The Mistress of Spices by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
Tilo is a young woman trained in the ways of spices and made immortal (in the form of an old woman) when she is sent out into the world (specifically, California) to use her knowledge of spices to help people.
Like the children’s book The Conch Bearer, which is the only other book of Divakaruni’s that I’ve read, the imagery is vivid and involving and almost makes you feel like you’re right there, though the early part of the book went a little too deep into surrealism for me. Unlike The Conch Bearer, the ending actually makes sense and works, instead of leaving the reader if a horrified sense of “WTF?”
Divakaruni focuses on culture and subculture, and not only Indian and Indian-American, as seen through Tilo and the visitors to her shop, which she is forbidden to leave. There’s also an understated romance that plays out a little different from the norm, though in someways, I kind of wish it had just been several hundred pages of Tilo observing her customers and piecing their lives together.
Has anyone seen the movie with Aishwarya Rai? Is it any good?
Like the children’s book The Conch Bearer, which is the only other book of Divakaruni’s that I’ve read, the imagery is vivid and involving and almost makes you feel like you’re right there, though the early part of the book went a little too deep into surrealism for me. Unlike The Conch Bearer, the ending actually makes sense and works, instead of leaving the reader if a horrified sense of “WTF?”
Divakaruni focuses on culture and subculture, and not only Indian and Indian-American, as seen through Tilo and the visitors to her shop, which she is forbidden to leave. There’s also an understated romance that plays out a little different from the norm, though in someways, I kind of wish it had just been several hundred pages of Tilo observing her customers and piecing their lives together.
Has anyone seen the movie with Aishwarya Rai? Is it any good?