From Library Journal
Originally published in India in 1996, this first novel is Badami's second to appear in the United States, after The Hero's Walk (LJ 3/15/01). Here she relates the story of Saroja, as told by her daughter Kamini and by Saroja herself. Kamini's memories are triggered when she learns of her mother's plan to journey across India without itinerary. Kamini's inability to contact her mother while she travels mirrors her childhood feelings of neglect and abandonment. In embarking on her travels, Saroja not only defies the narrow expectations of her parents, who pushed her into a loveless marriage and ended her ambitions, but she also breaks away from the expectations of her daughter. Although set primarily in India, this portrait of a mother and daughter transcends geographical limitations. And though the book bears some similarities to Amy Tan's The Bonesetter's Daughter (LJ 1/01), Badami provides no tidy resolutions to intergenerational and intercultural conflicts. Mother and daughter begin and end their stories alone. This thoughtful work is recommended for all public and academic fiction collections. Rebecca Stuhr, Grinnell Coll. Libs., IA Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Booklist
Badami's second novel explores the relationship of a mother and daughter, Saroja and Kamini. In the first half, Kamini comes of age among postcolonial India's railway colonies. Her father is often away, charting new frontiers for railway expansion, and she is left home with her mother and sister. She eventually leaves for Canada, where she remains wistful for the smells and sounds of India. Kamini worries when her mother suddenly departs for a trip across India, with only postcards marking her whereabouts. Saroja then speaks, telling her story of longing for a life independent of the demands of a husband and family. She recounts her loveless marriage and thwarted attempts to become a doctor, her often vicious commentaries earning her the nickname Tamarind Mem, after the sour fruit that grows in her backyard. Badami's brilliant and beautiful novel captures life in India--the musicality of the English spoken, the interactions with servants, the smells of rotting fruit in the market, the sweltering sun, and the constant moving about of a railway family. Michael Spinella
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved


Kirkus Reviews
"Beautifully composed..."


Library Journal
"This thoughtful work is recommended..."


Publisher's Weekly
"Badami writes graceful, evocative prose...a first novel that reveals so much talent."


Review
?Splendidly evocative . . . As much a book about the universal habit of storytelling as it is about the misunderstandings that arise between a mother and daughter.?
?The Washington Post Book World

?A TREMENDOUS ACHIEVEMENT?a skillful and compassionate family saga that is personal, intimate, tender, and revealing.?
?Toronto Globe & Mail

?TAMARIND WOMAN ALLOWS THE READER TO TRAVEL INSIDE AN INDIA RARELY REVEALED. Ms. Badami?s detailed descriptions of social customs and events are as enriching as they are beautiful.?
?Richmond Times-Dispatch

?COMPELLING . . . Dishing out often laugh out-loud funny dialogue, [Badami] finds a wicked absurdity in the traditions of India, though the comedy masks larger, more persuasive social conflicts.?
?Salon.com

?BITTERSWEET . . . With often stunning, poetic prose, [Badami] gives us an intimate character study of two women.?
?Minneapolis Star Tribune

?Warm, witty, and engaging . . . [with] a slightly whimsical edge . . . There are some wonderfully evocative descriptions of childhood fears and superstitions. . . . The characterization and portrayal of complex family dynamics are also extremely well done.?
?The Observer (England)

?One is beguiled by this evocative recreation of Kamini?s childhood. . . . The texture of the book is like a finely woven piece of cloth, where every fragment of memory, however ordinary, is given a motif. . . . Badami possesses great facility with the language and she uses it with a malleable elegance that is a pleasure to read. Her recall of detail and the ability to blend it into characters is remarkable.?
?Biblio (India)

?Exquisite . . . This is a literal swirl of a piece that should be gulped whole in one sitting. . . . Stunning, rich in detail, and utterly beguiling.?
?The Edmonton Journal (Canada)

?A strong, emotional mother-daughter story . . . Family relationships and the appeal of a distant time and foreign culture combine to give this novel appeal for readers who like settings they deem exotic as well as those who just like a good story.?
?Baton Rouge Advocate

?So hilarious that those around me asked why I was laughing . . . In Badami?s story, love is woven throughout the story?s tapestry like golden thread.?
?Voice of Asia

?A family tableau . . . with vivid language and intricate descriptions.?
?Elle

?VERY ACCOMPLISHED . . . QUIETLY SATISFYING . . .
[The details] are conveyed with enjoyable precision, and a picture of post-colonial India is vividly conjured up through a series of vignettes of places and people.?
?The Times (London)

?A book so unselfconscious it begs to be read aloud . . . Badami allows her characters to float their stories on the air in a first-person narrative as jewel-bright and weightless as a silk sari shaken out of its folds. . . . Badami?s gorgeous language is as rich and sharp and surprising as are her insights. Tamarind Woman is a treat.?
?The Ottawa Citizen

?This lovely novel is layered with voices telling stories. . . . Badami writes very well and her narrative is rich with details. . . . She chronicles the intimate details of women, struggling in the constraints and judgments of a culture that dictates their duties and the shapes of their lives.?
?Santa Barbara News Press

