The Storyteller’s Secret by Sejal Badani –411 pages
ARC from Lake Union Publishing in exchange for an honest review.
Book Blurb:
Nothing prepares Jaya, a New York journalist, for the heartbreak of her third miscarriage and the slow unraveling of her marriage in its wake. Desperate to assuage her deep anguish, she decides to go to India to uncover answers to her family’s past.
Intoxicated by the sights, smells, and sounds she experiences, Jaya becomes an eager student of the culture. But it is Ravi—her grandmother’s former servant and trusted confidant—who reveals the resilience, struggles, secret love, and tragic fall of Jaya’s pioneering grandmother during the British occupation. Through her courageous grandmother’s arrestingly romantic and heart-wrenching story, Jaya discovers the legacy bequeathed to her and a strength that, until now, she never knew was possible.
My Review: 4.5 stars
The Storyteller’s Secret is my kind of book; it’s a multi-generational family saga set in India. This book reads very quickly and will bring an explosion of different emotions. And the title! I read just about every book that has story, book or library in its title! The novel is told from the alternating viewpoints of Jaya, a New York journalist dealing with her third miscarriage and unraveling marriage, and Ravi, the devoted servant and friend of Amisha, the grandmother Jaya never knew. Badani, also author of Trail of Broken Wings, weaves together a new story of heartbreak, hope, healing and the power of friendship and love.
I can only imagine that it is difficult for authors to navigate between intertwining stories, while also keeping the reader equally invested in each narrator. In this book, it worked seamlessly. I couldn’t get enough of either Jaya or Amisha. The way in which Jaya handles the impending collapse of her marriage is raw and real. Did she push her husband away while dealing with the grief of the children that may have been? Did her husband not grieve how she needed him to? Was there something she could have done to save her marriage? Who would she be now? And how does she fix her brokenness? Amisha was a truly remarkable and courageous woman. Living in India under British occupation was a blessing and a curse for her. It gave her hope for what she could learn and gave wings to her dream to write. But it also reminded her of her limitations and what she was actually able to achieve in her place in life. I truly loved getting to know these two women and getting to see them grow into their independence and make the best with the hand they were dealt.
The writing is fluid and the knitting together of the two storylines and time periods was done incredibly well. So much so that even though the predictability level is up there, it really didn’t bother me. This novel also reiterated what I know about the rapid social change happening in India and the chain reaction of personal choice that follows from one generation to another.
Quotes I liked:
But perfection may be an illusion and power a liability.”
-“History shows us we need labels to help define our place. For hundreds of years, people have categorized others as less so they could feel like more. Color, gender, class, religion, physical handicaps, sexual orientation, and pedigree are just a few ways in which one group is divided from another. For every person who stands superior, another must be inferior. But what does it say of us as a human race when we push others down for our own needs? Does it accomplish the intended goal or simply give rise to a pattern of behavior that can never be broken?”
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