When young Charulata arrives in Panchgani to teach at Miss Timmins' School for Girls, it's not just the students that make the experience challenges - it's also her fellow teachers. On a mountainside in India, Miss Timmins' school has strict rules of behavior - for everyone - and it isn't long before Charulata notices one particular teacher who chooses to flaunt them. In a small enclosed community where race, religion and culture are both the glue between and the dividing line amongst the inhabitants, the happenings of one night during the monsoon season will rip this community apart. Even with the local police, three intrepid student detectives and Charulata herself trying to figure out what happened, Panchagni itself will be forever changed.
I found this at the thrift store and bought it both for the cover and for the blurb on the back. A mystery at a 1970s Indian girls religious boarding school! It IS a mystery, for sure. And even though I was ready to be done about 2/3 in, I liked the mystery enough. But man, this is a slow story and it is just as much a coming of age for Charulata, who comes from a disgraced Indian family, and who has her own personal preferences and issues to figure out. I did like the setting for the story, and how being so intimately tied to everyone around you can affect things, even just how every is living so close to one another, so wrapped up in everyone's business. And even then, how we can still not really know one another. The 70s druggie culture got annoying and there are a few graphic scenes that felt superfluous to me but I liked how the narration switched around a bit right as the mystery began, it made it more suspenseful. LOTS of foreshadowing here that could've been tightened up but I'd given up on several books lately and finally decided two days ago that I was just going to FINISH IT ALREADY and move on. So I did :)
Note for sensitive readers: graphic sexual scenes, a thread of the story is Charulata figuring out she is bisexual, some strong language
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