Elizabeth's review
The Mistress of Spices: A Novel
by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
Elizabeth's review
The Mistress of Spices: A Novel by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
Elizabeth's review
rating:
I got this book because I heard Divakaruni do a reading in March (she teaches writing at the University of Houston). She reads beautifully - and when I first started this book, I thought that her prose sounded better read out loud than on the page. In some ways, I had to be sold on this book - it took me a little while to get into it, and I couldn’t shake the feeling that it was a rather inferior version of Isabel Allende’s magical realism. (It’s about a woman named Tilo who runs an Indian foods shop in Oakland and uses her spices to magically treat the problems of her customers). Eventually, though, I got hooked, and read the second half quite rapidly. I actually found the stories of Tilo’s customers more interesting than her own - particularly the destinies of Haroun and Lalita, the latter of which actually moved me to tears. The most interesting aspect of Tilo’s journey, for me, was her relationship to her aged body (which isn’t hers) and its transformations, particularl...more
