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Rosarita
A beautiful, haunting novel that explores memory, grief, and a young woman’s determination to forge her own path.
A young student sits on a bench in a park in San Miguel, Mexico. Bonita is away from her home in India to learn Spanish. She is alone, somewhere she has no connection to. It is bliss.
And then a woman approaches her. The woman claims to recognize Bonita because she is the spitting image of her mother, who made the same journey from India to Mexico as a young artist. No, says Bonita, my mother didn’t paint. She never travelled to Mexico. But this strange woman insists, and so Bonita follows her. Into a story where Bonita and her mother will move apart and come together, and where the past threatens to flood the present, or re-write it.
A young student sits on a bench in a park in San Miguel, Mexico. Bonita is away from her home in India to learn Spanish. She is alone, somewhere she has no connection to. It is bliss.
And then a woman approaches her. The woman claims to recognize Bonita because she is the spitting image of her mother, who made the same journey from India to Mexico as a young artist. No, says Bonita, my mother didn’t paint. She never travelled to Mexico. But this strange woman insists, and so Bonita follows her. Into a story where Bonita and her mother will move apart and come together, and where the past threatens to flood the present, or re-write it.
1 pages, Audio CD
First published July 4, 2024
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About the author
Anita Desai
83 books911 followersAnita Desai was born in 1937. Her published works include adult novels, children's books and short stories. She is a member of the Advisory Board for English of the National Academy of Letters in Delhi and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in London. Anita Mazumdar Desai is an Indian novelist and Emeritus John E. Burchard Professor of Humanities at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She has been shortlisted for the Booker prize three times. Her daughter, the author Kiran Desai, is the winner of the 2006 Booker prize.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 751 reviews
May 15, 2025
if you want me to read a book just make it a short one with a beautiful cover.
the writing was very descriptive and visual, which i enjoyed, because again this book is very short. it's not something i would have been able to bear in a longer book, but it worked here.
unfortunately, not much else did. this was a fairly plotless book (which i usually like), but it was combined with these over-the-top and almost garish dramatic scenes that didn't mesh with what was otherwise pretty and slow-moving.
that mismatch made what would have otherwise worked for me — lightly sketched characters and story taking a backseat to theme — fall flat.
bottom line: but that cover though!
(thanks to the publisher for the copy)
the writing was very descriptive and visual, which i enjoyed, because again this book is very short. it's not something i would have been able to bear in a longer book, but it worked here.
unfortunately, not much else did. this was a fairly plotless book (which i usually like), but it was combined with these over-the-top and almost garish dramatic scenes that didn't mesh with what was otherwise pretty and slow-moving.
that mismatch made what would have otherwise worked for me — lightly sketched characters and story taking a backseat to theme — fall flat.
bottom line: but that cover though!
(thanks to the publisher for the copy)
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February 27, 2025
‘This is not a place you might encounter a ghost. Did you expect to, want to?’
The elusivity of memory and shadowy strands of the past and thwarted aspirations swirl like smoke through the poetic pages of Anita Desai’s Rosarita. Two decades since her previous novel, The Zigzag Way, Desai returns with a kaleidoscopic work pared down to succinct surreality and prose so perfectly polished you’d swear it refracts light. Written in 2nd person to pull the reader further into the spiraling mysteries and confusion, Rosarita follows Bonita, a young student from India studying in Mexico, as an encounter with an older woman presents a shocking tale of her mother’s past. Though she can hardly believe it had been hushed into obscurity, Bonita fumbles through a series of journeys to determine if her mother may have once been an artist living abroad of if the old woman’s head is ‘a teeming pit of fantasies.’ Is this a new revelation or has she been tricked into a ‘charmed moment embroidered by recollection’? Still, shadows of the past haunt the present as the novella takes on wings of a fabelistic quality where the search may unearth more than a few examinations of the past and Desai’s Rosarita delivers a compact and compelling tale of memory, family dynamics, and the struggles of women in pursuit of their own dreams under patriarchal demands.
‘How could it be possible to live parallel lives with no apparent connection?’
Desai’s approach in Rosarita rather brilliantly straddles both poetic clarity and slippery surrealist confusion, conjuring gothic undertones despite residing almost entirely in stark realism. There were wisps that recalled some of my favorite artists associated with the movement of surrealism in Mexico, such as Remedios Varo or Leonora Carrington. Desai, however, was inspired by the art of Satish Gujral who studied with Diego Rivera and other Mexican muralists and drew an artistic connection between violence of the partition of India in 1947 and the Mexican Revolution in 1910. Bonita imagines an event that would have led her mother to Mexico featuring an art lecture comparing the two events. Images of trains oozing blood and other horrors create such an effect she flees the exhibit.
