The Toss of a Lemon (Hardcover)

Journalist, playwright and short-story writer Viswanathan's absorbing first novel, based on her grandmother's life, goes deep into the world of southern India village life. Starting in 1896, the story follows Sivakami, a Tamil Brahmin girl, from her marriage at the age of 10 through her long widowhood, while Indian political and social life lumbers through immense changes. Before he dies, Sivakami's astrologer husband, Hanumarathnam, foresees his death in the malignant interactions between his stars and his son Vairum's. Though he trains a trustworthy servant to assist Sivakami until their son comes of age, the world that Hanumarathnam leaves behind is rapidly changing, and the family is not entirely fit to survive it; Vairum, especially, suffers the pain of a father's disaffection and, later, a widowed mother forbidden to touch any human being during daylight hours. Irreconcilable conflicts between tradition—especially the strict caste rules of Brahmin life—and the modernizing world lead predictably to alienation and tragedy, but on an epic scale. Viswanathan is especially adept at unobtrusively explaining foreign customs and worldviews to Westerners while wholly respecting the power and significance they hold for practitioners. (Sept.)
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“Her narrative, refreshingly, is free of anachronism, and she has a pleasing way of engaging the reader’s senses….Of a piece with the recent works of Vikram Seth, and reminiscent at times of García Márquez–altogether a pleasure.”
–Kirkus (starred review)

“What Viswanathan does remarkably well is give the reader a closeup of India’s history, culture, politics and landscape through the domestic lens of one family. This is a rich, sensual book that uses life itself as its plot....Reading it is an experience of immersion. You feel as though you are right there in all the teeming detail of life as Sivakami and her family know it. There is a whole world here between two covers.”
–National Post

"With its rich and complex background and often sharp insights, The Toss of a Lemon is a valuable and evocative work.”
–Elaine Kalman Nave, author of Robert Weaver: Godfather of Canadian Literature (Ottawa Citizen)

“Astonishing. Brilliant. Beautiful….Like the very best novels, at its core, The Toss of A Lemon teaches us about ourselves.”
–January Magazine

“Lovers of Rohinton Mistry and Vikram Seth will want to get a hold of this Brahmin family saga involving early marriage, early widowhood and clashing values.”
–The Vancouver Sun

“The Toss of a Lemon is a captivating novel that in relating the story of one Indian woman and her family tells the story of a changing society. Precisely and deftly written, constantly interesting, morally serious yet sympathetic–I challenge any reader to start reading this book and give up on it. The Toss of a Lemon joins the company of great novels on India.”
–Yann Martel

“The Toss of a Lemon is a glorious feat, as boisterously written as it is wholly engrossing. It’s about love - and cruelty - and how each reverberate across the generations in one family. And it is that rare thing, a novel that manages to be both epic and intimate at the same time.” 
–Peter Orner, author of The Second Coming of Mavala Shikongo 

"In this, her debut novel, Padma Viswanathan performs a wondrous balancing act of words. She sustains a vivid sense of the moment while spanning decades, brings unforgettable individual characters to life while recounting a saga of generations, and lays bare the inner worlds of those characters while evoking an entire nation in turmoil. Rich with sensual detail, The Toss of a Lemon is the story of a community centred on tradition during an era of upheaval and change. Above all, it is a moving and deftly drawn portrait of a family." 
–Alissa York, Giller-nominated author of Effigy

“The Toss of a Lemon gives readers the rare opportunity to enter the life of a Brahmin widow, to live her norms and routines and rituals as they have been lived by countless women over thousands of years. Padma Viswanathan’s remarkable achievement is to capture the slow, stately pace of an 8,000-year-old culture and yet keep her story moving briskly. I closed the book indebted for this immersion in a world I could not have otherwise entered.”
–Shyam Selvadurai, author of Funny Boy