Valmiki's Daughter

by Shani Mootoo

In Valmiki's Daughter, critically acclaimed and best-selling novelist Shani Mootoo returns to the style — and some of the themes — she first explored in her breakout book, Cereus Blooms at Night. Mootoo introduces readers to the Krishnus, a well-to-do Trinidadian family firmly ensconced in the strict social hierarchy of the island. In this story of family secrets, patriarch Valmiki conceals a painful fact about his sexual identity while his youngest, the lively and intelligent Viveka, struggles to come to terms with a painful secret connected to her sexual identity. As Valmikiâ€s and Vivekaâ€s secrets threaten to shake the foundations of the family, this beautifully written and hypnotically paced novel explores the complex interaction of race, gender, class, and sexuality in a closed society.

Genres: Fiction, LGBT, Canada, Queer, Family, Contemporary, Race

398 pages, Hardcover

First published November 14, 2008

About the author

Shani Mootoo, writer, visual artist and video maker, was born in Dublin, Ireland in 1957 to Trinidadian parents. She grew up in Trinidad and relocated at age 24 to Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. She currently lives in Toronto, Canada.

Reviews

[2TReads · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 to 4 stars

With social themes that resonate with me as a Caribbean reader, Mootoo takes the reader on the journey of living a secret and repressing one's identity to conform for societal and familial acceptance.

-She had no map of her future, but she knew who she was. She would not be diminished because of it- Viveka.

In the opening scene of Mootoo's story, one gets such detailed descriptions, that streets, statues and buildings seem to emit such a presence as to build the very atmosphere of the book, and one does wonder, with an opener like this, will there be anything left? But there is much to be discovered: a father afraid of his desires and identity – fearing his eldest daughter may experience sexual confusion or exposure to a sexual identity as he had and although he has had encounters, and continues to do so – does not want for her.

Mootoo is very deliberate in inviting and engaging her readers by addressing them within the context of the story whle the landscape unfurls before our eyes.

Valmiki is oppositional in his views of how Viveka carries herself, she is strong-willed which he abhors and admires and is worried by the fact that her intelligence and willfulness may make her unattractive to men. Viveka feels trapped, unable to freely express her desires for fear of retribution and being shunned by her family; she is further hindered by her parents' views and also knows that the body she exists in does not have the latitude as that of a man.

Mootoo along with outlining the slopes, dips, and curves of the island, paints a stark rendition of the classist leanings of the society. The disdain for the manual labourers, the attitudes held by the wealthy and educated, and how each plays into the societal structure of Trinidad.

It is very clear that Mootoo is making a statement when it comes to the roles that are played by her characters, whether it be because of their station in life, the status they hold in society, or the resulting shift in perception and respect from friends and family, and how those roles can be the detriment to self-actualization, selfhood, and self-identity.

The exploration of the families makes this saga engrossing: the marriages, friendships, affairs, desires, misunderstandings, hypocrises, and self-debilitating thoughts make it ever easier for readers to commiserate with these characters. The secrets being kept and the desires fulfilled yet denied, makes the tension between our players palpable and all that is left to do is await the fallout.

[Kiki · Rating 4 out of 5]

The simplest plots can take on the world. With the two families Mootoo charts cultural, political, social, and sexual histories and identities. She broaches topics specific to a particular Trinidadian context. (Tobago don't figure at all, tbh. Not in a way I could decipher.) With this book, obviously in dialogue with A House for Mr Biswas, Mootoo goes beyond its limits, using gender, sexuality, and aspects of T&T's colonial past, to emphasise the multiplicity that can and does exist in the most conservative East Indian families.

Viveka identifies as non-binary (even though she doesn't use that term). I was so glad Mootoo made it explicit. First time reading a Caribbean novel with a genderqueer MC. We need more please.

This is not my final review. Just had to get some words out about this marvellous novel. Thanks, Kay!

[Rebecca]

read for school. this is such a heartbreaking book and the ending in particular is so awful because of the idea that societal pressure is so overwhelming that Indian LGBT people have to have a heterosexual marriage to fit in, survive, live. also this book had a LOT of descriptions of sex, food, and geography/nature. not sure what to make of those.

