A Breath Of Fresh Air by Amulya Malladi – 240 pages
Book Blurb:
A smart, successful schoolteacher, Anjali is now remarried to Sandeep, a loving and stable professor. Their lives would be nearly perfect, if not for their young son’s declining health. But when Anjali’s first husband suddenly reappears in her life, she is thrown back to the troubling days of their marriage with a force that impacts everyone around her.
Her first husband’s return brings back all the uncertainty Anjali thought time and conviction had healed–about her decision to divorce, and about her place in a society that views her as scandalous for having walked away from her arranged marriage. As events unfold, feelings she had guarded like gold begin to leak away from her, spreading out into the world and challenging her once firm beliefs.
Rich in insight into Indian culture and psychology, A Breath of Fresh Air resonates with meaning and the abiding power of love. In a landscape as intriguing as it is unfamiliar, Anjali’s struggles to reconcile the roles of wife and ex-wife, working woman and mother, illuminate both the fascinating duality of the modern Indian woman and the difficult choices all women must make.
My Review: 5 stars
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This book worked for me in every arena. It’s filled with complicated characters, deep emotions, right vs. wrong, cultural expectations, divorce, marriage, motherhood and reconciling with past events. The title is exceptional as it relates to the Bohpal Gas Leak of 1984, Anjali’s son’s breathing issues as well as Anajali herself, in claiming a new life.
This author is a fine writer with an incredible ability to examine and explore human emotions.
Quotes I liked:
Time made apologies and absolution unnecessary. Time didn’t really heal, it just made bad memories distant so that the brain couldn’t recapture the lost pain”
“I had always thought that the relationships we make with strangers are the hardest and the relationships we have with family the easiest. For me the opposite had been true. The family I was born into was not really my family anymore, while the family I made for myself out of strangers was mine.”
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