12 year old Neela has lived a simple life in her village in Bengal. The British still have rule over India, and though sometimes she hears bad things about them, life is good for her. At Neela's older sister's wedding, many things change. A group of freedom-fighters interrupt the ceremony, and ask for donations. Some people don't support the freedom-fighters, and have the belief that the British are doing them good. Heated discussions spring out as a result, and Neela is a little bit worried. She is even more so after her Baba announces that he is going to Calcutta, to talk to a non-violence group who wants to establish peace in India. The reason this frightens Neela so much is that Calcutta is one of the British headquarters, and many violent things have been going on. Later on, after tested to see what she needs to do, Neela runs away to Calcutta to rescue her Father. Though, the British live in fancy homes and talk nicely, they treat the Indian people like dirt. While everyone else is in poverty, they are relaxing in their posh lifestyles. Unfortunately, as Neela finds out, some Indians amazingly support the British. Neela makes daring efforts, and has an adventure that would last generations!

This is the story of 12-year old Neela, a girl living in India under the rule of the British. Neela lives in exciting but turbulent times. She has difficult choices to make in terms of whether to be a dutiful young woman and marriage prospect as her culture dictates. The most difficult decision she must face is how to define moral justice and independence for her country and people. The political opinions of her family and people living in her village result in Neela taking a stand and putting her very life at risk. I read this book with my daughter and we determined that it is a must read. The story was fast-paced and exciting. The main character is a vibrant, and curious girl who evolves into a courageous individual.

SISTER OF MY HEART by Chitra Banerjee Divaruni

SISTER OF MY HEART by Chitra Banerjee Divaruni is a beautifully written story of two girls who are as close as two sisters can be. The story takes place in late 20th Century India. Anju and Sudha are two cousins who are born on the same day and are raised as sisters by their mothers and Aunt. Both of their fathers died before they were born, but their "mothers" Pishi, Nalini and Gouri raise them up to be proper girls, making sure they get an education and are made ready as marriage material when the time comes.

The two girls are different as night and day. Anju is plain while Sudha is beautiful. Anju is the bookworm, whose dream is to manage her mother's bookstore when she is of age. Sudha's dreams involve designing clothes and becoming famous. The two are inseparable despite their differences, until Sudha finds out about a horrible family secret that changes everything that came before. With this secret weighing deep in her heart, Sudha withdraws and changes, and refuses to tell Anju what is wrong. And when Sudha is told that she has been arranged to marry a man she does not love, her life turns for the worse. Anju's marriage takes her far away to America, and soon their lives seem to be on different paths. But despite the distance and the secrets that they hide, their love binds them, as the reader will find out.

For a trip to modern day India and a wonderful story of sisterly love, read SISTER OF MY HEART. The book had plenty of Indian fables and myths and traditions, along with plot twists and mysteries that will keep the reader wanting more. When I finished this book, I did not want it to end. I am glad to know that there is a sequel, THE VINE OF DESIRE, which I am looking forward to reading soon. Thumbs up for SISTER OF MY HEART.

I read "Mistress of Spices" which introduced me to Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni's work. Then I got a recommendation from another Indian author to read "Sister of My Heart." That was a good deed, (Thanks, Sharon) because I loved this novel, too.

The plot is very intricate and full of surprises. Sudha and Anju are two girls born in the same house on the same day, to different mothers, and from different fathers. Their fates are thereafter intertwined, and the two girls consider themselves sisters, if not actually twins. But their fates ultimately diverge--or do they?

Author Divakaruni can create surprise with a single word or short phrase. Her introduction of the word "ruby" in the first chapters stands out on the page as if it were a loud trumpet call. Her use of small, well-chosen words at JUST the right time can wake you up. Pay attention, something very interesting is about to happen. I just love that! And, just like Mistress of Spices, the author knows how to mix a fable or fairy-tale like story with an everyday drama. I love that, too.

This is one novel you should not miss if you love Indian fiction, if you love women's fiction (for any woman can enjoy this, I think) and if you loved Mistress of Spices.

I read Sister of My Heart because amazon.com's computer said that people who enjoyed Rohinton Mistry's work would also enjoy this book. IT was right. I enjoyed reading every moment of the story of two cousins growing up in Calcutta, India under somewhat unusual circumstances. Their fathers both were killed in an accident just before they were born. Their mothers, unrelated, go into labor upon hearing the news of the accident. The story takes them through their arranged marriages, and their falling in love. The novel is somewhat autobiographical but definitely totally genuine and authentic throughout. Divakaruni writes beautifully and her story will hold your interest. AND, even better, there is a sequel so you can follow the two cousins' lives in America in the second book. Divakaruni is also a wonderful poet.

