Himalayan Dhaba

by Craig Joseph Danner

When Mary Davis, a physician still grieving over her husband, finds an abandoned mission hospital in the Indian Himalayas, she stops to care for a dying baby girl and becomes involved with a British traveler and his kidnapper and an abused young Indian woman. Reader's Guide available. Reprint.

Genres: Fiction, India

320 pages, Paperback

First published April 29, 2001

Reviews

[Beverly]

This was an interesting read. Doctor Mary, after losing her husband, goes to the Indian Himalayas to work at a mission hospital that is pretty much falling apart. She is not a general practitioner but she wants to help and does her best by using medical documents, the barest amount of supplies and her common sense. The additional characters that come to her hospital for treatment make the story. They are an odd bunch...the owner of a local dhaba, a "hippie" tourist and a local drug dealer are just some of them. Sometimes I had a little trouble remembering who was who but I eventually got everyone sorted out and enjoyed seeing how everything ended up.

[Julia]

Read the ARC (advanced reading copy) of this book a long time ago, loved it then. Reread it later and loved it again. A woman volunteers to take her dead husbands place in a tiny village in the Himalayan mountains to feel closer to him after his death. You follow her, and other characters that weave into her story throughout the novel as she learns how hard it is for the poor to live in such an area.

[Loel]

I expected this to be syrupy-inspirational, but was happy to discover it wasn't. Interesting surprising and intersecting plot lines, strong characters, vivid description, humor.

[Carol Harrison]

This is quite a gripping story, though parts of it seem far fetched. Still, it is a page turner as the chapters are short and go back and forth among a few different characters, all of whom are inter-related. My one complaint about the book, which reveals my "grammar police" nature, is the author's consistent use of the phrase "couple ____" without using "of" in between -"couple days", "couple times" etc. And it happens about every 3 or 4 pages, at least. It became a distraction for me, and then I started noticing the frequent use of simile---but really, it is not a bad story. Oh, and the ravens--did they have some deep meaning that I missed or were they just part of the scenery?

[Lisa Visser]

Enough with the ravens already!

[Kathleen McRae]

I liked the story but the writing wasn't that interesting.

[Anil Dhingra]

Did not match up to my expectations. Finished with difficulty.

[Debbie Willer]

Quirky fascinating book.

[Jen]

Boring. It's supposed to be about the intersecting lines of people in the same place at the same time, but it's really one chapter about one person and another about another...even the doctor working on a patient felt like they were miles apart. Small details are descriptive, which is why I picked up the book in the first place: my partner is in the Himalayas this summer (and I can't contact him) so I wanted to feel close to him through books. The details do give me a sense of where he might be, but it's just too boring to slog through any longer. I made it to page 93, though, so I'm done.

[Allison]

This book was on the book discussion shelf at the library, and usually those are pretty solid choices, but I was dissapointed with his book. I found it hard to keep track of the characters, there were multiple, slightly intersecting stories. Towards the end I had a better idea of what was going on, but it was too late.

[Christi]

I thought I'd love this book - a health care worker in India, one of my favorite places in the world - but I was initially deterred by the author's irritating writing style. Then the book became lewd with a lot of foul language and was simply not an uplifting way to spend my time, so I returned it to the library without making it half-way through.

[Glen]

A bit of a slog in places with some winning touches of humor and a welcome if somewhat trite series of mostly happy endings. Some of the medical details were a bit gruesome, and some of the plot resolutions challenged credulity even given the exotic setting. Still, flawed as it is I found it an entertaining read and a story I'd not encountered before.

[Martha]

Still not sure exactly why I didn't really like this book - but it was just not very good. Maybe, if I sat down and read in bigger chunks it would have read better. When I finished the book, I closed it and said "Humm - what was that about and what was the purpose?"

Not one of my wisest choices. I usually am drawn to books about or set in the Himalaya - but not this time.

[Sherryl Wynne]

I would have said that I really liked this book... but I had one difficulty with it. The text has a sort of cadence to it, almost like poetry. And that became very distracting after a while! But the story (stories really - as there were several interwoven), was fascinating!

[Mara]

Good weekend read, not overly moving or inspirational but an interesting introduction to life in a small village in northern India told through the eyes of a diverse handful of people. Mostly sad and disheartening with a few bright spots of hope.

[Gillian Wilson]

This book is a fairly quick read, but I found it engaging. It does not take EXTRA brain power, but it does make a person think and it encourages true empathy for the main character and admiration with regards to her journey.

[Dave]

This was read for a library book club. I thought it was pretty bad, nearly unreadable. Author believes in padding to the extreme and also leaving it to the reader to figure out why he keeps bringing in the ravens. I ended up reading the last sentence of each chapter just to finish the thing.

[Indie]

I liked the remote make do medical parts and the sense of community that eventually permeates the book. Some out there characters with the addict and young entitled Brit. The real charmers are Meena and Amod though.

[Cynthia Paschen]

Interesting novel by husband of Ames native Beth Epstein.

[Dean Martin]

Thank God I live in America. Book allows me to appreciate America's fantastic healthcare system

[Prabhat]

The book shows you the hardships of a doctor who has the most minimal help up in the himalayas and her friend Meena trying to save a drunk British citizen.

[Priyanka]

A light decent read.

[jane]

I was hoping for more adventure!

[Alicia]

Doctor in remote Indian town. Vaguely entertaining, reads like a first novel.