[Debby Tiner · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this for a class, and it was rather enjoyable, but not quite what I expected. It reminded me of Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf, with complex passages, long scenery descriptions, and a lot of different characters. None of the characters were particularly likeable, although I related to Viveka the most. Some of the intimate scenes between her and men were very uncomfortable, and seemed unconsensual.

I wanted a happy ending, and I didn’t really get one. In fact, I’m not sure there was really an ending at all.

[Reet · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is about a young Indian-Trinidadian woman who is at first unsure of her sexual identity, but when she meets the French wife of a young family friend, she falls in love with her.
When I saw the title of the book Valmiki's Daughter, and the cover had pictures of bird cages on it, I thought it would be about a father who kept his daughter imprisoned and didn't let her live her life. On the contrary, the father tries to protect her from the impositions of her mother, and lets her know she has his support.
Her family is from an upper middle class Trinidadian neighborhood; she is "imprisoned" by the rigid rules of her culture and society. Everything is governed by "what people will say."
A friend of hers who expressed her love for other women was turned out to the streets by her own family. She had to turn to sex work to be able to live. Viveka is terrified that this could happen to her.
Valmiki is aware of his shortcomings. When he was in Medical school, in Goa, he had a gay lover, Tony. But, like Viveka in Trinidad, he was afraid of people discovering this part of him, so he went out with Devika. The first time they had sex, she became pregnant, so he married her. The next 20 years were spent with him having afair after afair, trying to prove to society what a virile man he was. On many weekends, he will go "hunting" with workers from the lower class, to give himself an opportunity to spend the night with his gay lover, Saul. But the result is that He and Devika have a Barren home life, and both she and Saul's wife know what is going on. Devika and Valmiki haven't had sex in 7 years.
Here's a funny part when they're sitting on the patio in the evening.
" The sun was just going down and the patio Was aglow in an orange light. The electric patio light was switched on in anticipation of the usual speedy nightfall. Valmiki reclined in the Wicker Chaise-longe, his feet aimed directly at Devika. If he hadn't turned the pages of the paper once in a while she would have thought he had fallen asleep. He raised his lower body, the left side, a couple of inches or so off the chaise, and there it Hovered for a good few seconds. He would have looked up at her with a lame and apologetic smile if there had been an accompanying sound or a foul scent. But since neither emanated, he lowered his body and continued his reading. Animals had better scent perception than humans, Devika reckoned, for the birds in the four cages that hung from the patio roof, one sporting a mohawk-like arrangement of feathers on its head and bearing a name she couldn't pronounce suddenly became ruffled and hopped about in agitation. The newest addition Scuttled defiantly on the cage's metal tray, nervous and distressed..."
Nayan, the son of the Prakashes, good friends just down the road from Viveka's family, is the same age as Viveka. His family owns cacao plantations in the middle of the island. He and Viveka grew up together, but Nayan went away to British Columbia for business school. He comes back with Anick, a French woman who had been in Canada for school as well. Anick and Nayan invite Viveka over for a meal cooked by Anick, who excels at French cooking. Nayan tells Viveka the story of how he and Anick got together, but he's a dick about it and Anick gets enraged.
" he knew better then to tell his parents about Anick, Nayan said, because he would be sent for, his money monitored, and even a marriage back home hastily arranged for him with a girl from a known family. Anick, meanwhile, had told her parents about him, that he was brown-skinned, West indian, wealthy and owned a cacao Plantation and chocolate-making factory. Apparently they were worried that he wasn't french, didn't speak any french, and that she was sounding much too serious about him. She had had other love interests before, but none they had seen her consider so seriously. If they had worried about her interests before, now they were even more so.
At this juncture, Anick got up abruptly and busied herself in the kitchen..."
Anick is bisexual, and she's enraged that Nayan is telling Viveka all about her, as if she weren't there, and it's none of her business.
Nayan pretends that Anick was living with her parents before he married her, but she had been living with her lesbian lover and had just broken up with her. She got together with Nayan on the rebound.
Anick is beautiful and is looked at as a curiosity, a decoration for Nayan's arm. She doesn't speak much English, and what she does is said with a thick French accent, that is thought of as charming.
Like many men, Nayan is intrigued by the thought of lesbian lovers.
" Then, on subsequent dates, he seemed to become more and more intrigued, as men tended to be, by her interest in women. He wanted details. She wouldn't tell him too much, holding those intimacies close to her heart. He would persist, ask her what it was that women did to each other, what it was that made her like being with a woman. The only way she had been able to respond and still be respectful of those intimacies, and at the same time not anger Nayan with a refusal to engage with him in such a manner, was to employ the strategy of appearing to educate him. But it took hardly a sentence or two before he would become aroused, wanting nothing more then than to show her, as he would say while in the act, what real sex was and what a real man was like.
Then, once they were married, Nayan's fascination with the subject waned. Furthermore, shortly after they arrived in Trinidad, he was suddenly disgusted. He told Anick he hated that part of her life, that he was appalled, even tormented, by the idea that she had once loved women. Since then, she had dreaded the day he would throw all that she had so recklessly told him back at her. And now, that day had come. She had to fight the breaking of her heart at what she had sacrificed in herself by marrying him. In a strange place, in a family whose ways were so foreign to her, with this man whose body did not comfort her well enough, whose presence bent her spirit and heart, she felt more acutely than ever before all that she had given up."
Anick and Viveka befriend each other, and when they discover their mutual feelings, their love is profound. But Within the rigid Society of Trinidad upper class, they cannot be together. They end up caged within the only accepted life of society in Trinidad. Apart.
The ending is sad.
I liked this story a lot, by this Irish-Trinidadian author. I appreciated that she didn't spell out sex scenes that can repulse a reader like me.