While I like Divakaruni's accessible style and simple narration, this book's content leaves a lot to be desired. Divakaruni is good at exposing the, all-too-easy to talk about, conflicts of Indo-American values and does so with a mostly honest voice; however she fails to illuminate, evoke empathy or redeem...

The pulls of Indian tradition are familiar, at least to an Indian audience, so there is nothing new there but if one hopes that the heroines (mostly) will find SOME settlement or form of redemption or even ATTEMPT to find new directions then you're sure to be sorely disappointed. There is no new ground here.

In fact far from finding their own unique answers or even making an attempt at them or, much less so, making peace or even some kind of a compromise with their lives her characters are left as they began, quite bereft of inspiration, hope or imagination - and unforgivably boring!

Many of the stories are shockingly inane in that some of the conflicts are just plain banal and you can't help but wonder why you should care about these people at all esp. if they cannot even face basic irrationalisms of their lives (one example - the young woman who reaches out to but ultimately fails the older woman being accused of being a bearer of bad luck).

The other big problem is that there is not sufficient depth in the stories nor enough complexity in the characters (development) to help one understand the forces behind the protagonists' paralysis.

Overall, most of the stories in this book are unfortunately such that they leave the readers with more ennui than empathy and much less understanding.

"The Unknown Errors of Our Lives" is a collection of short stories by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni that focuses on Indian women and their immigrant experience in America. In many ways, the subject matter of these stories are similar to those of Jhumpa Lahiri's "Interpreter of the Maladies" (a favorite book of mine). Many of the stories in Unknown Errors also deal with marriages of different sorts and in different stages: arranged marriages, engagements, deteriorating relationships.

The first story in the book is entitled "Mrs. Dutta Writes a Letter". This is a touching story about an older widow who moves from India to live with her son's family in America. Her son tells her "We want you to be comfortable, Ma. To rest. That's why we brought you here to America." Her attempts to share stories of India and cook traditional meals and help out around the house are looked down upon of by her daughter-in-law and she begins to feel un-welcomed. Life with her son and grandchildren in America isn't what Mrs. Dutta imagined it would be. Through Divakaruni's writing, the reader can feel Mrs. Dutta's pain and disappointment.

As in "Mrs. Dutta Writes a Letter" the story "The Intelligence of Wild Things" brings up issues of keeping Old World traditions alive after immigrating versus becoming Americanized. "The Intelligence of Wild Things" is about a woman who visits her younger brother, Tarun in Vermont. She discovers that his girlfriend is an American girl with "freckled skin and reddish-gold hair." She wonders how her brother who "had never wanted to come to America" has become so Americanized while she, who agreed to an arranged marriage in order to move to America, still clings to traditions she learned growing up in India.

"The Lives of Strangers" is one of my favorite stories from the collection. This story is about Leela, a young Indian woman from America who visits her aunt in India. They go on a pilgrimage in Kashmir with a group of women. One of these women is Mrs. Das whom the rest of the women believe was "born under an unlucky star" and therefor shun her due to a fear that her bad luck may rub off on them. Divakaruni does a fantastic job in this story portraying Leela's struggle with guilt and a conscience that is telling her to do what is right despite what others say.

Some stories in this collection are definitely stronger than others, but overall, the book offered an excellent look at the Indian immigrant experience from the female point of view.

ALTHOUGH I HAVE SPOTTED THIS NOVEL ON MY LOCAL BOOKSTORE SHELVES A FEW MONTHS AGO, I KEPT PUTTING OFF THE DECISION TO PURCHASE IT MOSTLY BECAUSE I USUALLY PREFER NOVELS OVER SHORT-STORIES. I ADMIT THOUGH BEING HIGHLY IMPRESSED WITH THIS BOOK.
FOR THE SECOND TIME (HAVING PREVIOUSLY READ "SISTER OF MY HEART" AND BEING EQUALLY ENCHANTED BY IT) I WAS REALLY ENTRANCED BY THE AUTHOR'S SIMPLE YET HEART-TOUCHING WRITING STYLE. MOST STORIES ARE INHABITED BY VERY HUMAN AND DOWN-TO-EARTH CHARACTERS I COULD VERY EASILY IDENTIFY WITH. THEY LEAD VERY ORDINARY LIVES AND THEIR CONFLICTS AND STRUGGLES ARE PART OF ORDINARY LIVES, TOO. THESE ARE PEOPLE TORN BETWEEN OLD LOYALTIES, STRONG FAMILY TRADITIONS AND NEW IDENTITIES. I THINK THAT AS A WHOLE, THIS IS A HIGHLY ENJOYABLE SHORT-STORIES COLLECTION WHICH IS LIKELY TO PROVIDE YOU WITH A PLEASURABLE READING. WARMLY RECCOMENDED!!!!

