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Summary
Summary
From the acclaimed author of A Breath of Fresh Air , this beautiful novel takes us to modern India during the height of the summer's mango season. Heat, passion, and controversy explode as a woman is forced to decide between romance and tradition.
Every young Indian leaving the homeland for the United States is given the following orders by their parents: Don't eat any cow (It's still sacred!), don't go out too much, save (and save, and save) your money, and most important, do not marry a foreigner. Priya Rao left India when she was twenty to study in the U.S., and she's never been back. Now, seven years later, she's out of excuses. She has to return and give her family the news: She's engaged to Nick Collins, a kind, loving American man. It's going to break their hearts.
Returning to India is an overwhelming experience for Priya. When she was growing up, summer was all about mangoes--ripe, sweet mangoes, bursting with juices that dripped down your chin, hands, and neck. But after years away, she sweats as if she's never been through an Indian summer before. Everything looks dirtier than she remembered. And things that used to seem natural (a buffalo strolling down a newly laid asphalt road, for example) now feel totally chaotic.
But Priya's relatives remain the same. Her mother and father insist that it's time they arranged her marriage to a "nice Indian boy." Her extended family talks of nothing but marriage--particularly the marriage of her uncle Anand, which still has them reeling. Not only did Anand marry a woman from another Indian state, but he also married for love. Happiness and love are not the point of her grandparents' or her parents' union. In her family's rule book, duty is at the top of the list.
Just as Priya begins to feel she can't possibly tell her family that she's engaged to an American, a secret is revealed that leaves her stunned and off-balance. Now she is forced to choose between the love of her family and Nick, the love of her life.
As sharp and intoxicating as sugarcane juice bought fresh from a market cart, The Mango Season is a delightful trip into the heart and soul of both contemporary India and a woman on the edge of a profound life change.
Reviews (1)
Kirkus Review
A welcome second from Malladi (A Breath of Fresh Air, 2002), who sends a young expatriate back to her family in India and makes her grow up fast. A bright girl from an ambitious Brahmin family, Priya studied computer science at Texas A&M and has a good job in Silicon Valley. Now on her first visit back to her family in more than seven years, she's surprised at just how foreign India--with its dirt, heat, and traditions--has become to her. Her family is proud of her accomplishments, but they worry that, at 27, Priya is on the verge of becoming an old maid. She didn't have the nerve to tell them about Nick Collins, her American fiancÉ back in San Francisco, so they took matters into their own hands by arranging a marriage for her to Adarsh Sarma, the handsome and very eligible son of a prominent local family. Americanized to look upon arranged marriages as monstrous and absurd, but still Indian enough to find it hard to defy her parents outright, Priya is in a bind. Plus, she thinks Adarsh is a hunk. And Nick has stopped returning her e-mails. Everyone is excited about setting up a double wedding with Priya and her aunt Sowmya (who has been assigned a considerably plainer and less desirable fiancÉ), and Priya is afraid that the arrangements will soon take on a momentum that can't be stopped. What to do? Has Nick abandoned her? Is a bird in the hand worth two in the bush? And does Priya really want, deep down, to be an Indian or an American? When there's no time to sort out your thoughts, you have to go by your gut feelings, even if you can't justify them. Standard fare, but nicely seasoned: The spice of atmosphere and geography livens up a family saga and gives a fresh twist to a typical coming-of-age tale. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.