Late bloomers A novel

Deepa Varadarajan

Book - 2023

"After thirty-six years of marriage, recently divorced Suresh and Lata Raman find themselves starting new paths in life. Suresh is trying to navigate the world of online dating on a website that caters to Indians and is striking out at every turn until he meets a mysterious, devastatingly attractive younger woman named Malika, who seems to be smitten with him. Meanwhile, Lata is enjoying her newfound indepedence after decades in an arranged marriage, but she's caught off guard when a professor in his early sixties starts to flirt with her. Priya, the former couple's unmarried daughter, thinks her father's online pursuits are distasteful but hides a secret affair of her own, while their son Nikesh pretends at a seemingly ...perfect marriage with his law-firm colleague and their young son, but hides the truth of what his relationship really entails"--

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Subjects
Genres
Domestic fiction
Novels
Published
New York : Random House [2023]
Language
English
Main Author
Deepa Varadarajan (author)
Edition
First edition
Physical Description
352 pages ; 21 cm
ISBN
9780593498026
Contents unavailable.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

Varadarajan debuts with an endearing exploration of an Indian American family's search for new beginnings. After 36 years, the Ramans call it quits on their arranged marriage. Lata moves into a condo and gets a job as a librarian, the allure of these first-time experiences outweighing the challenges of singlehood. Suresh, on the other hand, turns to internet dating. (For his profile, he shaves four years off his age, calling himself 55.)Meanwhile, their adult children navigate their own complicated lives. Nikesh, the star of the family with his perfect lawyer-wife, Denise, and their eight-month-old son, is hiding a secret about his relationship with Denise. His older sister, Priya, a history professor who's considered a problem child because she's unmarried and childless at 35, is hiding an affair with a man her parents would never approve of. Suresh meets an attractive woman too young for him, while Lata agrees to her first-ever date, but the accumulating secrets threaten to shake the family's foundations. Striking narration from each of the family members and believable character development add to Varadarajan's bold challenge to traditional South Asian conventions for a stringent life plan. These strong voices leave an indelible mark. Agent: Kim Witherspoon, InkWell Management. (May)

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Review by Kirkus Book Review

The Ramans were your typical Indian American family. Dad's a computer guy at Central Texas State University, Mom made sure the house was immaculate, the family well fed. Their son is an Ivy League lawyer in New York, their daughter a medieval history professor in Austin. But then, a year ago, Lata very untypically left her husband of 30-odd years, and now the ripples are starting to look more like a tsunami. Meet Suresh. He took early retirement last year and now rattles around the family home in Clayborn. With Lata gone, he lives off frozen burritos and omelets. Taking care of the yard was another Lata job, one he handles more successfully, finding he likes getting his hands dirty. But his real pastime is dating. He Googles "Indian internet dating" one day and can't stop searching. When he meets Mallika, he thinks he may have found his first second date. Across town, Lata's living in a condo, working at the university's music library, and faring better. She's got a new friend, Deanna, the pierced and tattooed Ph.D. student she works with, and even a love interest, Len Greenberg, a jazz professor who brings her CDs. Now, at 57, Lata's about to go on her very first first date. Daughter Priya is 35 and single, which in Raman world is not ideal, but worse: She's seeing a married man, and she smokes. Even No. 1 son Nikesh is showing some cracks in his picture-perfect life: Glossy high-powered "wife" Denise refuses to celebrate their son's first birthday with Nikesh's parents unless he comes clean that they are actually not married. Varadarajan's novel gives all four full voice to tell their stories. The parents' come with affectionate Indianisms (when Deanna tells Lata about her own family troubles, Lata "[makes] a mental note to bring her a large Tupperware of lemon rice"); the kids' with sharp takes on same (Priya explains that resenting an Indian mother's love of a son was "like resenting the orbit of the moon"). Varadarajan has written her characters with intelligence and compassion, imbuing them with complexity; each narrative mirrors, refracts, refutes, and informs the others in what's ultimately a tender exploration of family patterns, choices, regrets, and the possibility for change. Warm, hopeful, often charming. The Ramans are an idiosyncratic oasis in the world of literary unhappy families. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