I'm used to reading Salman Rushdie, Arundhati Roy, R.K. Narayan and Jhumpa Lahiri. While the writing of this author pales in comparison to the others', it is well-worth the read because of its accessibility. Its meaning is at the surface, and doesn't require a serious reading to understand. The virtue of the book is in its plots. Each of the plots is creatively told from a bicultural perspective. While I did feel at times that Divakaruna was a bit pessimistic about Indian marriages, there was definitely truth in her stories of forced abortion, caste and class relations, and in lies and exaggerations of matchmakers. I definitely would recommend this to anyone who is even mildly interested in the social issues surrounding arranged marriages, and in the problems that Indian marriages may face. Like I said, the stories are well-told, and none of the plots are forced. They flow naturally and easily, with little to no figurative language, etc. This is a very quick read, and a very entertaining read. I must admit that I have qualms about ever marrying and Indian person after reading this, but if you read with the notion that the book intends to shed light on some of the darker aspects of arranged marriage and interracial/intercultural marriage, then it's possible to come out of the experience with a still-healthy view of the Hindu sacrament. Read this book on a Sunday, then discuss it with a South Asian friend! You'll be able to recount all the stories by heart because they stick out in your mind, if not for the writing, for the plot.

Arranged Marriage by Divakaruni is painful. That is not to say that the book is "bad". On the contrary, Arranged Marriage is masterfully written -- interesting to the end, thought-provoking throughout, and extraordinarily well crafted. Rather, the stories themselves deal with, center around, and analyze issues that are painful: abuse, heartache, loss, abandonment. The Indian and Indian-American women in Divakaruni's stories must deal with such serious and life-changing problems that feelings of hopelessness often rise to the surface (not only with the characters but with the reader as well!). Frankly, reading this book in its entirety very quickly might be sensory overload. As a word of advice, read this book slowly -- maybe a story or two a day. Think about the stories before you move on and really try to separate out the kernels of hope embedded in each one (they do exist!). After a while, the stories are not simply "depressing and hopeless" but are instead poignant and hopeful.

Ms. Divakaruni goes further in the depth into the Indian culture by extracting the fine threads that link women to their identities. These stories are beautiful and each one depicts a young woman caught between the American culture and the Indian culture wanting to belong to either one. She illustrates and expands her stories to tell what it is like being an Indian woman in the modern age, the traditions are still valued and some are still followed and others are thrown to the wayside. If you seek to be enlightened and want to dive deep within the topic of Marriage and the Indian Culture...this book is the perfect epitome and it's all you'll need to understand!!! Coming from the Indian culture and being brought up in the United States...I myself connected with some of these young women in the stories...Happy Reading!!

"A home without books is like a body with a soul." Anonymous

Divakaruni's first novel reads like a fable, as she blends Old World India with New World America. An aged woman, Tilo, an Indian immigrant, serves as the "mistress" of spices. She unravels her mythic past to set the stage for the present. Highly fantastical, it is necessary to suspend belief in the reasonable as Tilo describes her early life, training for this unusual vocation. Using traditional Indian spices, some with particularly healing properties and required rituals, to attend to the various physical and emotional ills of her customers, Tilo carries on a constant dialog with the spices, and each chapter introduces another spice and its uses. The language is often poetic, her descriptions full of visual impressions: "my cloak dragging in salt dust like a torn wing".

Divakaruni cleverly uses her story line as a vehicle for exposing the social stigma of immigration, as well as the ills of modern cities riddled with poverty and crime. Where it could be strident, instead the writer introduces her character's problems and complexities in the context of understanding. In the course of her conscientious ministrations, Tilo unwittingly falls in love with a man she calls the "American". She cannot fathom his motives in their mutual attraction, as she is "disguised" as an old woman and he is a man in his prime. Soon the present pulls as strongly as the past, and desire clashes with duty. Her serenity shattered, Tilo is forced to make life-altering decisions, agonizing over her choices; in the end, the direction is clear, without doubt.

