Author: Kalpana Swaminathan
Publisher: Penguin
Year: 2003
Language: English
Pages: 233
ISBN/UPC (if available): 0143028790
Description
A dark and affecting tale about the turbulence of growing up, the many worlds we inhabit and the secret lives we live.
Fifteen-year-old Tenral leads two lives. There is the one she leads with her family and her friends at school . . 'a skin of milk life, easy and forgiving, like five o'clock sunshine'. Into her other, difficult life, move her English teacher Mrs. Alfie, and her dead lover. Tenral recreates their romance, taking her clues from Mr. Alfie's dramatic rendering of poetry, and tries to reconcile the past with the present through her own fairy tales.
Even as her friends look on, disapproving of her flights of fancy, Tenral's complex imaginary world widens to include the dour Maths teacher, Mr. Tilak, and Mrs. Alfie's mad mother who spills the secret about Mrs. Alfie's navy blue baby…
Events hurtle towards a frightening climax as Mrs. Alfie emerges from Teneral's world of make believes to reveal the truth. Tenral can reject this truth, and escape into her world of fantasy. Or she can embrace real life with its hardships and disappointments, in the hope that in the end it is all worthwhile, for there is always ambrosia for afters.