Someone Else's Garden
A Novel
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
The eldest of seven children,born low-caste and female in rural India,Mamta is abused and rejected by a father whocan see no reason to “water someone else’s garden” until ahusband is found for her. Seeking escape in matrimony, Mamta beginsher wedded life with hope—but is soon forced to flee her village and thehorrors of her arranged marriage to the bustle of a small city. Saved from becomingone of the nameless and faceless millions of rejected humanity by thesalvation of sublime love, Mamta struggles to find a precarious state ofacceptance and make peace with her past.
Powerfully affecting and uplifting, set against a vivid and colorful backgroundof Eastern life, Dipika Rai’s Someone Else’s Garden transcends geographicaldivides and cultural chasms to brilliantly expose the commonalityof the human condition, compelling us to seek answerswithin ourselves to humanity’s eternalquestions: Is life random?Do we have a destiny?
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In Rai's first novel, a young rural Indian woman named Mamta is given in marriage to a man so vile that he sells her kidney to buy prostitutes and fund his gambling. When Mamta learns that he plans to sell her other kidney, killing her, she flees to her home village, where her indentured father and brother help her escape to a city in central India. Once there, she finds her way and sends money to her mother, who, realizing that Mamta has left her husband, disowns her. Her brother-in-law, Lokend, arrives in the city to run for office and is badly attacked by his rival's aide, prompting Mamta to care for him. They fall in love and start a new life, bringing them back to their village, families, and a more humane existence. Though beautifully written, the story of Mamta is overwhelmed by cruelty and brutality; details on Mamta's late reconciliation with her mother and the sanctuary that the two create for abused women are but cursorily addressed. Despite the depth of feeling and the final note of redemption, many readers will find Rai's debut relentlessly bleak.