With the aura of a fable, I often felt too aware of the transition from the believable to the unbelievable; the author's device should not have been so obvious. In her following work, however, particularly Sister of My Heart, Divakaruni is able to overcome such flaws without losing her power or her poetry.

A highly evocative piece of prose, "The Mistress of Spices" was the first book I've read of Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, and I'm going to find more.

The blend of spice-centric folklore, deep emotional sacrifice, and the clashing worlds of things city and things cultural create a sense of counterpoint in this novel. You follow the Mistress herself, a woman to whom the spices sing, and in whose hands their tastes and uses are magickal. This is a woman who shed her youth to an immortal aged form to aid the world around her.

As the Mistress grows more and more involved in the lives of those around her, she might just risk everything, including not only her immortality but maybe her life as well, on the chance of love, passion, and the urge to care and help those around her. It is often said, 'with great power comes great responsibility' and this cultural exploration of that notion is just phenomenal.

If you like the works of Alice Hoffman (of "Practical Magic" fame), or "Like Water for Chocolate," for example, I would reccommend this book highly.

Incorporating the magical with the real, this novel follows the life of Tilo, a woman with magical powers who decides to become a Mistress of Spices. Divakaruni uses intense imagery and vivid descriptions to narrate the story. Her style verges on prose, utilizing sentence fragments, distinct punctuation, and strange paragraph formats for an interesting and compelling read.

In addition, Divakaruni develops a story that places a mystical character in an ordinary setting: Oakland, California. She combines Tilo's exciting life as an immortal being with the lives of every-day mortals in an effort to contrast the two extremes. With the presence of Tilo, the reader is able to view the commoners in Oakland as special people. Tilo, however, begins to feel jealousy at their lives, rich with human contact and emotion. When a strange American man enters the shop and steals Tilo's heart, she begins to question her decision to be a Mistress- is this the life for her?

Black Candle succeeds in its prose poems that a vignettes of the difficulties of life as a South Asian. The poems also work if one judges them as vignettes rather than poetry. Yoga Lessons is the strongest piece as poetry. Even as vignettes, however, the ubiquous use of first person, which works well for the poems in isolation, fails to work in the collection as the reader gets many "I's" of which some are the same and others not. The book does as excellent job of making the foreign culture and environment accessible to Americans.

This book reminds me most of Jana Harris' work where pioneer women's stories are made into poetry. If you enjoyed that, you'll surely enjoy this,

I found these poems to reveal a harsh beauty. If I joke that American women should read this before they complain it would be to ease the tension over severity with which women are treated in many of these Asian cultures. Divakaruni has revealed a piece of her soul and raised concerns over the mistreatment of women in Asia (as well as anywhere in the world for that matter) These poems are best read a couple at a time so one can absorb the passion and the reality of the situations described. A few of the poems in this collection moved me close to tears. Hopefully, a better day will dawn. I would like to apend my earlier comment that American women should read this by stating that all the men need to read it, too.

Black Candle is a supremely impressive collection of poetry rich with metaphor and set on the Indian sub-continent. These poems portray moving, palpable portraits of women's lives that will strike a universal chord of recognition and appreciation with the western reader. The Room: I have walked this corridor so many times/I no longer notice/the gouged floorboards, the brown light/washing the peeling walls, the stale/childhood smell of curried cabbage.//I am looking for the door,/the one whose striated knob/matches perfectly the lines of my palm,/which opens without sound/into a room with milk-blue walls.//On the sill, a brass bowl/of gardenias in water. Peacocks/spread silk feathers against cushions./The white cockatoo on its stand/knows my name. Sun filters/through the sari of a woman/who rises toward me. I am caught/by the lines of her bones, the fine/lighted hairs on her held-out arm,/your eyes, mother, in her mouthless face.

I've read all of Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni's fiction, and have frequently recommended this tremendously gifted writer to my friends. I eagerly awaited this book, only to be disappointed. Sister of My Heart, of course, doesn't need a sequel, and the author herself has said that she considered the story finished. Only many years later after other projects did she find she still had more to say about Anju and Sudha.

And what she has to say is very different from the earlier book. Where Sister affirmed the loving if tangled connections between its characters, Vine finds them tearing each other apart. Unfortunately, there's not enough movement in the story's first half, just an ever-elaborated atmosphere of tension. Worse, the author's trademark sumptuous language is overdone, and it throws off the balance of wordcraft with story. She delivers gem-like descriptions of trash rolling down the street but leaves the characters curiously opaque, their motivations described in artificial and thoroughly unconvincing ways. I never understood why the women acted the way they did, and felt, sadly, that I was missing the drama of present desire contending with past affection, since the loving friendship here threatened was nowhere in evidence. Given these problems with the plot and the characters, I found the language distracting and ineffective, despite some lovely images.

