Desirable Daughters, by the prolific writer Bharati Mukherjee, whose short story collection The Middleman won the 1998 National Book Critics Circle Award, is a masterful meditation on marriage and family ties. It begins on a fantastic note: on a winter night in an east Bengali village in 1879, the narrator's ancestor, 5-year-old Tara Lata, is married to a tree after her 13-year-old husband-to-be dies of a snakebite on their wedding day. The novel ends some 120 years later, when Tara, the 36-year-old narrator, returns to this same village in winter with her teenaged son. Like her ancestor, Tara Bhattacharjee is the youngest of three sisters of a Brahmin family. Although they grew up in Calcutta, Tara and the oldest sister now live in America while the middle sister lives in Bombay. Tara was married (in an arranged marriage) at age 19 to Bish Chatterjee, a genius who makes a fortune from a cutting-edge computer process. He and Tara are estranged when the novel opens, but when a stranger claiming kinship shows up at the house that Tara shares in San Francisco with her son and her boyfriend, she reconsiders her assumptions about her entire family. In the course of the novel, a sister's secret and a murder are uncovered, and a near-fatal bombing occurs. Mukherjee's Desirable Daughters is yet another of her magically written, compelling novels. --Susan Biskeborn


From Publishers Weekly
HIt should take nothing away from the achievements of new young writers of South Asian origin to state that Mukherjee eclipses all of them in her new novel, the highlight of her career to date. Only a writer with mature vision, a sense of history and a long-nurtured observation of the Indo-American community could have created this absorbing tale of two rapidly changing cultures and the flash points where they intersect. The narrator, 36-year-old Tara Chatterjee, was born into comfort and privilege in Calcutta. She and her two sisters are part of a close knit, snobbish Brahmin Bengali family, and the girls are raised to marry well. Tara, however, has brought shame to the family by divorcing her multimillionaire husband, Bish, and moving with their teenage son, Rabi, to Atherton, Calif., where the sudden intrusion of the past into her and her sisters' lives is only the first tremor of an earthquake that will undermine their safe assumptions. The narrative succeeds brilliantly in interweaving several themes of class, history and changing consciousness. Beneath the family drama and Tara's quest for her identity, Mukherjee tells a larger story about Indians in India and the U.S., painting a complex picture of vastly different cultures Hindu, Muslim, Parsi, Sikh further divided by substratas of caste and ancient prejudices, yet kept together by strict rules of family behavior and spiritual rituals. Finally, there's a very real current of danger running through the narrative that explodes into violence and irrevocable change. With remarkable dexterity, Mukherjee depicts tradition and myth colliding with the free will and dynamics of a one-world economy. Winner of the NBCC Award for The Middleman, Mukherjee has always been considered a significant writer. Here she bursts out as a star. 5-city author tour. (Mar. 31)Forecast: Mukherjee's perspective on the two societies she straddles is sharp and candid. Since she hasn't published a novel in several years, review attention and handselling should help this book find a discerning audience.Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.


From Library Journal
The complex plot of this novel by the award-winning Mukherjee (The Middleman and Other Stories) centers on three sisters of a Brahmin Indian family whose lives have diverged over the years; the youngest, Tara, has in fact moved to California. When Tara is approached by a young man claiming to be her nephew, a family secret is finally revealed, unleashing a sophisticated, gang-driven plot to kill or kidnap various family members. While Tara strains to unravel one mystery, new revelations surface, until she is forced to reevaluate everything she thought she knew. Artfully conveying the complexities of Indian society, philosophy and religion in India and the United States, Mukherjee's writing is rich, deep, and compelling, and her characters are well rounded and believable. Recommended for most collections. Joanna M. Burkhardt, Univ. of Rhode Island Coll. of Continuing Education Lib., ProvidenceCopyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.


