This book contained some of the inner thoughts of India I never knew about. My parents are from India and I,myself,have been to India a few times.The way the girl grew up is unreadable. This book is so good that words can not express my feelings. The way she grew up and worked herself up to her goal, which was to reach America. That was her goal and her destination. That is what I felt about this book.

This is one of the most unique travel books I've ever read. The first 165 pages are written by Canadian novelist & short story writer Clark Blaise and are followed by a 115 page section by his wife, Bharati Mukherjee, also a novelist & short story writer & Berkeley professor. The book originally appeared in 1975 and documents in two distinct voices a year spent in the company of Mukherjee's family in India, first in Bombay then in Calcutta.
Blaise and Mukherjee met at a writers workshop in Iowa, married, and lived in Canada with their two children until their house burned down which left them homeless and prompted their journey east. Mukherjee spent her formative years in Calcutta and is returning to a largely familiar world but to Blaise everything is new. The first sixty pages of his narrative take place in Bombay and Blaise is never altogether at home there as they are staying with Mukherjees parents and her father is the uncontested head of the household. Blaise's trips into the city are flights from the congestion of stifling family life, his insights into the nature of Indian family life are in equal parts humorous and informative(the family does not even know the first name of a servant who has lived with them for years, nor do they show any interest in knowing). This view of India from an outsider given an insiders access is just one of many aspects of this book that distinguishes it from mere travel narrative. His initiation into the rituals and customs and (to him)peculiarites of Indian family life make for great reading. But the best section is the sustained amazement and energy of the 10-15 page description of Calcutta(where they have chosen to spend the better part of the year in a mission which caters to scholars) as he rides a rickshaw through its cluttered streets. Over the course of the year Blaise will meet many of Calcutta's elite including its most famous(to the west anyway)citizen, the film maker Satyajit Ray. Calcutta is the major city of Bengal, the eastern most province of India, filled with a proud and cultured people, and Blaise spends many fascinating pages analyzing both its culture and polotics:
The Bengali has lived with the English longer than any Indian, and he has absorbed him,while keeping his own soul, with astounding ease. -p.122
Blaise begins with illusions about India but over the course of his year in Calcutta he learns about its culture and people and the contact with this world different in every imaginable way from his own has a profound impact on him, the way he views the west, and the way he views his marriage.
In counterpoint to Blaise's description of the year is Mukherjee's. She is a westernised Indian who has married outside,and according to her father beneath,her caste and in caste conscious India that is often an unforgivable offense. The Mukherjee girls(Bharati and her sisters)are brilliant and Bharati is beautiful and her novel, The Tigers Daughter, just published to rave reviews, has made her famous in her home country. Her year is marked by equally profound realizations which include increased self awareness of her own very personal way of blending if not bridging the two very distinct cultures of which she is a part:
My aesthetic, then, must accomadate a decidedly Hindu imagination with an Americanized sense of the craft of fiction. To admit to possessing a Hindu imagination is to admit that my concepts of what constitutes a "story" and of narrative structure are noncausal, non-Western.-p.298
But perhaps the most fascinating part of her section is her portrait of her former classmates who have stayed in India and married and now make up the elite. These highly educated women are nonetheless stranded in their homes and live cloistered social lives atop an India which has grown restless and intolerant of the wide divisions that separate the rich from the poor. Riots and robbery are always imminent realities. The women Mukherjee observes clothed in silk saris and gold bracelets and diamond earings in their gated community of mansions in the worlds poorest city seem trapped in a world that they know cannot last. They go on as if immune(or wishing to be) from all the realites around them, a social elite with money to burn but drained of contact and significance to the greater India outside their own very high walls.

Rare book by two excellent writers & one that has not gone through too many reprintings so get a copy while you can. I especially like the sturdy(always good for a travel book) '95 Hungry Mind paperback edition with excellent cover art as well as updated prologues and epilogues by the authors.

I think this a really good book for Indians or any immigrant group who has recently traveled to the US. It shows the life in the US and how people live here. i realli liked this book ad i suggestest everyone read it even though there is alotta sex related things in it!

You can hardly call her a "Indian women writer" that seems too narrow. She writes boldly and assumes roles that only a cosummate writer can do. Her Middleman story set the stage and then each story just got better. Forget Divakurani whose books are overarated, if you want to read "Indian women writers", then Bharti Mukherjee has no equal in this genre. She is astounding, fresh, and tanscends her category.

I read this book and the Interpreter of Maladies back to back and though there are similarities as to subject they are very different writers. Mukherjee's story's snap and pop while Lahiri's sparkle. These are great stories about being in a new place told from various viewpoints. My favorite was about a Catholic woman introducing her Afghan botfriend to her parents at thanksgiving. It was uncomfrtably like being there. Enjoy!

