Seemingly light reading featuring a New York family and friends headed to an Indian wedding morphs into a spectacularly entertaining examination of race, privilege, hybrid identity, family dysfunction and maybe even a love story (or five).
Tina Das, still single at 32, has plateaued at her television producing job. While she waits to board her flight to her cousin's almost week-long nuptial celebration, she's with her BFF-since-Yale-days Marianne, her divorced parents Neel and Radha, and her mother's boyfriend David. Once in Delhi, the family is accommodated at a posh country club in oversize private cottages with onsite staff. Marianne, whose partner stayed home, is enjoying the groom's brother's attentions. Neel anticipates a date with widowed Mrs. Sethi. Radha hopes she might reconnect with Tina, who still resents her for the divorce a decade ago. And then there's Tina: she's got plenty of drama balancing Sid, the gorgeous personal trainer from the Mumbai slums, and trying not to fall (again) for the charming Australian expat who dissed her in London.
Diksha Basu, who made keeping up with the Joneses bitingly insightful in The Windfall, gives a similar eyebrow-arch to her characters here. Her revealing glimpses into the lives of passing strangers include a young lover searching for privacy in public with her boyfriend, the butler's after-hours life and Mrs. Sethi's grumpy dessert-loving cook. Basu balances the haves and have-nots--both socioeconomically and emotionally--with deft assurance and expert timing. Her astute, often scathing, commentaries beneath the irresistible humor transform her fiction into a must-go literary destination. --Terry Hong, Smithsonian BookDragon