[CaseyTheCanadianLesbrarian · Rating 4 out of 5]

Any discussion at all of Shani Mootoo I must precede with an acknowledgement that I love, love, LOVE, her writing. I think she’s one of the most talented writers or artists period whose work I am familiar with—she happens to be one of those disgustingly talented people who is not only an imaginative and brilliant writer but also a gifted visual artist and filmmaker. So when I finally picked up her most recent novel Valmiki’s Daughter (2008), after being too swamped for too long with school work to fit time in to read it, the anticipation was killing me. I pretty much devoured it in one day—it was the first thing I read when I decided not to continue my PhD, in fact. The novel, indeed, forcefully pulls the reader in immediately, somewhat disconcertingly addressing “you” directly in the first section and, using an imperative tense, telling you where you are, what you see, smell, hear, and touch—and where to go next. You are a visitor to San Fernando, Trinidad and Mootoo inundates you with vivid sensory details of the polyphonic, bustling city, the lush environment, and mouth-watering food....
see the rest of my review here: http://caseythecanadianlesbrarian.wor...

[Chaitali · Rating 4 out of 5]

My first ever Indo-Carribean read and it did not disappoint me at all. Valmiki's daughter is beautiful father daughter family saga and the competing pulls of race, class, and sexuality.

The author walks you through beautiful parts of Trinidad and descriptions are so real that you almost drift to those places though her descriptions.

The story has loads of potential and the author has done a good job in exploring and showing struggle of a person to come terms with one's sexuality. As a man Dr. Valmiki leads two lives , the struggle to accept his queerness and his wife knowingly or unknowingly keeps with him and his secrets. But when it comes to his daughter Viveka who finds herself going through the same turmoil as of his father, he don't want to her to live the life he has been through.

The novel is very thoughtful and the author has done a great job in depicting the inner conflict faced by a young woman and the price that conflict extracts from her family.

After this book, I want to explore more work done by Shani Mootoo and this book is making me to explore more Indo-Carribean Books.

[Marissa and her goodreads spam · Rating 5 out of 5]

honestly, i think this is my new favorite book. reading it was kind of like zen, the writing was so beautiful and descriptive. shani mootoo took my brain on a bittersweet vacation to trinidad and tobago. each character was developed so wellllll and the emotions of family life were so realistic (even though i know 0 things about life in trinidad, emotions must be the same everywhere).

i think this painted a very realistic picture of sexuality and acceptance shown through the experiences of valmiki and his daughter viveka. like father, like daughter. definitely showed the suffocating power of societal pressure on love & sexual identity.

“she had no map of her future, but she knew who she was. She would not be diminished because of it.”

[Nikki · Rating 2 out of 5]

I actually liked this book more toward the end. The beginning is almost tediously descriptive. However, the characters themselves are easy to empathize with. I was left sort of confused at the end.