The more I ponder this book, the more intriguing I find the story. Beigh Masters is an "asset-hunter" in search of a legendary diamond from India, The Emperor's Tear. Her research leads to a connection with a distant relative, Hannah Easton, who lived in Salem, Mass., in the 1670's. Now fascinated by her own familial ties, Beigh traces Hannah's life from New England to the Coromandel Coast and the powerful East India Trading Company. Most extraordinary, Hannah becomes the "Salem Bibi", the white lover of a Hindu Raja, carving herself a place in history.

But there is more: the novel is so brilliantly themed, the premise so unique, that this reader was guided through a journey of staggering originality. Beigh's lover/companion, Venn, is developing a computer program that would allow an individual to experience a few moments in the past, set to a specific time frame, with pertinent information entered into the program. Beigh provides the structural facts, creating the opportunity to ......? Is it really even possible? This is not "time-travel" as usually written, but Virtual participation in real time. Mukerjee actually ties the threads of history together, from one side of the world to the other, suggesting infinite permutations. Not your traditional historical novel, Mukerjee fashions an ending worthy of any mystery-adventure devotee. Experiencing this story is an adventure in itself.

Bharati Mukherjee emigrated from her Brahmin family's insular compound in India to study at the Iowa Writers' Workshop, and her abiding literary yantra ever since has been inter-cultural dislocation, transplantation and rebirth -- in particular the collision of intransigent tradition with the chaotic possibilities at freedom's edge. In "The Holder of the World," she does not merely turn her personal experience on its head, but she does dizzying somersaults with full twists in midair. The context and model for her treasure-hunt mystery is one of the fascinating artistic traditions of the Indian subcontinent: Mughal miniature painting. The unexpected depiction of a fair-skinned Western woman in one of these 17th-century paintings launches the narrator on detective work she expects to lead to material treasure, but what she exhumes as virtual reality and historical truth converge is both tantalizingly less tangible and inestimably more valuable. The particular virtuosity of this slender volume is Mukherjee's determined compression of plot, narrative, character and information that makes reading something akin to aerobic exercise. Brief phrases and gestures become complex characterizations; sketches and outlines evoke transcontinental adventures; narrative whizzes by in a blur that somehow suggests rich detail; well-placed smudges and squiggles expand into vast landscapes. "The Holder of the World" is a sprawling, wide-screen historical epic, painted in miniature with a one-hair brush.

If someone told me that an author could transplant a seventeenth century female Protestant from Salem, Massachusetts, to the excesses of southern India and have the character enjoy that life, I might raise an eyebrow at its improbability. If someone told me that the vividly bloody action of King Philip's (Indian) War in Massachusetts and a Muslim-Hindu holy war near the Coromandel Coast in India were connected, I might look askance in disbelief that such atrocities on opposite sides of the world, committed for totally different reasons, could possibly be related. If that someone then told me that a narrator might locate a missing three hundred year old jewel by using a virtual reality program developed by her MIT researcher/lover, I'd be picturing a bodice-ripper with Fabio on the cover. And if that someone still had the nerve to suggest that all the above could be combined seamlessly, knowledgeably, and totally successfully in one astounding novel of fewer than 300 pages, I absolutely would not believe it. I still don't. Yet that is exactly what Bharati Mukherjee has done in The Holder of the World. In doing so, she manages to create a true literary bridge between East and West, reaching so far back to the roots of our respective cultures and thinking that for the first time in the dozen or so novels I've read by Indian authors, I feel as if I'm beginning to understand how and why we and they became who we are.

Mukherjee writes with sharp wit, presenting her Indian immigrant characters in uncomfortable, absurd, and often terrible situations. Her stories are about people who surrender "little bits of a reluctant self every year, clutching the souveniers of an ever-retreating past" [from her "Introduction"]. Her immigrant characters want to fit in their new America, and yet they want to cling to their pasts, their cultures, their ethics. They want to be American, in the sense of being successful and fitting in, and yet they can't reconcile themselves to it; America, often, rejects them, eats away at their traditions, their values, and even their self-respect. Note, though, that Mukherjee does not moralize; she never loses her sense of irony or absurdity.

It's really a wonderful short stories. I like, especially, Father. I am a parent and a Asian, so I can understand his feelings. I don't think it is a murder.

Some books? You can smell the attempt to dominate or be coy with the reader. Not Croft. Her voice is strong and instantly engaging, but not pretentious or faux-English like so many of her contemporaries. The way the stories inside unfold is almost lyrical, but not in the sweeping, Jeannete Winterson way, and not as dense as Boyle, though fulyl as engaging. Croft's style is earthy and warm even when the story is not pleasant, and this book is like a blanket of ideas and just the right words at all the right places. Simple, but always digging into you slyly.