Desai herself has spent plenty of time in Mexico. Having moved from India to the United States in 1980s to teach at M.I.T., she found the winters too harsh for her tastes and began to winter in the Mexican city Oaxaca. ‘Getting to know Mexico opened up another world for me, another life,’ Desai told the New York Times, ‘It’s strange because it’s so like India, I feel utterly at home there. And yet there’s something about Mexico that’s surrealistic rather than realistic.’ This effect certainly shines through here.
From The Aztec World, a mural by Diego Rivera
‘You will see her as she had never shown herself and you had never seen.’
The aspects on the elusivity of the past in Rosarita move as circuitously through the narrative as Bonita does the streets of Mexico. There is an aspect that reminded me much of French Nobel Laureate Patrick Modiano yet Desai’s is uniquely her own as it points towards examinations of women’s lives under cold, controlling men. Recalling both her mother and grandmother’s quiet resignation to domestic duties, she begins to understand how a life of art could have been swallowed up into her ‘unwilling martyrdom’ under a husband who would not approve of a wife with artistic aspirations. Especially one who’s past is never discussed leading Bonita to consider being an artist was another element that granted an ‘unsuitability as a wife’ that made her parents all the more a curious match.
The only evidence, however, of this potential artist life resides in the insistence of the strange old woman (first termed The Stranger and, later, The Trickster) island a yellowing memory of a ‘sketch in wishy-washy pale pastels’ that hung in her room. The painting featured a mother and child that ‘could have been one here in San Miguel,’ but this is mere speculation. The impression in the photo that the mother and child are not looking at each other or even close ‘as if they had no relation to each other, each absorbed in a separate world, and silent’ makes for an excellent impression of her and her own mother’s hardly mentioned connection, now gone totally silent with her mother in the grave.
‘You had resisted her fantastical tale but now find you would like to believe it. Could she, like a wizard or a magician, bring your mother to life again even if it is a life you never knew or suspected?’
Through episodes of meetings, misdirection and even a flight to The Trickster’s ancestral home, Bonita finds the truth constantly slipping through her fingers. Is she on the trail to truth, is the old woman losing her mind or is this ‘all a piece of theatre she has arranged’? Or is this, perhaps, Bonita herself falling into disarray? ‘You realize how far you have been dragged into a fantasy of her life. But is it her fantasy, or yours? Yours or the tricksters?’Desai shirks easy resolution and tidy understanding in favor of a more surreal and introspective look at memory and family history as a concept rather than a mystery to solve. It makes for an excellent atmospheric read with a lightness of touch that may leave some readers wanting something more concrete, yet the effect of its elusivity is heart enough and, coupled with such crystalline prose, makes for a worthwhile read.
3.5/5
The elusivity of memory and shadowy strands of the past and thwarted aspirations swirl like smoke through the poetic pages of Anita Desai’s Rosarita. Two decades since her previous novel, The Zigzag Way, Desai returns with a kaleidoscopic work pared down to succinct surreality and prose so perfectly polished you’d swear it refracts light. Written in 2nd person to pull the reader further into the spiraling mysteries and confusion, Rosarita follows Bonita, a young student from India studying in Mexico, as an encounter with an older woman presents a shocking tale of her mother’s past. Though she can hardly believe it had been hushed into obscurity, Bonita fumbles through a series of journeys to determine if her mother may have once been an artist living abroad of if the old woman’s head is ‘a teeming pit of fantasies.’ Is this a new revelation or has she been tricked into a ‘charmed moment embroidered by recollection’? Still, shadows of the past haunt the present as the novella takes on wings of a fabelistic quality where the search may unearth more than a few examinations of the past and Desai’s Rosarita delivers a compact and compelling tale of memory, family dynamics, and the struggles of women in pursuit of their own dreams under patriarchal demands.
‘How could it be possible to live parallel lives with no apparent connection?’
Desai’s approach in Rosarita rather brilliantly straddles both poetic clarity and slippery surrealist confusion, conjuring gothic undertones despite residing almost entirely in stark realism. There were wisps that recalled some of my favorite artists associated with the movement of surrealism in Mexico, such as Remedios Varo or Leonora Carrington. Desai, however, was inspired by the art of Satish Gujral who studied with Diego Rivera and other Mexican muralists and drew an artistic connection between violence of the partition of India in 1947 and the Mexican Revolution in 1910. Bonita imagines an event that would have led her mother to Mexico featuring an art lecture comparing the two events. Images of trains oozing blood and other horrors create such an effect she flees the exhibit.
‘At their feet corpses left for vultures to gorge on. Wounds, mutilations thrust in the faces of those who survive to declare: this is Man, intrinsically, this is his history: look!’