1 Suresh All these internet women lie, I tell you. All of them. Funny that the anonymity draws everyone in. But it's also what keeps you from trusting a word. Sometimes the lies are about the fundamentals: previous marriages, whether they have kids, what line of work they're in. Oh, and age. Age is a big one. The last date I went on was with a woman whose profile said forty-­one. Impossible! There wasn't a chance that Ms. Mittal (formerly Mrs. Mittal) was a day under fifty. My son, Nikesh, laughed at me when I told him about that one. "But, Dad," he said, " you are fifty-­ nine ." Well that may be, but I didn't go around grossly exaggerating for sport. I was more reasonable about it all. On my profile, I described myself as "Suresh Raman, a healthy and active, five-­foot-­ten, fifty-­five-­year-­old divorced man of Indian origin." All right, so fifty-­five was four years ago, the height was a rough estimate, and "active" was only an accurate description if it included toenail-­clipping while watching CNN in my carpeted den. But these were reasonable deviations from the truth. RDTs, I called them. So long as you kept it reasonable, where was the harm, really? It was early evening now. I parked my SUV in front of a small, white brick house. I had to quash my misgivings--­for the next few hours, at least. I reminded myself: This was a first date, a new woman, a clean slate. I sniffed under my arms. Good, still powdery fresh. I'd left my house in Clayborn, Texas, three hours ago, but I blasted the AC the entire drive to Austin. Whatever my doubts about lying internet women, I'd never want a date to see unsightly wet patches blooming across my shirt. I checked my reflection in the rearview mirror. Even at this hour, the late-­August sun beamed harsh and unforgiving. My eyebrows looked like two furry worms wriggling around a pockmarked forehead. I licked my forefinger and tried pasting down the errant hairs. But it was useless. Hairs kept popping up in every direction. Oh well. Perhaps the restaurant would be dim and Mallika wouldn't notice the unruly duo dancing above my eyelids. Mallika. We'd been emailing each other for two weeks. Now, this one did not seem like a liar. I couldn't be sure, of course, as I'd yet to see her in the flesh. At the moment, she was still three parts fantasy to one part reality--­a concoction of my hazy, lonely brain. Though given the mendacious tendencies of these internet women, it was hard to maintain any fantasy for long. Mind you, this wasn't just abstract cynicism talking. It came from months of experience. And in my months of experience, I'd learned that even when these internet women weren't lying about important things, like age, then they were lying about ridiculous things--­things I wouldn't have even cared about had they told me the truth. But when I discovered they'd lied about it, I had to assume it meant something. Last month, for example, I went out with this divorced real estate agent from Baton Rouge named Usha. She lied about all kinds of trivialities. Favorite Food: Italian . Trusting this preference in her profile, I suggested going to the Olive Garden on our first date. It had been a tiring six-­hour drive from Clayborn to Baton Rouge, but I wanted to show her that I was sensitive to this detail about her--­that I cared enough to remember. Upon hearing my suggestion, she shrugged and explained that Italian wasn't really her favorite. She wanted a steak. Feeling rebuked, I asked her why she didn't just say "steak" on her profile. She replied that she was afraid of scaring the divorced and widowed Hindu vegetarian men from answering. Now, I wasn't an unsympathetic man. Or a vegetarian. And while I questioned the sanity of anyone who enjoyed masticating thick slabs of beef, I understood that a forty-­two-­year-­old divorcée with two teenage kids needed to expand her pool of possibilities in any way she could. Only that wasn't all. Over the course of that evening, which began and ended at Matthew's Steakhouse, I discovered that in the dozen emails and phone conversations leading up to our fateful meeting, she'd lied about her car (a Honda not a Volvo), her glasses prescription for nearsightedness (minus four, not minus two), her tennis elbow (she didn't even own a racket), and her subscription to National