[Meg · Rating 3 out of 5]

I grabbed this book at the book thing because it was written by a Caribbean writer and sounded like my cup of tea....island life, writer with some travel experience, yay! And then it sat on my bookshelf.
This is the story of a family living in Trinidad and trying to get by. A father who is a closeted bisexual who has affairs because he is unsatisfied in his life. A butch daughter who tries to appease her parents by dating men, but finds herself obsessed with women and determined to play volleyball and be herself. A mother who lets her life be defined by how successful her parties are and cares only about appearances, but doesn't really live. The story is slow to start and follows these three characters through every day life and allows the reader to observe and judge on their own.
I personally found this story extremely slow--- and I would never have gotten through it if I didn't take a couple of breaks to read other books. After about halfway through, the book finally has some action and the pages turn a bit faster....a bit.
Read if you enjoy Caribbean literature and character studies. Be forewarned it is slow.
2017 Reading Challenge: a book you got from a used book sale.

[Joy Ramlogan · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book peels back the layers of South Trinidadian Indian society through the lens of a repressed homosexual doctor Valmiki and his elder daughter Viveka who discovers that she too is a lesbian. Structurally the novel gains pace eventually. As a Trini, I liked the opening description of San Fernando and the landmarks with the cacophony of sound and smells. However, as a reader, I thought this descriptive chapter addressed to the reader was excessively long and I did not know what to make of it. The author's exploration of what it means to be a homosexual man created an unfortunate example of a womanising doctor with his side piece being a lower class man with whom he goes hunting. I think this novel descended to stereotypes too quickly - the daughter Viveka is self-absorbed and her adventures into lesbianism with the French woman deliberately mirrored her father's choices. And I found that Valmiki's wife Devika was an unbearably boring character. The best part of this novel is the loving descriptions of food, and the landscape.

[lucian · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved it. I’d say I would love it even more if not the overbearing telling instead of showing the story at times. I love long descriptions, the image of Trinidad and the sketch of complex relationships within a family. The characters have my heart. I think they’re almost brilliant and I’d like them even more if they had more of their agency described. In a way, this felt like a long movie, showing not only complex issues of gender and gendered stereotypes, but also racial themes and commentary on classist behaviour. A wonderful book.

[Farhana Faruq · Rating 2 out of 5]

I love that this novel takes place in Trinidad, and how Mootoo describes all the different areas (not the "your journey" sections, those were slow). Otherwise, there is no real story, everyone seems to be closet homosexuals and the author has portrayed basically every male character as pathetic.

[Susan · Rating 4 out of 5]

As someone who knows very little about Trinidad, it was interesting to see this view of Trinidad's culture/history. I felt that the bulk of the book was a bit slow, and then the ending went by too quickly, but otherwise a good read.

[Kristīne Vītola]

https://youtu.be/bVlZXqfq3LA

[Katherine · Rating 4 out of 5]

i really liked it but the ending could mean a number of things

[Fartashia Wijdan · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5

[Shanice · Rating 4 out of 5]

More like 3.5 stars but I'm feeling generous

[Jan Morrison · Rating 4 out of 5]

Erotic, full of gorgeous detail, but so sad.

[Clementine · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 🌟

[Sonja · Rating 4 out of 5]

“She felt suddenly sad, and realized that is was because she didn’t know the French word for emerald” ough.

[Jo Hoffman · Rating 5 out of 5]

I feel,, cowardly, for wanting it to end another way. Expecting it to end according to a world these characters do not belong to

[Teresa · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars
was a bit rough to read, homosexuality/bisexuality in a conservative indo-trinidanian culture means this is a rather complex novel of identity (a somewhat too slow paced one at times).

[Dani (The Pluviophile Writer) · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was long listed for 2009 Giller Prize and it is easy to see why.

Review at The Pluviophile Reader: http://bit.ly/2eJwnB5

4/5 stars.
ebook, 410 pages.
Read from June 19, 2017 to June 23, 2017.

It’s always nice when a rewards program actually provides you with a reward you actually like! I signed up for the VIP program with Kobo since I figured I buy enough ebooks through out the year that the discount would be worth the small fee I paid to sign up. When you sign up you have the option of selecting a free book from a narrow list that they provide. I initially browsed the list once and was thoroughly unimpressed with my options as it contained a bunch of shitty romances or self-published novels with little repute. I left my discount code to rot in my inbox until it nearly expired. For whatever reason, I decided to give the list another look before I let it expire and it was then that I discovered this nice surprise.