?Tamarind Woman presents a vivid history of women between India and America, told in the form of an entertaining novel.?
?Winston-Salem Journal

?I enjoyed it enormously. . . . A captivating writer, with a sharp sense of character and a humor that infuses the story with vitality.?
?HELEN DUNMORE

?[A] dense weave of fascinating details of everyday life in a culture unfamiliar to the American reader.?
?Chapel Hill News

?ENGAGING . . . [ITS] PAGES GLOW
WITH LOVING NOSTALGIA FOR THE OLD COUNTRY.?
?The Times Literary Supplement

?Badami weaves a tale of bittersweet nostalgia . . . imbuing her descriptions of Indian domestic life with achingly palpable details as she explores all the small ceremonies that make family life so simultaneously rich and infuriating. . . . A delectable book, filled with pungent sights and sounds and poignant memories. It proves, yet again, that each person in a family experiences that microcosm differently. Only by synthesizing these disparate views do we grasp the full flavor of events.?
?Quill & Quire

?[A] novel that reveals so much talent . . . Badami writes graceful, evocative prose and plays complex variations on her themes. All her characters are vibrant and deftly drawn, and her narrators? opposing points of view create a poignant irony.?
?Publishers Weekly

?Badami?s brilliant and beautiful novel captures life in India?the musicality of the English spoken, the interactions with servants, the smells of rotting fruit in the market, the sweltering sun, and the constant moving about of a railway family.?
?Booklist

?This is a beautiful first novel, written in lively Indian English. And, in the tradition of Indian writing, all-too-human flaws are described with endearing humor.?
?The Georgia Straight

?Poignant . . . A light, delicate prose . . . It?s a remarkable exposition of the truth that we never ever really know anyone, even with those closest to us.?
?The Herald (Glasgow)

?[A] VIVID, ALMOST CINEMATIC TALE . . .
Sight, sound, and, especially, smell inhabit the narrative with the force of character. . . . By telling the story of a bitter woman so eloquently, Badami offers a measure of sweet redemption.?
?Maclean?s

?This novel is a beauty. . . . Simply written, unpretentious, Tamarind Woman weaves a web around you as all good stories do and clasps you in its embrace. Anita Rau Badami has written a fine book with sensitivity. . . . An absolute delight to read, Tamarind Woman puts to rest the rhyme that girls were made of sugar and spice and all things nice. How delightful and refreshing that Saraja is made of tamarind and chilies and fierce black pepper.?
?The Hindu

?In a masterly fashion, Anita Rau Badami spins her web of memory. . . . It is a fascinating book that shows how an expatriate can reconstruct her imaginary homelands with magnificent detail. . . . Tamarind Woman will help Anita Rau Badami establish herself as a post-colonial writer who is able to assert and foreground her Indian experience in a powerful way.?
?The Pioneer (India)

?Introspective, with rich descriptions of Indian middle class life, Tamarind Woman is a compelling novel that will win even more admirers for this young, talented writer.?
?Register-Pajaronian (Watsonvile, CA)

?What a treat . . . An escape, an entertainment?that mere but elusive thing that most of us, after all, are seeking in good fiction.?
?National Post

?[A] thoughtful work . . . This portrait of a mother and daughter transcends geographical limitations.?
?Library Journal

?A POWERFUL STORY . . . A RICHLY TEXTURED WORK.?
?Books in Canada

?The customs of two very different worlds are revealed in minute detail throughout Anita Rau Badami?s arresting novel. . . . While this tantalizing book is filled with glimpses of life in a country whose sights and sounds are exotic to an outsider, its central theme is the mother-daughter relationship that transcends geographical boundaries. Badami writes elegant, complex prose. . . . Her provocative thoughts fill the pages of Tamarind Woman, leaving the reader entranced. . . . This thoughtful novel leaves one with much to ponder, particularly the fragile family ties that refuse to be severed.?
?The Sanford Herald (NC)

?A forceful narrative . . . Colorfully retold myths [are] spun from the mouths of various personalities . . . This layered novel?s suggestive world seeps smoothly into your consciousness.?
?Winnipeg Free Press

?A warm, engaging portrait of exile, geographical and spiritual . . . Memories run like silk being spun, starting out simple and crafted differently by each individual in this subtle story of family dynamics.?
?The Scotsman

?An intimate and tender novel evocative of India, its myths, superstitions, and religion. It also explores the mutability of memory, unraveling the deep ties of love and resentment that bind mothers and daughters everywhere.?
?Paisley Daily Express (England)

?Beautifully crafted . . . Although rooted in the caste system of India, this accomplished work transcends cultural and linguistic barriers.?
?Yorkshire Post (England)



Book Description
Set in India's railway colonies, Tamarind Woman tells the story of two generations of women. Kamini, an overachiever, has moved to Canada to begin her graduate studies. Her mother, Saroja, nicknamed Tamarind Woman due to her sour tongue, is bitter because of her loveless marriage and her thwarted ambition to become a doctor. When Kamini receives a postcard from her mother saying that she has sold their home and is traveling through India by train, both are plunged into the past to confront their dreams and losses. On her long rail-road journey, Saroja tells the passengers on her train the story of her life. And from Canada, in between phone calls to her mother and postcards received from her mother's trip, Kamini reflects on her past. As we learn about their respective histories, from girlhood through maturity, we see the loss and love, the jealousy and joy, that has filled their lives. TAMARIND WOMAN is a wise and compassionate novel about family, memory, and the traditions that tear us apart and bring us together.

