The Girl in the Painting by Renita D’Silva – 498 pages
Book Blurb:
Emma’s beloved grandmother, Margaret, is dying, and she has one last wish before she says goodbye. When she gives Emma a mysterious painting and the deeds to a house in India, Emma is shocked. Margaret has rarely spoken of a link to India before – she has been unwilling to ever speak of her past at all. But now Margaret has a request for her granddaughter: Find Archana. Margaret asks Emma to give Archana the painting and – most important of all – to tell her that she forgives her. With her grandmother on her deathbed, Emma travels deep into the heart of the Indian hills in search of answers, to a crumbling house overgrown with vines. And when she finds Archana, the secret Margaret has been keeping for over seventy years will finally be revealed – the story of a day spent painting by a stream full of water lilies, where a betrayal tore three lives apart forever…
My Review: 4 stars
The Girl in the Painting took me right to India in a dual timeline book, that takes place in the 1920s and the early 21st century. I was hooked from the start when an elderly English woman asks her granddaughter to take a painting and a message of forgiveness to her estate in India.
I learned quite a bit while reading this book. First, the English grandmother was once part of the esteemed Bloomsbury Set – a group of artists, authors and intellectuals that started in 1905. People such as Virginia Woolf and Vanessa Bell were members of this group. It was there that she met a man and fell instantaneously in love. I also learned about a tradition called sati. It’s primitive and was honored in some villages in India. Sati ensures that a widow must be set on fire after her husband passes. Incredibly awful, right?
This book is ode to forgiveness and a song to sisterhood. D’Silva has a way of enveloping her characters with richness and authenticity. She can knit a story together that leaves the reader completely satisfied. I really enjoyed an earlier book of hers as well, The Forgotten Daughter. If you haven’t read this author, I highly suggest you do.
Quotes I liked:
Truth has a way of making itself known, one way or another.”
“Painting is conversing with your soul. You’re putting your feelings down through brushstrokes.”
“She smiles, her eyes bright beacons, her face a picture, a story unfolding, a gift.”
“History both teaches and gives us warning. Through our history, we make sense of who we are.”
“She knows that once you’ve shared something you’ve created, you lose ownership, that everyone experiences it in their own unique way.
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