Books

OTHER STORIES RELATED TO BOOKS Inside The Veil Top 10

If reviewing first fiction is hard, reviewing established writers is harder. For one, you have to constantly grapple with the phantom of their literary reputation. The Vine of Desire is a difficult book to review. It is neither outrightly bad so you can slam it shut and toss it aside nor is it outrightly good so you can gush suitably over it.

THE VINE OF DESIRE By Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni Abacus Price: £6.50 Pages: 373

The Vine of Desire is a sequel to Sister of My Heart. With sequels, you see an evolution; you can trace the growth of that character. This one began ominously with, "In the beginning was pain..." and thereafter it rambled, carrying forward a frayed plot by the sheer force of pretty words and phrases.

Anju and Sudha, cousins and girlhood companions, after a year of living separate lives come together again in America. Anju is recovering from a miscarriage that has unhinged her life and Sudha, who chose to keep her girl child rather than abort, is now a divorced woman. Caught between the two women is Sunil, Anju's husband who has always nurtured a passion for his wife's cousin. Sudha, seeking a measure of self-worth, trying to assuage loneliness, succumbs to Sunil's need for her and then flees from home, cousin and cousin's husband to be a nursemaid to an old and ailing man. Sunil moves out and away. Anju does her writing coursework, makes it to the dean's list and learns to fly. In fact, it's only once Sudha leaves Anju's home that the book picks up pace and actually becomes quite enjoyable.

SERIAL WRITER: Divakaruni

If the plot seems limp, the main characters or rather how they are drawn is even more weaker. Most of the time they languish in their thoughts or in bed. The dynamics of reality seem far removed from each one of them. In fact, reality is compounded out of elaborate references to the O.J. Simpson trial, and stories from the Ramayana; one-line mentions of Saddam Hussein's mobilising forces, of Germans having wrested from the French the distinction of being the world's largest consumers of alcohol ... Perhaps all of this can be forgiven if Chitra Divakaruni hadn't resorted to what seems to be a series of creative writing exercises. You don't know if you are reading a novel, a commentary, journal entries or an assignment book. Self-indulgent always and at times annoying and at times awfully boring ... A writer of Divakaruni's stature ought to know better.