From Booklist
Mukherjee can't resist raiding the mystery genre's bag of tricks to keep her reflective literary fiction focused and suspenseful, and to remind readers of just how precarious even the most privileged lives truly are. Like Leave It to Me (1997), her newest tale is set in San Francisco, a city emblematic of instability given its pitched terrain and promise of earthquakes. The youngest of three beautiful, conservatively raised sisters in an orthodox Hindu Bengali family, Tara has done the unthinkable: she's left her brilliant, enormously wealthy husband, a Silicon Valley legend; liberated her artistic teenage son from prep school; and taken up with an ex-biker Buddhist carpenter. Then, just when she thinks she might be getting the hang of things, an obsequious yet vaguely threatening young man appears, claiming to be her long-denied illegitimate nephew. As Tara tries to find out if there's any truth to his story and adjust to the fact that her son, Rabi, is gay, she realizes how little she knows about her own family. Self-possessed and curious, Tara wouldn't be out of place on the pages of a full-fledged mystery, and Mukherjee--whose humming power-line sentences carry sparkling commentary on traditional Hindu marriages, caste prejudices, spiritual matters, and the dark side of America's striving Indian immigrant community--makes shrewd use of her protagonist's wry wit, false aura of helplessness, and keen observations. Entertaining and intelligent, Mukherjee's graceful novel explores the continuum between tradition and change as it chips away at superficialities to reach the core of human experience. Donna Seaman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved


New York Times
"Her most thoughtful, emotionally detailed book yet."


New York Times Book Review
"A page turner."


Elle
"Mukherjee mixes her ingredients here with the consummate elegance and intelligence that have consistently dazzled readers of her earlier work."


Robert Olen Butler
"Bharati Mukherjee is writing achingly compassionate, ravishingly beautiful, absolutely essential books. And Desirable Daughters is one of the best."


Washington Post
"Mukherjee has emerged as an exemplary author"


Chicago Tribune
"A beautiful piece of literary fiction on its own."


St. Paul Pioneer Press
"A novel of grace and shrewd intellect and a page turner."


USA Today
"Llyrical and insightful, sharing observations about family that apply to almost all cultures."


Book Description
"The highlight of her career to date . . . Mukherjee bursts out as a star" (Publishers Weekly [starred review]) in her stirring novel of three women, two continents, and a perilous journey from the old world to the new -- now available in paperback. In the tradition of the Joy Luck Club, Bharati Mukherjee has written a remarkable novel that is both the portrait of a traditional Brahmin Indian family and a contemporary American story of a woman who has in many ways broken with tradition but still remains tied to her native country. Mukherjee follows the diverging paths taken by three extraordinary Calcutta-born sisters as they come of age in a changing world. Moving effortlessly between generations, she weaves together fascinating stories of the sisters' ancestors, childhood memories, and dramatic scenes from India's history.


About the Author
Bharati Mukherjee is the author of five novels, two nonfiction books, and a collection of short stories, The Middleman and Other Stories, for which she won the National Book Critics Circle Award. She is currently a professor at the University of California at Berkeley.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

"The highlight of her career to date . . . Mukherjee bursts out as a star" (Publishers Weekly [starred review]) in her stirring novel of three women, two continents, and a perilous journey from the old world to the new — now available in paperback.

In the tradition of the Joy Luck Club, Bharati Mukherjee has written a remarkable novel that is both the portrait of a traditional Brahmin Indian family and a contemporary American story of a woman who has in many ways broken with tradition but still remains tied to her native country.

Mukherjee follows the diverging paths taken by three extraordinary Calcutta-born sisters as they come of age in a changing world. Moving effortlessly between generations, she weaves together fascinating stories of the sisters' ancestors, childhood memories, and dramatic scenes from India's history.

National Book Critics Circle Award-winner Bharati Mukherjee has long been known for her elegant, evocative prose, and for drawing characters influenced by ancient customs and traditions but rooted in modern times. She is the author of five novels, two works of nonfiction and a collection of short stories, The Middleman and Other Stories. Currently a professor at the University of California at Berkeley, she resides in the San Francisco Bay area.

FROM THE CRITICS

Newsday

Multicultural reality limned by Bharati Mukherjee with aculty, humor, and warmth.

New York Times

Her most thoughtful, emotionally detailed book yet.

Washington Post

Mukherjee has emerged as an exemplary author(Washington Post)

USA Today

Llyrical and insightful, sharing observations about family that apply to almost all cultures.

NY Times Book Review