Review by Booklist Review
Everything Bonita thought she knew about her past is abruptly thrown into question when an older woman attired in layers of colorful skirts accosts her in El Jardin de San Miguel. Bonita has traveled from India to Mexico to study Spanish and is taken aback by this theatrical woman's insistence that she knew Bonita's mother, Rosarita, when she was Bonita's age and in San Miguel to study painting. Bonita says that's impossible; her mother, Sarita, was not an artist and never went to Mexico. But flashbacks to mysterious moments in her childhood prod Bonita into accompanying the stranger she dubs the Trickster on a journey allegedly retracing her mother's footsteps. Shortlisted thrice for the Booker, Desai is exceptionally attuned to the power of suggestion, tug of secrets, mutability of memories, and the anguish of women denied lives of their choosing. Her profound sense of place yields exquisitely rendered scenes saturated with the land's bloody past and the traumas families inherit. As Bonita's quest leads her to the sea, Desai leaves us stunned by nature's glory and humanity's capacity for horror and joy, loneliness and love.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
In this provocative if underdeveloped offering from Desai (Fasting, Feasting), an Indian woman studying Spanish in Mexico learns her late mother took a similar path many years earlier. While on a park bench in San Miguel de Allende, Bonita is approached by an older woman named Victoria, who calls her an "Oriental bird" and says she looks just like her mother, Rosarita. Bonita initially disbelieves Victoria when she claims Rosarita came to San Miguel many years ago to study art, and that Victoria met her in the very same park. Though Bonita knows nothing about her mother's travel or interest in art, she later remembers a pastel sketch of a woman on a park bench that could have been from San Miguel and considers how her mother might have sacrificed her art to raise a family. Driven to know more, Bonita finds herself running into Victoria again and again ("Could she, like a wizard or a magician, bring your mother to life again even if it is a life you never knew or suspected?" Desai writes). As Bonita follows in Rosarita's footsteps to Colima and La Manzanilla, intriguing questions are raised, but Desai merely skims the surface of her protagonist's emotions. This will leave readers wanting more. Agent: Peter Straus, RCW Literary. (Jan.)
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Review by Library Journal Review
Three of Desai's (The Zigzag Way) eloquent novels have been shortlisted for the Booker Prize. Her latest features Bonita, a young girl who has left her home in India to study Spanish in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. She loves languages and has already studied French in France and Portuguese in Goa. When readers meet Bonita, she's sitting on a park bench, reading the Spanish-language newspapers she just bought. A woman runs up to her, stops, and stares at her. The woman then informs Bonita that she's been watching her and that she must be the daughter of Rosarita. And the woman is right. Bonita's late mother was Rosarita, an upper-class Indian housewife. But to Bonita's knowledge, her mother never traveled to Mexico, studied art, or danced the tango, as this strange woman asserts. Or did she? VERDICT This compelling short work of magical realism will stay in readers' minds for a long time.--Marcia Welsh
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