Desai herself has spent plenty of time in Mexico. Having moved from India to the United States in 1980s to teach at M.I.T., she found the winters too harsh for her tastes and began to winter in the Mexican city Oaxaca. ‘Getting to know Mexico opened up another world for me, another life,’ Desai told the New York Times, ‘It’s strange because it’s so like India, I feel utterly at home there. And yet there’s something about Mexico that’s surrealistic rather than realistic.’ This effect certainly shines through here.
From The Aztec World, a mural by Diego Rivera
‘You will see her as she had never shown herself and you had never seen.’
The aspects on the elusivity of the past in Rosarita move as circuitously through the narrative as Bonita does the streets of Mexico. There is an aspect that reminded me much of French Nobel Laureate Patrick Modiano yet Desai’s is uniquely her own as it points towards examinations of women’s lives under cold, controlling men. Recalling both her mother and grandmother’s quiet resignation to domestic duties, she begins to understand how a life of art could have been swallowed up into her ‘unwilling martyrdom’ under a husband who would not approve of a wife with artistic aspirations. Especially one who’s past is never discussed leading Bonita to consider being an artist was another element that granted an ‘unsuitability as a wife’ that made her parents all the more a curious match.
The only evidence, however, of this potential artist life resides in the insistence of the strange old woman (first termed The Stranger and, later, The Trickster) island a yellowing memory of a ‘sketch in wishy-washy pale pastels’ that hung in her room. The painting featured a mother and child that ‘could have been one here in San Miguel,’ but this is mere speculation. The impression in the photo that the mother and child are not looking at each other or even close ‘as if they had no relation to each other, each absorbed in a separate world, and silent’ makes for an excellent impression of her and her own mother’s hardly mentioned connection, now gone totally silent with her mother in the grave.
‘You had resisted her fantastical tale but now find you would like to believe it. Could she, like a wizard or a magician, bring your mother to life again even if it is a life you never knew or suspected?’
Through episodes of meetings, misdirection and even a flight to The Trickster’s ancestral home, Bonita finds the truth constantly slipping through her fingers. Is she on the trail to truth, is the old woman losing her mind or is this ‘all a piece of theatre she has arranged’? Or is this, perhaps, Bonita herself falling into disarray? ‘You realize how far you have been dragged into a fantasy of her life. But is it her fantasy, or yours? Yours or the tricksters?’Desai shirks easy resolution and tidy understanding in favor of a more surreal and introspective look at memory and family history as a concept rather than a mystery to solve. It makes for an excellent atmospheric read with a lightness of touch that may leave some readers wanting something more concrete, yet the effect of its elusivity is heart enough and, coupled with such crystalline prose, makes for a worthwhile read.
3.5/5
May 13, 2025
Tremendous? Or crazy? Based on mistaken identity, surely. Your mother never lived in San Miguel, never even visited Mexico. You know that – the absurdity of such a suggestion! You could tell this woman a thing or two about her. But she insists she knows otherwise. Over the little metal table with its paper-napkin holder and posy of dried and dyed country flowers and tall glasses of iced coffee, she insists while you resist.
In Rosarita, which seems to be the Spanish equivalent of Sarita, sees an Indian woman in Mexico wonder about who her mother was apart from her marriage and motherhood after a chance comment from a random stranger stating Sarita spent some time painting in Mexico. Bonita is in Mexico for a language course, but soon can't stop thinking about her mother and if she did indeed have a past she didn't talk about.
The book is beautifully written, the narration is in an interesting use of second person present tense, which not only compels the reader to put themselves in Bonita's position, but also imposes a sense of urgency on the events. The narrative has a heightened sense of the subject's current feelings and increased attention to the environment, showing perhaps that Bonita does not want to inspect her own motivations and whatever life is waiting for her back in India.
Though the book explores Bonita's emotional response to the possibility of her mother walking the same path several years ago and raises several questions about her family, we don't see much growth and introspection in Bonita, i.e no answers to these questions - a metaphor for her relationship with her mother who passed away a few years ago. I would have sppreciated a bit from Bonita's perspective on her own life to explain her response to her mother's life. On the whole, a poignant look at freedom for women at the time of the Indian independence and India-Pakistan partition.
Such incidents revealed her unsuitability as a wife. Father’s family had established order; out of what disorder had she arrived?
🌟🌟🌟🌟1/4
[One star for the premise and the whole book; One star for the writing; 3/4 star for the story progression; 3/4 star for the world-building and description; 3/4 star for the characters and their growth - 4 1/4 stars in total.]
