Tamarind Woman (Paperback)

The author skillfully weaves the present and different versions of the past together. Aunty Vijaya from the book remarks that memories are never the same between two people--"They are pictures we create in our hearts you see...and each of us uses different sticks of chalk to colour them." The dialogue is excellent. The characters and relationships are varied and interesting. The descriptions are vivid--"...the tree was covered in blossoms, fiery with colour sucked from the sun."

As I was skimming the book to include a couple of my favorite sentences in this review, I caught myself re-reading it! I had to make myself stop. I'll recommend Tamarind Woman to my mother-in-law and sister-in-law, and I'm going to add Badami's second book The Hero's Walk to my wish list right now. If you enjoy learning about other cultures or if you're just interested in human relationships, you'll enjoy this book.

TAMARIND WOMAN is not meant, however, to be a thrilling tale, but rather an in-depth look at the tangled relationships of family life -- especially the inextricable bond between mother and daughter -- and in this it does succeed. It is not deeply psychological or intellectual (perhaps thankfully), but it is warm and well written, and ultimately very worth reading, especially for Baudami's loving and skillful portrait of her Indian culture.

Kamini lives with her mother, father and her sister Roopa in India. They spend alot of time changing places because her father is a Railway worker and they go to new towns so that her father can work. Kamini is a dreamer with a mouth.. She wants to go to college and not be married so young.

The second half of this book is about the mother and how her life came to be and her life with the girls. Saroja the mother spends most of her younger life going to school, till her father decides it is time for her to married and stop school. So Saroja marrys a man and spend the next few years with him having two daughers. After her daughter she still wants her freedom and does things that cause gossip.

When the girls move away and have grown up. Saroja decides to take a trip and see parts of India that she hasn't seen before.

This story is well written, but at times I felt it went into the details of each charactor too much.