November 15, 2007

There is Room For You

Jane suggested this book to me and I did enjoyed it. "There is Room For You"' by Charlotte Bacon is part travelogue (both to the India in the 30's and 40's and India today), part story of mother-daughter relationships, and part memoir of Anna's mother Rose's life growing up in Calcutta during the waning years of British Colonial Rule. The story centers on 35-year-old Anna Singer, a grant writer from New York City recently divorced from her husband, still mourning the accidental death of her father, and not comfortable with herself. A book review I read stated that this book reminds the reader "....that we are all travelers forced to read strange maps and decipher unfamiliar codes in a constant quest to be at home in the world." I like that analogy. The novel slowly unfolds, alternating between the memories that Rose wrote in her diary after fleeing India during the outbreak of World War II and later England before settling and marrying in the United States and those of Anna as she tries to explore her mother's past to decipher the events that damaged Rose's spirit and ability to be a complete person, wife and mother. The story has an interesting twist at the end and that leaves the reader hopeful that this family will be okay.

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