In Rosarita, which seems to be the Spanish equivalent of Sarita, sees an Indian woman in Mexico wonder about who her mother was apart from her marriage and motherhood after a chance comment from a random stranger stating Sarita spent some time painting in Mexico. Bonita is in Mexico for a language course, but soon can't stop thinking about her mother and if she did indeed have a past she didn't talk about.
The book is beautifully written, the narration is in an interesting use of second person present tense, which not only compels the reader to put themselves in Bonita's position, but also imposes a sense of urgency on the events. The narrative has a heightened sense of the subject's current feelings and increased attention to the environment, showing perhaps that Bonita does not want to inspect her own motivations and whatever life is waiting for her back in India.
Though the book explores Bonita's emotional response to the possibility of her mother walking the same path several years ago and raises several questions about her family, we don't see much growth and introspection in Bonita, i.e no answers to these questions - a metaphor for her relationship with her mother who passed away a few years ago. I would have sppreciated a bit from Bonita's perspective on her own life to explain her response to her mother's life. On the whole, a poignant look at freedom for women at the time of the Indian independence and India-Pakistan partition.
Such incidents revealed her unsuitability as a wife. Father’s family had established order; out of what disorder had she arrived?
🌟🌟🌟🌟1/4
[One star for the premise and the whole book; One star for the writing; 3/4 star for the story progression; 3/4 star for the world-building and description; 3/4 star for the characters and their growth - 4 1/4 stars in total.]
July 17, 2024
This book is the opposite of effortless. It's written with flourish, decoration of sorts. It feels the writer is showing off her way with words. The characters are thinly sketched. The idea of this story is powerful. Knowing a parent or making an effort to know them beyond the pigeonholes we see them through is alluring. But the treatment is too stretched. You are not invested in the characters. There's too much happening in the 96 odd pages. This could have been a meditative story. A murmur, a whisper, eloquent and deep. But here it is loud and shrill.
Bonita didn't know she was in Spain chasing a shadow. Rosarita remained a mystery, or not. Stranger turned trickster turned manic is a strong pillar of the story but you see her in flaky, shadowy light. It's ok if things don't add up. You are not necessarily looking at nice tidyings. The scatter is acceptable. Trouble is you are not motivated enough to thread it through.
You dive in with a lot of expectations. And I think that is where you go wrong. You are looking for Anita Desai. You find her in effusive, ornamental words, expansive imagery. You look for fine filigree. What you find is solid glitter. You could do with less adjectives and adverbs (in this review too). You were looking for soul, you found a carcass.
Bonita didn't know she was in Spain chasing a shadow. Rosarita remained a mystery, or not. Stranger turned trickster turned manic is a strong pillar of the story but you see her in flaky, shadowy light. It's ok if things don't add up. You are not necessarily looking at nice tidyings. The scatter is acceptable. Trouble is you are not motivated enough to thread it through.
You dive in with a lot of expectations. And I think that is where you go wrong. You are looking for Anita Desai. You find her in effusive, ornamental words, expansive imagery. You look for fine filigree. What you find is solid glitter. You could do with less adjectives and adverbs (in this review too). You were looking for soul, you found a carcass.
February 13, 2025
Memories of the past can float by on gossamer wings.Visions of our ancestors and our history sift through the mind in a kaleidoscopic haze of remembrance.In “Rosarita,” Anita Desai explores the veils of memory and truth to construct a mysterious search for the past.
The search begins when Bonita is enjoying the morning sun in a garden in San Miguel.She has traveled to this Mexican town from India in order to study Spanish.During her stroll, she is approached by a flamboyantly attired woman who claims to have known Bonita’s mother. The stranger, Vicky, reminisces that Bonita’s mother, Rosarita, came to Mexico to study and develop her artistic talents.Bonita has no recollection or knowledge of this phase of her mother’s life and doubts the reliability of the older woman. However, upon encountering the stranger several times, Bonita finds that doubt is eroding her certainty. She remembers a painting on the wall of her bedroom with no signature. She recalls her mother’s prolonged, unexplained absence from the marital home.Might the stranger hold pieces of her mother’s past that have been unknown to Bonita?
The allure of unlocking the past mysteries gradually insinuates itself in Bonita’s mind, launching a search for self discovery and connection to her roots. There is a spectral, fable like tone to this search, which is delivered in Bonita’s second person voice interspersed with Vicky’s third person narrative.The alternating cadences create a disturbing rhythm that unfolds a chimeric world of fleeting images and uncertainty.Shrouds of the past present themselves and recede, leaving an aura of unease and apprehension.
