genre: historical fiction
Sona's life in Bombay as a nurse in a British hospital in the late 1930s doesn't have a lot of happiness in it. She loves her mother and enjoys her job, but money is always tight and with her clearly half Anglo and half Indian looks, she is often mistrusted before she even has a chance to explain herself. What she does enjoy is working with her patients, and when the artist Mira Novak is admitted into Sona's care, the world suddenly seems much bigger. As Mira befriends Sona and tells our naive nurse about her jetsetting life, Sona slowly awakens to the wideness of the horizon - and how little of it she has experienced.
You know I'm a sucker for a good historical fiction novel - but this one did not ever grip me the way I wanted it to. It took me an actual month to get through its three hundred and fifty pages, although whenever I DID actually pick it up, I wasn't bored. I think the writing was just not that particularly good. So much telling and so little showing. So much disbelief to suspend. Word choice was bland and Sona made so many decisions I just did not understand, decisions with huge consequences that felt out of the blue. I really enjoyed this author's book The Henna Artist but this was not for me.
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