Set in Trinidad and Tobago, Valmiki is a doctor and well-respected family man. He has two young daughters whom he loves deeply despite his inability to connect with them on an emotional level. The root of Valmiki’s family problems stems from his deepest secret which, is the inability to admit to himself that he is gay. A sexuality that is still, unfortunately, seriously frowned upon in his culture. Valmiki is so confused that he actually purposely has affairs outside of his marriage with other women to try and convince and enforce his fragile masculinity. His affairs include ones with men as well but he is deeply afraid of getting too close to them despite yearning to.

Valmiki also fears for his daughter, Viveka, whom he suspects is also being gay. Viveka is an intelligent, highly independent, frustrated young woman. She is tired of being stifled by her family and societal ideas of what she should be. She wants to play volleyball and be free to wear and do what she pleases. Viveka becomes aware of her own sexuality with the arrival of Anick; a French woman who has recently come to regret her recent marriage to a local man, who also happens to be a friend to Valmiki and his family. Will Viveka follow the same torturous lifestyle as her father or will she embrace her identity and disgrace her and her family?

This book was long listed for 2009 Giller Prize and it is easy to see why. Remarkable, yet ordinary characters in a lovely and descriptive landscape with writing that is rife with commentary on race, gender, class, and sexuality. The relationships between certain characters are stunningly beautiful and easy to get lost and wound up in. The story is highly empathetic, romantic, heartbreaking and frustrating at times, especially, if as a reader you have grown up in a culture that is more liberal with homosexuality. While the book is a bit of slow starter, once the groundwork has been laid, this is a story that you will fully immerse yourself in and not want to put down.

I would highly recommend this book the anyone in the LGBTQ community and for those that support them. I would also recommend this book to anyone looking for a great plot in a setting outside of Western culture or for those looking for a surprising story that will stay with you long after the book is closed.

[Rusalka · Rating 1 out of 5]

I was overly excited to read this book. I have a friend at work who is from Trinidad and Tobago. We hear all these wonderful stories about her homeland, and I was hoping for a bigger insight into this world.

But what I got is a transplantation of the overly oppressive elements of Indian society in a lovely tropical location. I will have to ask her about this, as that is the cultural background she is from (as opposed to Afro-Caribbean) but she funnily enough went home for the Christmas break so I have to wait until I get back to work. But this was entirely at odds to conversations we had had. And that was worrying to me from the outset. Two possibilities for this. One is my friend's childhood and young adulthood was abnormal. Or the book written by a expat living in Canada was abnormal. So I was slightly on edge.

Valmiki is a rich, successful doctor on Trinidad. He has a wife and two daughters. He sleeps with lots of exotic, foreign women. We also find out in the first quarter, even the first fifth of the book, that he is actually gay (I say gay not bi, as he seems to have absolutely no feelings towards the women besides his wife, and that just seems to be companionship, not love at all) and sneaks off into the forest to go hunting with a group of lower class men (class is a BIG deal apparently...), one of which he has had a long term sexual relationship with. This is apparently a giant elephant in the room as his wife knows and it's all about keeping up appearances.

But then he is so upset about a fight with his wife and eldest daughter as she wants to play sport. And this is wrong and not to be tolerated apparently, more by wifey than him, but it sets off alarm bells for him. And I'm here thinking "Oh here we fricking go". Then there is a big deal about what his intelligent daughter wears. This is an reoccurring theme, about how she likes jeans, a cotton shirt and leather Indian shoes. If I wanted to read a book about clothes I would find the equivalent of Sex in the City in paperback. For disclosure's sake, that's what I wear substituting tshirt for shirt as I feel like it, and shoes would be thongs or skate shoes. But the whole time I'm reading this I'm getting "DO YOU GET IT????? She won't wear a dress!!!! SHE'S A LESBIAN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! OMFG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" If the author had taken a 2x4 and painted "She is a lesbian" on it, and then smacked me literally over the head with that, it would have been more subtle.

Enter the French girl who apparently goes both ways, because all French girls do. ... Really? Is that not incredibly offensive to put peoples sexuality down to a nationalistic stereotype???