In this way, the novel explores memory, identity and aspirations. During Bonita’s encounters with Vicky, moments of possibilities flit by and then disappear in an unreliable shroud.Both Bonita and the reader are left gazing at a fable in sepia tones with no resolution as it floats away. We wonder how much are you able to trust memories while pondering how much of Rosarita’s past has truly been revealed. 4.5 stars
The search begins when Bonita is enjoying the morning sun in a garden in San Miguel.She has traveled to this Mexican town from India in order to study Spanish.During her stroll, she is approached by a flamboyantly attired woman who claims to have known Bonita’s mother. The stranger, Vicky, reminisces that Bonita’s mother, Rosarita, came to Mexico to study and develop her artistic talents.Bonita has no recollection or knowledge of this phase of her mother’s life and doubts the reliability of the older woman. However, upon encountering the stranger several times, Bonita finds that doubt is eroding her certainty. She remembers a painting on the wall of her bedroom with no signature. She recalls her mother’s prolonged, unexplained absence from the marital home.Might the stranger hold pieces of her mother’s past that have been unknown to Bonita?
The allure of unlocking the past mysteries gradually insinuates itself in Bonita’s mind, launching a search for self discovery and connection to her roots. There is a spectral, fable like tone to this search, which is delivered in Bonita’s second person voice interspersed with Vicky’s third person narrative.The alternating cadences create a disturbing rhythm that unfolds a chimeric world of fleeting images and uncertainty.Shrouds of the past present themselves and recede, leaving an aura of unease and apprehension.
In this way, the novel explores memory, identity and aspirations. During Bonita’s encounters with Vicky, moments of possibilities flit by and then disappear in an unreliable shroud.Both Bonita and the reader are left gazing at a fable in sepia tones with no resolution as it floats away. We wonder how much are you able to trust memories while pondering how much of Rosarita’s past has truly been revealed. 4.5 stars
July 13, 2024
I will always be amazed by how masterfully certain writers can capture the essence of the story in just a hundred pages. Anita Desai’s Rosarita ends before you can have your fill of the story, leaving you wanting more. But mostly, it leaves you with the ever important question of whether we truly ever know our mothers.
Our protagonist is a young Indian woman named Bonita who visits San Miguel to study Spanish. It is there, on one of the park benches that she meets an eccentric character, a woman who claims to be her mother’s friend. Bonita is instantly defensive because it’s an unthinkable thing for her mother to have traveled so far without anyone ever knowing about the journey. Her quiet, helpless mother who always lived under the presence of her ruthless and authoritarian father. How was it that she had had a secret life, one that sounded so vibrant and carefree like this stranger has described?
And thus Bonita sets off retracing her mother’s steps, both hopefully and apprehensively. She visits the places her mother once stepped on, takes in the views that she must have soaked in and meets people whom she must have acquainted herself with. This journey is both exciting and at times, a bit sad. Bonita is often overcome by indignation by her mother’s act of keeping her family in the shadows, about this enticing part of her life.
And she doesn’t know what to make of the woman who accompanies her. This woman with fiery eyes and colourful skirts, her eyes rimmed with kohl the colour of midnight. She makes gestures that are grand and at times theatrical. She is later termed as the Trickster by Bonita. A name that quite literally describes her personality.
Rosarita is about a mother’s daughter, a tale that both brings them together but also marks a line between the two. Much like how the waves come crashing against the shore, we see two women, one present and the other in spirit closing the gap between them.
I dare say that Rosarita is Anita Desai’s best work yet.
Thank you for giving me the opportunity to read this brilliant story @panmacmillanindia ✨
Our protagonist is a young Indian woman named Bonita who visits San Miguel to study Spanish. It is there, on one of the park benches that she meets an eccentric character, a woman who claims to be her mother’s friend. Bonita is instantly defensive because it’s an unthinkable thing for her mother to have traveled so far without anyone ever knowing about the journey. Her quiet, helpless mother who always lived under the presence of her ruthless and authoritarian father. How was it that she had had a secret life, one that sounded so vibrant and carefree like this stranger has described?
And thus Bonita sets off retracing her mother’s steps, both hopefully and apprehensively. She visits the places her mother once stepped on, takes in the views that she must have soaked in and meets people whom she must have acquainted herself with. This journey is both exciting and at times, a bit sad. Bonita is often overcome by indignation by her mother’s act of keeping her family in the shadows, about this enticing part of her life.
And she doesn’t know what to make of the woman who accompanies her. This woman with fiery eyes and colourful skirts, her eyes rimmed with kohl the colour of midnight. She makes gestures that are grand and at times theatrical. She is later termed as the Trickster by Bonita. A name that quite literally describes her personality.
Rosarita is about a mother’s daughter, a tale that both brings them together but also marks a line between the two. Much like how the waves come crashing against the shore, we see two women, one present and the other in spirit closing the gap between them.