FROM OUR EDITORS

The Barnes & Noble Review from Discover Great New Writers
Readers with their fingers on the pulse of Canadian literary fiction already know Anita Rau Badami, whose award-winning books are bestsellers there. But not as many Americans are aware of the quiet resonance and emotional impact of her prose, which has already drawn comparisons to that of Jhumpa Lahiri, Manil Suri, and Michael Ondaatje.

In her first novel, Tamarind Woman, she explores the connection between mothers and daughters, and the histories that shape their lives. Set in the railway colonies of India, the book begins from the perspective of Kamini, a strong, independent woman who has left her native India and moved to Calgary for graduate school. Her mother, Saroja, is nicknamed "Tamarind Woman" and lives up to her name, ever ready with an acid-tongued commentary. Kamini has always had a tortured relationship with her mother; she was "never sure about Ma's feelings" for her. "Her love￯﾿ﾽwas like the waves in the sea, the ebb and flow left [her] reaching out hungrily."

But what becomes apparent in the second half of Badami's book is that several factors have influenced the bitterness that has seeped into Saroja's life -- her thwarted desire to become a doctor and her loveless arranged marriage to an older man who is rarely home. Filled with poignancy, humor, and the exotic sights and smells of Indian life, Anita Rau Badami's Tamarind Woman will inspire readers of all ages to reflect on the lives of their own mothers and help them gain mutual understanding. In fact, it's a perfect Mother's Day gift for discriminating readers! (Spring 2002 Selection)

FROM THE PUBLISHER

"Set in the railway colonies of India, Tamarind Woman tells a story of two generations of women. Kamini, an overachiever, lives in a self-imposed exile in Canada. Her mother, Saroja, nicknamed Tamarind Woman due to her sour tongue, is trapped by the customs of traditional Indian life. When Saroja informs her daughter that she has sold their house and is going on a journey across India alone by train, both women are plunged into the past, confronting their dreams and disappointments as well as their long-held secrets." At the center of both their lives is Kamini's elusive father, an officer for the India Railway System. Often away from home working on the railroads, he is unaware of the secrets of his own household. He doesn't know that his wife disappears for days at a time, leaving Kamini and her favored younger sister in the care of their superstitious servant. Nor does he know the gossip surrounding his wife and the local mechanic. Nothing, however, escapes Kamini's notice. Only now, living in Canada, is she able to make sense of the eccentric family she's left behind. Only now, with her children grown and her husband long deceased, is Saroja able to make peace with her past.

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

Though it's being published in the U.S. after Badami's well-received second novel, The Hero's Walk, this is actually her first, covering terrain common to many first novels: the relationship between a mother and a daughter. The story of the Moorthy family is first told by Kamini, the elder of two daughters. Enrolled in graduate school in Calgary, Kamini sits homesick in her basement apartment, recalling her childhood from the birth of her sister when Kamini is six to the day she leaves for Canada. She describes a complex family and a conflict between parents that she barely understands a bitter mother and a father who's always away. Then her mother, Saroja, weighs in, broadening and deepening Kamini's story. Saroja is also the eldest daughter, a smart girl whose ambitions to become a doctor are subverted when her family pushes her into an arranged marriage to a man 15 years older than herself. Her marriage remains as stunted as her ambitions, and Saroja welcomes the attentions of a half-caste auto mechanic. She narrates all this to the women who share her train compartment as she tours places in India she could not visit while raising her daughters. Badami writes graceful, evocative prose and plays complex variations on her themes. All her characters are vibrant and deftly drawn, and her narrators' opposing points of view create a poignant irony. She might have trimmed away some of the many smaller stories to make room for the central drama, but that is a small complaint for a first novel that reveals so much talent. (Mar. 29) Forecast: Badami got lots of exposure with the publication of The Hero's Walk, and readers on the lookout for her next book will not be disappointed by this earlier effort. Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal

Originally published in India in 1996, this first novel is Badami's second to appear in the United States, after The Hero's Walk (LJ 3/15/01). Here she relates the story of Saroja, as told by her daughter Kamini and by Saroja herself. Kamini's memories are triggered when she learns of her mother's plan to journey across India without itinerary. Kamini's inability to contact her mother while she travels mirrors her childhood feelings of neglect and abandonment. In embarking on her travels, Saroja not only defies the narrow expectations of her parents, who pushed her into a loveless marriage and ended her ambitions, but she also breaks away from the expectations of her daughter. Although set primarily in India, this portrait of a mother and daughter transcends geographical limitations. And though the book bears some similarities to Amy Tan's The Bonesetter's Daughter (LJ 1/01), Badami provides no tidy resolutions to intergenerational and intercultural conflicts. Mother and daughter begin and end their stories alone. This thoughtful work is recommended for all public and academic fiction collections. Rebecca Stuhr, Grinnell Coll. Libs., IA Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews