Wow! I enjoyed making my way through the generations of a Madras family. Spoilers ahead…I found myself missing the mother though-who we met in the beginning as a 12 year old bride. She was the most fleshed out out character I think. With magical thinking and an unbelievable tolerance for many circumstances-and there was SO much tragedy! (I can still picture that spiky tree. And Lenin’s hand…) It was neatly wrapped up with a twist that left me wanting more interactions, but I still enjoyed the characters. Especially Digby Kilgour who has a way of charming himself out of SO much grief. Love the drawing aspects and the artist ways of Digby and Elsie. The rage that the husband, Philipose, unleashed on the sculpture in his drugged out state was a compelling scene as well-totally visceral and believable. I also enjoyed the medical aspects of “the condition.” I was completely skeptical in the beginning that such a trait was inherited, and the author had a wonderful solution to the thread. I think the medical stories were more compelling than the romances (and their adjacent tragedies) in some ways. They had a more tangible conclusion, a logic. Although, I will say I really liked how that the mother, the original 12-year old bride, Big Ammachi, could “feel” the dead and those around her, as well as her daughter, Baby Mol, the “forever a girl”-could tell the future.
3/5 stars. –Trine Giaever, adult winter reading participant.