Monsoon Summer by Julia Gregson – 464 pages
Book Blurb:
Oxfordshire, 1947. Kit Smallwood, hiding a painful secret and exhausted from nursing soldiers during the Second World War, escapes to Wickam Farm where her friend is setting up a charity sending midwives to the Moonstone Home in South India.
Then Kit meets Anto, an Indian doctor finishing his medical training at Oxford. But Kit’s light skinned mother is in fact Anglo-Indian with secrets of her own, and Anto is everything she does not want for her daughter. Despite the threat of estrangement, Kit is excited for the future, hungry for adventure, and deeply in love. She and Anto secretly marry and set off for South India—where Kit plans to run the maternity hospital she’s helped from afar.
My Review: 4 stars
Monsoon Summer is a story about families, relationships and the conflicts that arose after India’s independence from Britain. The noted author and screenwriter Delia Ephron recently recommended this book at an author event I attended. I’ve always loved Indian fiction but the bonus to this book was the additional strife due to the mixed race love affair between an English nurse and an Indian doctor, with a particular focus on the roles woman play in both countries.
Kit is definitely a character worth rooting for. She’s torn between her passion for nursing and midwifery and appeasing her mother, who’s hoping for Kit to be a docile homemaker. When Kit falls in love with an Indian man (Anto), her mother pretty much disowns her, which leaves the reader anxious to know why this is so upsetting to her mother.
Life in India is far different from life in England and Kit has lots of sacrifices to make in order to please Anto’s family. Of course she’s a master of defiant behavior as well due to her work choice. With the Indians still having mixed feelings towards the Brits, her arrival in Southern India is definitely an adjustment. Additionally, midwifery in India is considered low class so Kit’s choices are constantly being questioned.
I appreciate this author’s ability to share this historical period with excellent storytelling. I look forward to reading more from this author.
Quotes I liked:
Life happens to you, you can’t control it.”
-“…he believed everything we were was the result of what we had thought.”
-“First it was impossible. Then it was difficult. Then it was done.”
-“Families are frightening. They mean too much.”
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