Synopsis:

When renouned painter Mira Novak arrives at Wadia hospital in Bombay after a miscarriage, she’s expected to make a quick recovery, and Sona is excited to spend time with the worldly woman who shares her half-Indian identity, even if that’s where their similarities end. Sona is enraptured by Mira’s stories of her travels, and shocked by accounts of the many lovers she’s left scattered through Europe. Over the course of a week, Mira befriends Sona, seeing in her something bigger than the small life she’s living with her mother. Mira is released from the hospital just in time to attend a lavish engagement party with all of Bombay society. But the next day, Mira is readmitted to the hospital in worse condition than before, and when she dies under mysterious circumstances, Sona immediately falls under suspicion.

Before leaving the hospital in disgrace, Sona is given a note Mira left for her, along with her four favorite paintings. But how could she have known to leave a note if she didn’t know she was going to die? The note sends Sona on a mission to deliver three of the paintings—the first to Petra, Mira’s childhood friend and first love in Prague; the second to her art dealer Josephine in Paris; the third to her first painting tutor, Paolo, with whom both Mira and her mother had affairs. As Sona uncovers Mira’s history, she learns that the charming facade she’d come to know was only one part of a complicated and sometimes cruel woman. But can she discover what really happened to Mira and exonerate herself?

Along the way, Sona also comes to terms with her own complex history and the English father who deserted her and her mother in India so many years ago. In the end, she’ll discover that we are all made up of pieces, and only by seeing the world do we learn to see ourselves.

Rating:

Review:

This book was just extraordinary! Truly I find myself at a loss for words to describe it. Historical fiction is sometimes a hit or miss for me, but this one knocked it out of the park. The first third of the book is spent on building the character of Sona and her relationship with Mira. But also giving us a very good background in what it was like to be half-Indian, half-English in 1937 India. A time when India is having a reckoning of the colonialism that they want to be free from and are starting to take back the power to cast out the English. But where does that leave people who have spent their entire lives in India, are half Indian and love India with all their hearts. This was absolutely fascinating and frankly I would have read an entire book about that topic alone.

After that primer on this time period in India, we are launched across the world with Sona. On a mission to deliver paintings and letters on behalf of her dear friend Mira. And along the way she realized that she didn’t know as much about Mira as she thought she had. Sona discovers that Mira was a different person to everyone she met. Everyone had a different memory of her and experience with her. Along the way Sona also learns a lot about herself and the English father who had abandoned her and her mother.

This book is exactly the kind of historical fiction that I love. This one will likely be on my short list for best book of the year.