I held off on reading it for a while because I felt like I had read a lot about India lately. Turns out I had only read two books on India last year: Groom to Have Been and Inheritance of Loss. Over the past few years, I've read In Between World of Vikram Lall, Interpreter of Maladies, Namesake, God of Small Things, and A Fine Balance. Which, for me, is not a disproportionate number of books on a certain topic - but I guess I find these pieces about India have strong descriptions that stick in my head so I don't like to confuse the books by reading them too close together.
In any case, this one was great too. It was about two women with a long history together - one of them (Bhima) is the other one's (Sera) servant. While by our standards, Bhima is treated poorly by Sera - forced to sit on the floor and use separate drinking cups - within the culture depicted in the book Sera treats her well. Secrets in both Sera and Bhima's lives are slowly revealed throughout the book, which continually changed my perceptions of the characters. The story also follows parts of the lives of Sera's daughter and her husband, and Bhima's granddaughter.
The plot held my attention, the characters were well-developed and multi-dimensional, and the culture is described almost in a detached journalistic way, devoid of the typical Western judgement found in some foreign-set stories. I have very little criticism of this book.
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