I did however find the book grew stronger and more powerful in the second half, after the uncomfortable menage a trois is broken up and the characters pursue their lives separately. Towards the end Divakaruni delivers some truly moving insights into the emotional realities we all share, reminding me that she's a writer worth listening to, even in her weaker efforts.

Unlike several of the other readers, I don't think the book's shortcomings derive from being set in the US rather than India, because CBD has already shown that she can tell stunning American tales in her two short story collections. Rather, I think it's that she's in a transitional mode, reinventing herself as a writer on a different scope. You can see this in her use of more varied and sophisticated techniques--five narrators (one of them omniscent) give the story a very different, less intimate texture than Sister of My Heart. Other voices crowd in through letters from India and assignments from Anju's creative writing class. CBD's authorial gaze spirals outward to take in the expanse of the city and the San Francisco bay area, the larger world that swirls around her characters. She makes pointed reference to ongoing world events, and tries (rather clumsily) to weave the OJ Simpson trial into her plot. On the whole, her voice is more experimental and self-conscious in its address to the reader. Some of these features I loved (particularly the last chapter told in Lalit's voice) and others I found distracting, but on most of them I reserve judgment. I think they'll work better in her next book.

In summary, I wouldn't recommend the book to anyone who isn't already a Divakaruni fan; Sister of My Heart needs no sequel. I would and do, however, encourage anyone to encounter this talented author through her short stories, collected in Arranged Marriage and (my personal favorite of all her books) The Unknown Errors in Her Lives. And I await her next book with curiosity, eager to see how she grows into her new skin.

"Sister of My Heart," to which "Vine of Desire" is the sequel, was a magical, wonderful story of two cousins set in India. Part mystery, part love story, part family saga, it would have been tough for the sequel to equal it. "Vine of Desire" starts off in the United States; Anju has moved here and Sudha is soon to follow, setting up the love triangle with Anju's husband, Sunil, that dominates the book. The author tries to cram into a few pages enough detail from the first book so it will all make sense, but I can't imagine diving into this one without having read the first--it would be quite difficult to understand the motivations and history of the characters. Southern California, where this story takes place, is far less exotic than the India of the first novel, and rather predictably the situation among the three main characters blows up and separates the sisters of the heart. The 'sisters' reunite rather shakily at the end, as Sudha prepares to go back to India, and the author neatly sets up the situation for yet another sequel. With three men in the picture--Sunil, Ashok and Lalit--and two women, we should get a happier ending next time around.

Anju and Sudha are reunited again when Sudha travels to America to help her sister Anju overcome the loss of her baby. Sudha also plans to make a new life for herself and baby daughter Dayita. But the attraction that had flared just before their double wedding in Calcutta between Sudha and Anju's husband Sunil was still kindling just beneath the surface. It is this slow burning desire between in-laws that sends this household into flames.
The Vine Of Desire stands alone as an extraordinary book. Although those of us who have read Sister Of My Heart may have been looking for the same poignant writing that made us fall in love with Sudha, Anju, the Chatterjee family and India could be a tad disappointed. The writing in The Vine Of Desire, while still talented and graceful, wasn't able to give us the descriptive prose as Divakaruni did when she took us through the sites, smells, and customs of India. Should she have kept the setting in India with this book, I think not, the fact of the matter is how do you truly follow after a book like Sister Of My Heart?
Divakaruni has displayed that she is a masterful writer and I look forward to reading many more of her books.

Ms. Divakaruni's output is likely to be forgotten in a short time -perhaps a few years. In the mean time, she masquerades as an interpreter of the east to the sort-of-educated white audience. Along with her fellow Bengali woman author, Bharati Mukherjee, this lady continues the insults of Sikhs, this time from Yuba City. Perhaps this attitude is rooted in their upbringing in Calcutta, where Sikhs drove Taxi Cabs, buses, and trucks and (like another minority group in the US) were blessed with legendary equipment - in stark contrast to their own bengali men - who though so intellectual just did not have this physical dimension.

This is the kind of collection that will turn poetry haters into poetry lovers (or at least poetry likers). Divakaruni tells moving little stories -- rather than addressing abstract ideas -- in these entertaining poems. My favorites were "Woman With Kite" and "The Makers of Chili Paste." Her poems are mostly about Indian women, though I found them universally moving