Author: Preethi Nair
Publisher: HarperCollins
Year: 2005
Language: English
Pages: 294
ISBN/UPC (if available): 8172235321
Description
This novel is a story about Truth, unraveled through the mystical art of cooking. It is about telling a lie to save the vulnerable, only to have it resurface with unforeseen consequences.
Maybe there are one hundred shades for explaining truth, a spectrum from light to dark. Things are not always clear-cut, they are not either black or white, life just isn’t like that.
Satchin and Maya enjoy a carefree life in India with their mother Nalini, who concocts magical recipes with their grandmother. Unexpectedly, their father Rahul sends for them to join him in London where he is working. Having uprooted his wife and children, he ruthlessly abandons them leaving behind a trail of debt and deceit.
Left penniless in an alien culture, Nalini is determined to preserve her children’s sense of self-worth and tells them that their father died in a fatal accident. As their fight for survival begins, whole realities are bult on this one lie.
Maya, her mother Nalini, and her brother Satchin have left a carefree life in India to come to England. But when Maya’s father disappears leaving only deceit and debt behind, they are left to fend for themselves in a strange, damp land.
Maya, though, doesn’t know of her father’s betrayal. Nalini, determined to preserve her children’s pride, tells them that their father died in an accident and, as their struggle to make a life begins, whole realities are built on this lie. While Nalini cooks exotic pickles which enchant all who eat them, Maya begins to adapt to her new home-the unfamiliar food, the language, the music-and then to explore and make bold plans, plans that her mother does not understand.
But even a white lie cannot remain hidden forever-and when the truth resurfaces, it changes everything.
REVIEWS
Has all its ingredients in just the right quantities to spirit away all negative emotions.
-Daily Express
Moving description packs a powerful punch in this book about family, forgiveness and the power of truth.
-Guardian