Meera Syal

This is Meera Syal's debut novel, and it's a simultaneously raucous, snarky, and loving coming of age tale.

Adolescence is hard enough on us all, but being the only "brown girl" in an old isolated faded English coal mining town, where every girlchild is "chick" or "duck". It's pretty confusing for Meena, whose loving Punjabi parents and friends stand in stark contrast to her idol, the mean girl Anita. Why are we all attracted to bad girls and bad boys? No answer here, but plenty about what it show more can take to grow up and away. Quotes:

"Can I give you a lift?"
Now if she'd ask that question to an Indian, they would have replied, "Oh no, we will walk, it is such a lovely day, please don't bother yourself, we enjoy strolling in the sleet, so good for the circulation..."

"I decided the talent to not burn whilst cooking, or at least not to feel pain, only came to Indian women after they were married."

"We will always have our children, the village mothers said, our only investment for the future, and then they sounded exactly like my Aunties." show less

Meera Syal has become one of my favorite writers - two novels down, one to go. This one is chock full o'plot set in London and Delhi, and in the center is Shyama, daughter, mother, divorcee, and lover of the white Brit Toby, ten years younger and eager for a child. Shyama's a successful business owner, and her daughter Tara is 19 and contentious and contemptuous of her mother's effort to keep her young lover via procreation. When reality sets in after another failed IVF attempt, Shyama and show more Toby head to Delhi to find a surrogate to carry a donor egg and Toby's sperm. Massive complications ensue.

A very strong side plot features Shyama's parents, who have been fighting bureaucracy and corruption to reclaim their Delhi retirement home, which has been taken over by a squatter niece, and the surrogate Mala, whose tale could be its own novel.

The characters are so vivid and their inner thoughts so thoroughly rendered that I was yearning to meet and converse with them all. Syal gives the reader fly-on-the-wall status in a most satisfactory way. show less

This is a novel with a familiar pretext: three female friends from school days grow up and either get what they wanted, or don't. Tania, Chila, and Sunita are the pretty one, the dreamer, and the smart one, all Indian Brits living in London. Their intertwined lives are damaged by deception, heartache, and family troubles, all realistic and enchantingly told. The cultural aspect of living with and loving your ethnic heritage (despite never having been to India!) are also handled with a fine show more pen, as is "love" vs arranged marriage. Highly recommended!

Quotes: "Choosing whom you love is the most political decision you can make."

"Tania did not subscribe to the theory that every time a relationship ended, the other person walked away with a piece of you, and vice versa. That would mean most of the population would become colanders in a rainstorm." show less

Shyama is a successful businesswoman, owner of a popular beauty salon and a divorced mother of a student daughter. However Shyama wants another child with her partner Toby, a younger man, and she is told that she will not be able to have one naturally. Mala is an intelligent but impoverished Indian woman, her family died leaving little dowry and Mala's husband thinks that getting Mala to act as a surrogate for a wealthy couple will allow them live a little more comfortably. Inevitably the show more lives of Shyama and Mala meet as Mala becomes the surrogate for Shyama and Toby's child but as Shyama's aged parents fight to regain their investments in India and Tara, her daughter, suffers in London, Shyama is torn between her family, her culture and her ambition.

Syal is a well-known actress and her previous novels have veered towards the comedic element, this one is different. On the surface this is a story about two women, one with money and one without, but the subplots explore so much more. Tara suffers an assault in the the UK and then travels to India to support women's rights, so changing. Mala travels to the UK and flourishes, Syama's parents have to take legal action against their own family to possess what is theirs by right. The constant theme is one which compares the life and freedoms of women in the UK with those of women in India, either through caste, fertility or sexual rights, and this makes the book far more thoughtful that it initially seems. show less