My only ocmplaint about the book is the overly-long last piece, the novella. It's still in that great voice, but the story isn't as engaging as the others. There are other stories and characters in earlier stories that I would have liked to seen treated to this length outside of this particualr one, so I don't think the problem actually lies with her, but with me as Engaged Reader: we always want more of the right thing when we find it.

Read the 4 stars as more of a 4.5 and get this book. You'll burn through it, but you'll do so again and again.

WHAT REALLY HAPPEND 331 PEOPLE DIED BUT NOW THEY ARE BEAING BROUGHT TO TRIAL THAT STARTED FEB 4 2002 ALL SHOULD BE KILLED

Bharati Mukherjee's 1988 short story "Jasmine" is a gem. It tells the story of Indian woman from Trinidad who enters the U.S. illegally and ends up working in the household of a liberal academic family in Ann Arbor. Mukherjee employs a light touch in her portrayal of the differences between the savvy Jasmine and her well-intentioned but naive employers. The story steers clear of sentimentality while still making you acutely aware of the precariousness of an illegal immigrant's life and the yawning gulf of power between the rich and poor parts of the world.

The novel "Jasmine" is an expansion of that short story. Here, Jasmine is from an impoverished family in India proper, and we get a tour of subcontinental politics, Sikh separatism, and the mechanics of immigrant smuggling before she even makes it to the States. Though Jasmine ultimately lands in a liberal academic household, along the way she moves to Iowa, gets married, and becomes embroiled in a subplot reminiscent of the save-the-farm movies that enjoyed a brief popularity in the late 1980s. (For long stretches of the book you keep expecting Sally Field to show up.) This structural shagginess is the story's growing pains. Whether it's worth it depends on how compelling you find the themes "Jasmine" has been expanded to address.

Given a bigger canvas, Mukherjee takes on bigger ideas. The novel depicts not just the differences between the first and third worlds, but also their interconnectedness. Most interestingly, Mukherjee undermines the notion that immigrants flee pre-modern homelands in search of modern sanctuaries. In her novel, both are equally modern: the former is just modernity of a rougher sort. At one point during her sojourn in Iowa, Jasmine and her adopted Vietnamese son Du (things get awfully shaggy) fix a VCR together. In Mukherjee's world, the west is no longer the locus of technology: there's nothing more natural than for fellow third-worlders to bond over a soldering gun.

Themes like this make the novel "Jasmine" compelling on an intellectual level, and I'd be surprised if it's not a darling of undergraduate seminars. (Where the engagingly hard-to-classify Mukherjee is no doubt pigeonholed as a "woman writer of color.") Still, there's a grace missing from the novel. Though the shagginess of the plot may be forgivable, the neatness of the prose strikes a false note. In going from short story to novel, Mukherjee shifted from the third to the first person, and she can't quite pull off the change in perspective. Jasmine is supposed to be a fiercely intelligent but largely uneducated woman, but her voice in the novel has a sanguine, middle-class ring to it. It's oddly at ease, and too indulgently comprehending of the little absurdities of the liberal academic lifestyle. The short story's Jasmine sounded like a woman from Trinidad; the novel's Jasmine sounds like Bharati Mukherjee.

As a meditation on what it means to be an immigrant and what it means to be an American, the novel "Jasmine" is a worthwhile read. To see art trump ideas, however, check out the anthology "The Short Story and Its Writer" (Ann Charters, editor) and read the seed from which it grew.

This novel is a really moving tale. This is my first time reading Mukherjee's writing but it won't be the last. I found it to be a compelling read from start to finish. The story of how a young Indian girl becomes an American is intriguing. The evolution of Jyoti into Jasmine into Jane is gripping. I enjoyed the way Mukherjee wove this tale. She includes flashbacks to her past to let the reader see the past of Jasmine. It allows for empathy as the reader is led through the tragedies of her early life. Her resolve is extraordinary. She has to overcome the murder of her husband, terrorism in her homeland, a rape and many other hardships along the way. You can see how different events shape her views and attitudes. She begins to think and act for herself. There is sorrow and pain on the way but it is ultimately a tale of liberation. It's another example of the indomitable human spirit. Definitely a book that should be widely read.