Geographic (ha!). None of those things in isolation would have caused me to do more than raise a puzzled eyebrow. But read together, the insignificance of those lies added up to one significant thing: She was a liar. There had been countless such evenings. During the long (and sometimes multistate) drive back home, when disappointment sat in the back of my throat like undigested food, I'd say to myself: "Enough, old man, enough of this silly business." But at such moments, I too was a liar. For within minutes of pulling into my garage, I'd head straight for the buzzing glow of my computer. I'd check for new responses, answer the promising ones, and update my profile--­the three-­step ritual that had become second nature to me, like the windshield-­to-­rearview-­mirror-­to-speedometer visual reflex of driving. Nikesh called me "hooked." I'd describe my dating mishaps to him, and he'd say, "If they're so bad, then stop; or just stay local, at least." Local? What was the point of trying to meet an Indian woman in Clayborn? They were all friends with my ex-­wife Lata, who'd left me, and would therefore be biased against me. And a non-­Indian woman? That was too foreign to contemplate. But I didn't say any of this to my son. Instead, I'd meekly reply, "You're right--­this is the last one. No more." But he wouldn't believe me. He'd chuckle and chide, "You're hooked, Dad." He was right. I had yet to go on a good date, but I wasn't ready to stop. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see a curtain flutter in the front window of Mallika's house, a ripple of black hair against the glass. Was Mallika peeking out? Was she wondering why I hadn't gotten out of the car yet, hadn't crossed the dried expanse of lawn to her front door? I thumbed my brows one last time. I ran my palms over my grayed--­but mostly full--­head of hair. I unbuckled my seatbelt, leaned forward and then fell back again, my back hitting the leather with a loud smack. Why couldn't I sit here for just a little while longer? Just a few more moments to savor the Mallika of my hopeful imaginings and delay the inevitable disappointment. For a second, I considered pulling out my phone and dialing Nikesh. I could ask him to tell me a joke and lighten my spirits. But then, maybe I shouldn't bother him at this hour. Six o'clock in Texas meant it was seven for Nikesh in New York. He would likely be busy--­either at work late, or giving Alok a bath, or coaxing him into bed. It startled me sometimes to think that Nikesh, my youngest, was no longer so young--­no longer that spindle-­legged teenager with an unruly mop of hair, but a thirty-­year-­old man with an eleven-­month-­old son of his own, working long hours at a prestigious Manhattan law firm. My grandson, Alok, was by all accounts a sweet-­tempered boy like his father. Thankfully, he'd inherited none of the Nordic sternness of his mother, Denise, a woman that neither I nor Lata had even met before Nikesh married her--­correction, before he eloped with her, telling us about it only after the fact. No doubt Lata was still licking her wounds from the shock of their elopement. For my part, though, I was relieved not to publicly perform the role of delighted father of the groom. At least Nikesh had spared me the indignity of reciting some fraudulent speech about the joys of marriage in a Hilton ballroom, while our friends (Lata's friends, mostly) squirmed and Lata glowered behind me. In truth, I couldn't find much fault with Nikesh. Oh sure, he might tease me now and then for being hooked on internet dating. But at least he was indulgent and kind to his aging, addled, romantic-­idealist father. My eldest, Priya, on the other hand, hurled harsher words my way: post-midlife crisis; act your age; ridiculous; embarrassment. I tried not to take it too personally. It had been almost a year since Lata moved out, but the wound was still raw for my daughter, a thirty-­five-­year-­old history professor in Austin. Oh sure, give her macro-­level changes--­civil wars, fallen empires, mass famine, and pestilence--­those were her bread and butter, she couldn't get enough. But throw some micro-­level change her way, and she turned on you. Excerpted from Late Bloomers: A Novel by Deepa Varadarajan All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.