Jaishree Misra

Ya I liked the book,contrary to what I rated it at first look,esp. the last chapters.Decent story and with lot of moral too.The novel is about 4 friends-girls,and their guilt ridden flashback from their school-days.It revolves around their lives and speaks of the common experiences of resentment and jealousy towards a new student which are common place in all schools.So the theme being universal one could sort of relate with it.

I liked the ease which which the author made the transition show more between narrating the two sub stories feel seamless.Great first-hand knowledge, into how life in a girls only school might be, was also pretty enlightening for me.But I still think the untold story of their headmistress would have been better or rather telling the story from Victoria Lamb's(their head mistress) point of view would have been better.

So overall a good experience from reading an altogether different story from what (little) I've read till now.The verses from A.E Houssmans poem were really beautiful and added charm to the story

I'll add this verse i think was written as Lilly's epitaph :

With rue my heart is laden
For golden friends I had,
For many a rose-lipt maiden
And many a lightfoot lad.

By brooks too broad for leaping
The lightfoot boys are laid;
The rose-lipt girls are sleeping
In fields where roses fade. show less

The book tells the story of an Indian girl and her struggle in the conflict between true love and arranged marriage.

The story is very old and as such not very interesting: girl meets boy, they fall in love but get separated. However, there are some unique twists to it. The cultural setting and the sense that these are also the author's own experiences makes it interesting enough, though in the end the book is pretty generic.

*Spoiler alert*

The girl is pushed into an arranged marriage to a show more somewhat older man. The marriage does not prosper as her mother-in-law takes a dislike to her and her husband is at best disinterested. Then a baby is born and she hopes things with husband and his family will improve. However, things actually take a turn to the worse when it becomes apparent that the baby is mentally handicapped and her new relatives would mostly like to keeps this under wraps.

Thus the main character must fight for her child's right to school. She decides to study the subject of handicapped education and moves to England to accomplish this and accidentally meets with her long-lost love. show less

This is chick-lit, but chick-lit of a high calibre. Four childhood friends from a Catholic school in India have created lives for themselves in London and India. However, their lives have been overshadowed by a tragic event which took place during their last year in school. One day, they find that they have been summoned to a reunion by their old principal.

As their minds return to the buildup to that tragic event, the women start to realise how their lives have been shaped, and indeed show more damaged, by their inability to deal with that night. Misra moves seamlessly between the past and the present to weave her story.

The major negative in this book is the anti-climatic and somewhat unsatisfying ending. Misra spent a lot of time developing the characters and their lives, and to finish on this dull note was disappointing. But overall, if you want an easy read you could do a lot worse than this tale of friendships and second chances. show less

I was looking forward to diving into the covers of this novel. Sadly, it wasn’t the cosy enjoyable read I was expecting and I ended up feeling quite disappointed. The book is overlong for starters; in fact the blurb tells you more or less everything that happens. Because we already know that Lily died on the night of the school prom I couldn’t work out why on earth Jaishree Misra felt the need to tell us something had happened to Lily on almost every page.

It certainly isn’t the page show more turner its hyped up to be and I read plenty of books within this genre but for me it just didn’t flow. The characters are an unusual grouping, in the same way the ‘sex and the city’ girls are an unusual mix, yet it still missed something. The book is well-written but it could’ve been a hundred pages shorter. It wouldn’t put me off reading something else by this author however, I just wouldn’t be expecting too much.

All of the signs are there for part of the big revelation at the end, and in fact are quite obvious from fairly early on – the signs that is, not the revelation (which I might add was quite a disappointment). The reason I’d read something else by her is that she developed her characters – they were real women, with faults and good points that shone through, and the switch between their school lives in 1993 and 2008 was well handled and offered insight and explanation as to why the girls had turned out the way they did. They just seemed too unlikely a group of people to have remained friends, as I said above.

It’s a good holiday read and should be read with that in mind. Nothing challenging at all, just put your feet up and think about nothing. show less