Monsoon Summer
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- 4,49 €
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- 4,49 €
Publisher Description
A compelling story of love, adventure, and the secrets that follow us, wherever we go...
I adored this wonderful story...Astonishingly good' Dinah Jefferies, bestselling author of The Tea Planter's Wife and Before the Rains
Oxfordshire, 1947. Exhausted by the war and nursing a tragic secret, Kit Smallwood throws herself into helping her godmother Daisy set up a charity sending midwives to India, a plan fraught with danger.
Then Kit meets Anto, a trainee doctor from India nearing the end of his English education, and falls utterly in love. Marriage should be the easiest thing in the world, but when Anto informs his family that he is shortly to return home with an English bride, his parents are appalled.
Despite being Anglo-Indian herself, Kit's own mother is equally horrified. She has spent most of her life trying to erase a painful past and losing her daughter to an Indian man is her worst fear realized.
As they journey to a new life in India, Kit begins to understand the seriousness of what she has undertaken and just how much she has to learn about the nature of home and the depth of her love.
Readers love Julia Gregson's spellbinding novels:
'Exotic, decadent, dangerous and terrific storytelling' Fanny Blake
'What a gorgeous read. Exciting, romantic, unpredictable and funny' Tracey Ullman
'A heartbreaking, poignant love story' Heat
<h3> 'Skillful, vivid and explicit' Sunday Telegraph
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This ambitious historical novel from Gregson (East of the Sun) follows British nurse and aspiring midwife Kit Smallwood, who marries an Oxford-educated doctor, Anto Thekkeden, and moves with him to India shortly after the country gains independence in 1947. Haunted by the death of a baby on her watch, Kit is reluctant to pursue her midwife certificate. Nonetheless, she promises family friend Daisy Barker that she'll help get Daisy's favorite charity, a clinic for poor women called the Moonstone, up and running. Kit and Anto soon realize that their idealistic plans will be challenged by Anto's wealthy high-caste family. Kit is especially disparaged by Anto's mother, Kunjamma, who hoped that after his long absence abroad he would marry a local girl of similar status. Kit learns that the Moonstone is in dire need of staff and supplies, and begins to dedicate more and more of her time to the increasingly risky job, much to her new family's chagrin. Strong characters make Gregson's novel a powerhouse. The need to preserve honor and avoid shame drives the Thekkeden clan and leads them to keep secrets from one another that snowball. Kit's desire to help people eventually gets her into trouble with both her family and the law. Gregson does a fantastic job of pitting conventional ways against progressive thinking without demonizing either side. This story covers a lot of ground family vs. the other, new vs. old, science vs. superstition and only falters when bending the plot a certain way at convenient points. This small flaw doesn't detract from a powerful and memorable novel.