I dare say that Rosarita is Anita Desai’s best work yet.
Thank you for giving me the opportunity to read this brilliant story @panmacmillanindia ✨
April 4, 2025
Anita Desai is a former Booker Prize winner who I have never had the pleasure of reading before. Wanting to expand my horizons, I have been reading short stories and novellas by award winning writers over the last few months to get a feel for their writing. Rosarita is the story of linguistics lover Bonita who has gone to Mexico to study Spanish in San Miguel de Allende only to discover that her mother supposedly studied art in the same town before it became a tourist haven. The writing is exquisite. Readers note that it is full of magical realism; however, I only noticed one instance as Bonita attempts to track her mother’s movements. While short in scope, I could get a feel that Desai is one of the world’s gifted writers. I look forward to further exploring her body of work.
3.5 stars
3.5 stars
January 19, 2025
Poets and lovers of poetry will love this story for its stunningly crafted prose. The writing is never flowery or purple--just precise and with such attention to word choice that even the sensation of the sentences feels rhythmic. The plot line is fun, but what I enjoy about this piece the most is the beautiful, highly crafted writing itself.
May 30, 2025
3.5 maybe. Really interesting examination of myth, motherhood, diaspora, and what we think we know of family in rly short space
January 1, 2025
The writing style is impressive, imaginative and beautiful without using flowery words. I rarely had to pick up a dictionary while reading (maybe my English is getting better). Just for that it deserves three stars—I wanna eat the words
Otherwise? The story was fine. Good but not exactly what I'd expected. It's still fairly short though, so I don't mind
Otherwise? The story was fine. Good but not exactly what I'd expected. It's still fairly short though, so I don't mind
May 15, 2024
3.5 idk it was beautiful scenes but i think somethin deffo went over my head
January 21, 2026
There she sits, in the jardín before the pink Parroquia de San Miguel Arcángel, in San Miguel, Mexico, when Bonita is confronted with her mother's past. Consumed by grief and guilt, she seems to be in the midst of restorative travel, yet everywhere she turns, she sees traces of her mother. Her grieving takes her to La Manzanilla, a charming fishing village on the Pacific Ocean, to a little bungalow where she comes to terms with losing a mother she never truly knew.
Everywhere you go, you glimpse out of the corner of your eye that unmistakable figure emerging from the stones and the shadows into the dazzling light of day like a mirage created by it but also easily dispelled by it.
The imagery in this spectral story is so luminescent because of the descriptive narrative. There you are, reading in your home, and yet you are right there, next to the sea, or in the Parque Juárez en Veracruz, or at the ruins of what was once an artist residency. You did not know that a second person point of view and present tense narration could work so cohesively with this sedate style of storytelling, but as is expected of Desai, this is a bewitching narrative. As a short story would, this does not leave the answers one would expect and yet it ends well, for it seems to deliver emotional closure for a daughter who empathizes with the sacrifices her mother made so that she, the daughter, could have freedom and choices. It is also so structurally and stylistically different that it is easy to either like or dislike it at first read.
On a broader note, this is a story about how we grieve and how we remember. It is loneliness and uncertainty encapsulated. It is about how we bear the guilt that comes with loss when we consider all the things we could have done with our loved ones, and when we consider the private part of their lives we did not share.
Everywhere you go, you glimpse out of the corner of your eye that unmistakable figure emerging from the stones and the shadows into the dazzling light of day like a mirage created by it but also easily dispelled by it.
The imagery in this spectral story is so luminescent because of the descriptive narrative. There you are, reading in your home, and yet you are right there, next to the sea, or in the Parque Juárez en Veracruz, or at the ruins of what was once an artist residency. You did not know that a second person point of view and present tense narration could work so cohesively with this sedate style of storytelling, but as is expected of Desai, this is a bewitching narrative. As a short story would, this does not leave the answers one would expect and yet it ends well, for it seems to deliver emotional closure for a daughter who empathizes with the sacrifices her mother made so that she, the daughter, could have freedom and choices. It is also so structurally and stylistically different that it is easy to either like or dislike it at first read.
On a broader note, this is a story about how we grieve and how we remember. It is loneliness and uncertainty encapsulated. It is about how we bear the guilt that comes with loss when we consider all the things we could have done with our loved ones, and when we consider the private part of their lives we did not share.
June 19, 2024
A novella about a young Indian woman on holiday in Mexico, meeting an older woman, who claims to have known the former's mother many years ago, meeting her when she was travelling alone in Mexico to learn to paint. The young woman is torn between disbelief (as the older woman's story contrasts with her own knowledge of her mother) and a sense that there might be something to the woman's story after all.
