If Today Be Sweet

by Thrity Umrigar


In spite of how much I like her name (seriously, I can go hours just chanting "Thrity Umrigar" in my head like it's a koan), I'm not that crazy about her work. I enjoyed her first book, The Spaces Between Us, very much--it reminded me a lot of Rohinton Mistry's books, though less complex, less layered. But very authentic, and very moving.

This book was a fun, easy read. But in comparison with the first book, maybe a little less believable? Not that the characters weren't well-thought out or inconsistent...but this book did strike me as more of a modern-day immigrant fairy tale.

Maybe it's because it's a happy book, and the first one was so tragic.

Recently-widowed Tehmina is visiting her son in suburban Ohio (he's married to a "midwestern white girl"), trying to decide whether to live in America with them or go back to Bombay. She's torn between her love for her family and her love for her familiar life. She finds herself drifting from day to day in Ohio--finding herself unhappy in spite of all that she has.

A great deal of her unhappiness comes from the cultural divide, and the tensions she feels she brings into her son's home.

What changes her is a small act of bravery that would be considered inconsequential in Bombay where everyone knows everyone else's business, but in the US could be perceived as both interfering and heroic. This small deed and its consequences help Tehmina to see that she has worth, even as an "old" lady in a foreign country, and makes it clear what her decision about the rest of her life needs to be.

What I liked most about the book was how Thrity got into Tehmina & Sorab (her son)'s heads, and their thoughts about their different experiences of immgrating to the US. I also loved the little descriptions of Parsi culture and wish I knew a bit more about it beyond what I've read in Thrity's books.

Dedication

by Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Kraus

The third offering from the pair that brought us The Nanny Diaries is a big, big improvement over their second (Citizen Girl).

For one thing, they've given up that cute little device they had in their first two books of calling their characters by a generic name.

Katie is 30, a sustainable development worker who is shadowed by her great childhood/teenage love, Jake Sharpe, who left town right before their prom and has become a celebrity rock star--perhaps a cross between Bono & Brad Pitt, but younger. Since she last saw him, he has written and sung many hit songs, most of which are about her and their relationship.

Katie vows on her best friend's wedding day to one day confront Jake about their past--why he left, why he never got in touch, why he keeps writing about her, and most important to their friends, why he never gave them songwriting credit for the first big hit he had.

She finally has the chance, Christmas 2005. Jake's come home to their small Vermont town with his fiancee. Katie flies up from North Carolina to get the closure she's needed for the last 13 years.

The story is told over many flashbacks that sandwich the present. With them, the picture we build of Katie is clear: she's strong and smart. She's honest. She's good at what she does.

But in spite of all she has going for her, Katie needs closure because she hasn't been able to move on from her 17-year old self. Jake's songs about her have made her wonder what they could've had, and how he could've just walked away from it.

Satisfyingly, Katie gets her closure. And she gets some romance, too. But not in a "happy ever after" kind of way, although I think the book had a happy ending, nonetheless.

As much as I enjoyed the plot and the narrative, this book didn't engage me as much as The Nanny Diaries did. Part of the problem for me was I often felt like I just fell into the middle of a conversation among Katie and her friends, and by the time I'd caught up with it, they'd moved on to something else, and I was scrambling once again.

I'm not sure why I felt that way--the characters spoke a familiar language, and it was actually nice to find myself trying to figure out what the characters were up to instead of everything being revealed in the narrative.

But this is certainly not a book that I'd read again just for the fun of it, because it felt like too much work for something that's supposed to be easy reading.