Difficult Daughters tells the story of Virmati, a young woman who falls in love with a married professor just as her family is planning her own marriage. It vividly describes India around the time of partition, but more importantly gives more depth to a story which sounded familiar. It would be predictable to write the story of a rebellious daughter who embraces education and career as an alternative to arranged marriage, but what Kapur does is more subtle. Virmati makes tentative moves into independence but in fact makes very few choices for herself and yearns for a conventional life with her lover.

Likewise, this isn't a predictable story of forbidden love. 'The professor' (as he is primarily referred to) is a selfish and domineering character, binding Virmati to him when it would be kinder to let her go and preferring the romantic ideal to the real woman. He is as domineering as her family, albeit with different values, and her interest in education is largely shaped by what he wants her to become. Virmati is likeable but often frustrating, an intelligent woman letting everyone else control her life - a problem which isn't neatly solved. These complications made the novel far more interesting to me, but it's not for someone who's looking for a conventional love story.

On a negative note, the story does drag on a bit in the middle and sometimes Virmati becomes irritating. I also thought Kapur should have expanded a little more on the life of Virmati's daughter, the narrator. Her background is deliberately vague, but she meets Virmati's family and friends to learn about her mother and I would have liked to find out how these characters from the main story had developed and aged. ( )