The best things about the book are the concept and the brevity. Otherwise, the writing is confusing and obscure, the story jumps around between periods as well as fiction and reality, and can't seem to really capture the reader's attention. My main issue is that I'm not sure what I read, why I read it, and what it was about. A long time has passed since I felt intimidated by books that I failed to understand. Now I just find them pretentious.
My thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for providing me with an early copy of this book in return for an honest review.
The best things about the book are the concept and the brevity. Otherwise, the writing is confusing and obscure, the story jumps around between periods as well as fiction and reality, and can't seem to really capture the reader's attention. My main issue is that I'm not sure what I read, why I read it, and what it was about. A long time has passed since I felt intimidated by books that I failed to understand. Now I just find them pretentious.
My thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for providing me with an early copy of this book in return for an honest review.
July 10, 2024
4.25 Stars -
what a quiet little melancholy book brimming with grief and sadness. all of it wrapped in beautiful (albeit a bit dense) writing. goes to show why anita desai is a name which is taken with reverence in the world of literature.
spanning themes like grief, memory and isolation this book tells a tale deeper than the words. it explores the lengths we go to get escape our life and what happens when we can’t go further. bonita (the main character) and her emotional felt tangible and they were heavy. but anita desai paints with her words in the most exquisite way.
the writing is atmospheric, takes you on a journey across mexico and india across times in past and present and paints a beautiful imagery with sadness in every understroke. the story is written in a second person perspective which is a first for me but after getting settled was quite refreshing to read. it really put me in the main characters head and made the book feel a lot impactful.
being a short book, this book definitely took me on an emotional ride which i enjoyed a lot.
what a quiet little melancholy book brimming with grief and sadness. all of it wrapped in beautiful (albeit a bit dense) writing. goes to show why anita desai is a name which is taken with reverence in the world of literature.
spanning themes like grief, memory and isolation this book tells a tale deeper than the words. it explores the lengths we go to get escape our life and what happens when we can’t go further. bonita (the main character) and her emotional felt tangible and they were heavy. but anita desai paints with her words in the most exquisite way.
the writing is atmospheric, takes you on a journey across mexico and india across times in past and present and paints a beautiful imagery with sadness in every understroke. the story is written in a second person perspective which is a first for me but after getting settled was quite refreshing to read. it really put me in the main characters head and made the book feel a lot impactful.
being a short book, this book definitely took me on an emotional ride which i enjoyed a lot.
April 18, 2025
Rosarita is about a young Indian scholar who travels from her family’s home in India to Mexico to study the Spanish language. Once there she succumbs to temptation to follow the rumors of her mother’s journey to Mexico as she once pursued a goal of being an artist.
This is a beautifully written second-person narrative that vividly describes Mexico as seen through Bonita’s eyes. However while the narrative was descriptive, the plot was slow and almost gray in comparison. I wasn’t always clear on what was happening as the narrator rambled on at points, and I honestly wasn’t really invested. But as I already stated, the descriptions of places and people cannot be overstated so I felt 3/5 was deserved.
This is a beautifully written second-person narrative that vividly describes Mexico as seen through Bonita’s eyes. However while the narrative was descriptive, the plot was slow and almost gray in comparison. I wasn’t always clear on what was happening as the narrator rambled on at points, and I honestly wasn’t really invested. But as I already stated, the descriptions of places and people cannot be overstated so I felt 3/5 was deserved.
August 24, 2025
You can always expect the wonderful Anita Desai to take you on an emotional rollercoaster ride with her colourful and vibrant words. In this one, she took us through three journeys - a geographical, an emotional and a historical one.
Always, the author captures the rigid structures that makes an Indian woman. In this, we have a daughter searching her own memories of her mother and trying to reconcile it with the one from tales told by the enigmatic stranger.
The 1947 is a memory but an ever present one. A scar that will not heal. Desai uses this scar to draw two distinct women. The one who bore the direct cut and the family it affected.
Altogether, this novella is light in pages but heavy with words.
Always, the author captures the rigid structures that makes an Indian woman. In this, we have a daughter searching her own memories of her mother and trying to reconcile it with the one from tales told by the enigmatic stranger.
The 1947 is a memory but an ever present one. A scar that will not heal. Desai uses this scar to draw two distinct women. The one who bore the direct cut and the family it affected.
Altogether, this novella is light in pages but heavy with words.
April 20, 2025
Different (or maybe, unique), exquisitely crafted, a nice little (no more than novella length) experience (or distraction), and (for me) a gratifying introduction to a new author.
An immersive, atmospheric meditation of sorts (maybe little more than a dream), a pleasant experience easily consumed in a single sitting, a compelling and engaging journey (although, frankly, more of a detour), a gauzy recollection of a stranger in a strange land of sorts.