An astrologer tells Jasmine at the age of seven that she is going to be widowed by the time she is fifteen. After the astrologer's prediction comes true, Jasmine decides to move to a small city in Iowa. Coming from India, she refers to Iowa as the new "Third World". During her lifetime, Jasmine travels to many places where she is given different names. These various names identify her as a new person by the influential men of her life. For example she is given the name "Jase" from her professor and the name "Jane" from her husband. This helps Jasmine to conceal her ethnic difference, and it enables her to survive in this strange, new world. Jasmine believes she is born more than once. Thus, her changing names reflect her rebirths. Jasmine's journey serves as a metaphor for the ever-moving, regenerating process of life itself. Overall, this book forces the reader to see America from a different point of view as a "Third World".

Steeped in Indian (specifically Brahmin) culture and legend, this story of 3 sisters is "narrated" by the youngest of them, Tara. Having grown up in Calcutta in the strictest of Brahmin upper-class households, the three sisters each find their own niche in the world, be it in the homeland or in the more modernized setting of America.

The main idea of the story revolves around Tara's life, and everything she's ever believed to be true about her family, being turned upside-down by the appearance of a young man who claims to be a close relative. Tara suspects he has underhanded motives and is determined to find the truth. In her journey to do so, she becomes reacquainted with the sisters who have remained so aloof from each other even through their regular contact.

The plot branches off into another secret, this time one held by Tara's own son, and delves into her relationships in general which strengthen considerably when she is faced with an element of danger she must try to free herself of.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Desirable Daughters is, without a doubt, elegantly written which is to be expected of an English professor such as author Bharati Mukherjee. Unfortunately, the story itself is heavily overshadowed by the powerful lesson on culture and the overly-long background descriptions of each character. At any given point in time, the reader can become lost in a sea of information that wasn't necessarily required for the plot to succeed.

Had the book been a non-fiction one based solely on Brahmin life and legend, it would have been excellent indeed. Since it was meant to be a fictional story with a thread of suspense and mystery, however, it was somewhat of a disappointment. Any suspense that may have built up was quickly drowned by yet another in-depth look into the inner workings of one of the characters.

Bharati Mukherjee is an amazing author and the reader is given a brilliant and fascinating look into a world they may otherwise never have known. Those facts are indisputable, but this particular book didn't have the balance needed to make it a successful piece of fiction.

Some books tell a good story. Some inform and illuminate, providing light and insight into the previously unknown. In Desirable Daughters, Ms. Mukherjee accomplishes these admirable ends and more in an intriguing tale of three sisters and the divergent paths their lives take in the wake of their privileged Brahmin beginnings. Reviews elsewhere on this page delve into the intricacies of plot, so there is no need to cover this ground again. Suffice it to say that the sudden appearance of a suspicious stranger into the storyteller's life serves as the catalyst for an unfolding series of events, encounters and recollections.

Told from the point of view of Tara, the youngest sister, the narrative takes us from Calcutta to San Francisco to Bombay to Jackson Heights, the cultural, historic and geographic details rendered in vivid masterstrokes you will not soon forget. Highlights are many. The opening chapter (despite the irritating overuse of italics). Tara's visits with her sister in a luxury Bombay apartment that overlooks the Arabian Sea-and the terrifying baggage such a lifestyle engenders. The people, the shops and the interplay among the Indian community of Queens. And the unshakeable sense of impending horror Mukherjee deftly weaves throughout the text.

One of the blurbs on the dust jacket comes from Amy Tan. It is easy to understand the reasoning behind the choice, for those who enjoy her work are likely to find much the same pleasure in Bharati Mukherjee and Desirable Daughters. Buy it. Read it. Enjoy it. And be prepared to savor it for a very long time to come.

This was the first of Bharati Mukherjee's books that I read. It was a wonderful book and her writing style is beautiful. I've read the other reviews and some have seen her extensive descriptions of the charactor's religious and cultural backgrounds as negative. I, on the other hand, bought the book for those very descriptive backgrounds and was not dissapointed!

As the American/caucasion wife to an Indo-American Bengali Brahmin and the mother of our 4 mixed heritage children, I found the book an enormous education into my husband's family heritage and culture. I gained invaluable insite into the complexities of mixing 2 very different worlds and doing so while maintaining your sanity! I've since read Bharati Mukherjee's other books and have been equally excited and pleased with each one!

Instead of dry - non-fictional - text-book type reading, her books have given me the opportunity to learn and explore in the more pleasurable and even more insightful format of a beautifully narrated fictional story, gracefully intwined with religous, historical and cultural history lessons.

Dimple, the main character of "Wife" is portrayed in such a way by Mukherjee that the reader is left wondering about the attitude that he or she develops towards her. Mukherjee takes us deep into the mind of Dimple as she makes a transition from being single to marrying a husband chosen by her father,and from living in the familiar surroundings of Calcutta to moving to the so-perceived violent city of New York. As the novel progresses, Dimple's hidden unstable personality reveals itself leaving the reader shocked, yet entranced.