And then the end. The ending made me want to throw up over the entire book.

Just. No.

When I get back to work I'm asking my friend for a proper Trini read as this was bollocks. Not very grown up that final assessment, but I really did not enjoy much of this book at all and at 398pp I'm entitled to call it names.

For more reviews visit http://rusalkii.blogspot.com.au/

[Lindy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Valmiki Krishnu is a respected medical doctor with a charming wife and two daughters. Viveka, the eldest, is studying English at university. Vashti is in high school. They live in a wealthy subdivision in Trinidad and, to outside appearances, are very much like the upper-class Indo-Trinidadians that make up their social circle.

Like the caged birds that Valmiki keeps, however, the Krishnus are trapped by the bars of their rigid community. Valmiki juggles his need for his longtime male lover, Saul, with his need for discretion in a place where eyes are everywhere. Several times in the course of the story, individuals experience very personal moments and then realize, shortly afterwards, that someone has been observing them. The small island country appears to offer no safety for those who do not fit into a stifling norm. Is life worth living if it is to be posing as someone you are not?

Viveka has a growing sense of her lesbianism and her parents are witness to her feelings. Valmiki wants his daughter to make better choices than he did, yet he cannot discuss this openly with her, nor with his wife.

It isn't surprising that this novel reminded me from the start of Naipaul's A House for Mr. Biswas, with its focus on the nuances of Indo-Trinidadian society and with Valmiki Krishnu trapped in a life not of his choosing, much like Mohun Biswas. Indeed, Viveka is deeply intrigued by Naipaul's work.

The questions in this novel are not only if Viveka will demonstrate the courage she needs to be true to herself, but what effect that would have on her family if she does. A complex and deeply moving story.

The edition I read had a few typographical errors ('they' instead of 'the'; heliconia misspelled, that sort of thing) -- my friend who is an editor at Random House tells me these are inevitable. Still, it is a shame to come across them in a novel of such high literary quality.

[S B · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.3 (RD)

[Wendy G · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was really looking forward to my first Shani Mootoo, and I'm sorry to say that I ended up being disappointed in "Valmiki's Daughter." It is the story of Valmiki, an Indo-Trini doctor, who is raising his two daughters in the daily reality of Trini society but with the expectations of their Indian heritage. The daughter of the title, Viveka, is discovering her lesbian and gender-nonconforming identity, which her mother strives to stamp out of her. Valmiki is married and ostesibly heterosexual, however he has dalliances with men and seems to save his deepest passions for them. Mootoo's descriptions of Trinidad are quite lovely, and her treatment of sex is really emotional. The sticky point for me was the ending: so many lesbian stories end up being 'the lesbian chooses to be with a man.' Whether or not this is truly the ending is up for interpretation, but it seems to be yet another story of truncated self-actualization.

[Nairne Holtz · Rating 5 out of 5]

Valmiki’s Daughter addresses the conflict between desire and social conformity felt by members of a wealthy Hindu family living in Trinidad. In one sense, not much happens—university student Viveka sneaks out to play sports against her father’s wishes (for he is concerned she is not sufficiently feminine) and falls in love with a married French woman. But over the course of this slow-paced novel the author reveals an entire society and the complex intersections of race, class, gender and sexuality. Whether the author is describing her protagonist’s childhood fantasy of herself as a white boy, the Krishnu family’s fancy parties, the rough cacophony of San Fernando with street vendors selling double-doubles amidst a din of steel pan and radios tuned to cricket matches, or the lush beauty of a cocoa estate in the forest, Mootoo flawlessly conveys the operation of exterior and interior worlds.

[Badriya · Rating 5 out of 5]

Immediately I started this book I was drawn to it because the descriptions of the settings have many similarities to my hometown Lagos. Though Mootoo exhibited the various cliches and stereotype associated with the difference between generations, the characters are so well rounded that it pinpoints the realities of the situation very realistically. The honesty of this novel both shocked and pleased me. And the descriptions of the sex scenes are so thorough without being vulgar. I really like who the character Trevor turned out to be, and where he appeared in the plot. Even with his minor role he is the perfect conclusion of open mindedness the resolution needed. I still find myself asking what happened to Valmiki's son...