Trends aside ... and I concede that the (American, and more specifically, indie bookstore) market appears to be evolving and expanding ... through an excellent NYC independent bookseller, I've been introduced to a number of (popular and prolific) non-American and non-English writers (or, probably more accurately, literary craftsmen ... or, should I say, masters of their craft. Interestingly, many of these appear to be comfortable with a far more compact form (which, admittedly, makes experimentation less daunting).
Sheepish disclaimer: Enough folks categorized or shelved this as magical realism that I succumbed and included this under the ever-diverse and expanding umbrella of sci-fi and fantasy. Obviously, there's no right or wrong answer here, and folks can draw their own lines, but it does seem to me that, increasingly, anything (particularly literary fiction) that features ghosts or specters (or spectres) is being treated as nonconventional (and thus the shelving), even though I don't think that used to be the case.
An immersive, atmospheric meditation of sorts (maybe little more than a dream), a pleasant experience easily consumed in a single sitting, a compelling and engaging journey (although, frankly, more of a detour), a gauzy recollection of a stranger in a strange land of sorts.
Trends aside ... and I concede that the (American, and more specifically, indie bookstore) market appears to be evolving and expanding ... through an excellent NYC independent bookseller, I've been introduced to a number of (popular and prolific) non-American and non-English writers (or, probably more accurately, literary craftsmen ... or, should I say, masters of their craft. Interestingly, many of these appear to be comfortable with a far more compact form (which, admittedly, makes experimentation less daunting).
Sheepish disclaimer: Enough folks categorized or shelved this as magical realism that I succumbed and included this under the ever-diverse and expanding umbrella of sci-fi and fantasy. Obviously, there's no right or wrong answer here, and folks can draw their own lines, but it does seem to me that, increasingly, anything (particularly literary fiction) that features ghosts or specters (or spectres) is being treated as nonconventional (and thus the shelving), even though I don't think that used to be the case.
August 29, 2025
Bonita is a young woman from India who is studying Spanish in San Miguel, Mexico. She encounters an older woman who claims to have known her (now deceased) mother. This stranger insists that Bonita's mother, whom the woman calls "Rosarita,” was once an artist who lived in Mexico. Bonita is intrigued but skeptical. She follows this mysterious woman from San Miguel to Colima to La Manzanilla to try to figure out whether this woman truly knew her mother or if she is staging an elaborate deception. The novella explores themes of artistic expression, memory, identity, familial trauma, and cultural displacement, which is quite an achievement for such a short work (112 pages). It will appeal to those who enjoy stories of life’s journeys and appreciate ambiguous endings.
September 14, 2025
Romanzo breve, forse troppo - una novantina di pagine - con una trama bizzarra che ruota intorno a una figlia che si interroga su quanto sappia veramente del passato della madre. Bonita, dall'India é giunta in Messico nella cittadina di San Miguel per studiare i legami artistici tra i murales della rivoluzione messicana e quelli relativi alla partizione dell'India con il Pakistan. Un incontro casuale su una panchina scatena una serie di domande. Bonita viene scambiata da una anziana signora, vestita in modo molto folcloristico, per la figlia di Rosarita conosciuta in gioventù. Rosarita dipingeva, era allieva di un maestro, aveva vissuto in una comune di artisti, una vita libera interrotta bruscamente per tornare in patria. È l'inizio di un percorso sulle tracce di un passato lusinghiero e appassionato ma chiaramente falso: la famiglia di Bonita era ricca, tradizionale, con gli uomini che pensano agli affari e le donne alla casa e ai figli, la madre una profuga dal Pakistan, considerata a lungo una moglie inadeguata. La vecchia si rivela presto un'imbrogliona affetta da una innocua follia, eppure Bonita continua scegliendo di credere che ci sia un fondo di verità in un viaggio che diventa una ricerca di sé stessi per arrivare "il più lontano possibile dove dici a te stessa che oltre non puoi andare" . Anita Desai racconta con una scrittura elegante e impeccabile un percorso di liberazione interiore in un Messico caldo e "paradisiaco" con un finale forse un po' troppo new age ma che non stona. Un piccolo romanzo al femminile che merita di essere letto. Tre stelle e mezza.
December 12, 2024
it’s obvious that Desai is an insanely talented writer, I loved her descriptions and overall prose. however for such an interesting summary, the book itself sadly didn’t quite meet my expectations. it’s a less than 100 pages novella but I kept wishing it was longer so it could be more fleshed out, I feel like some of it went over my head but I definitely want to read a full novel from her now.
June 17, 2024
Stunning, profound and incredibly beautiful. Also a masterclass in second-person narrative style.
November 15, 2025
A Quiet, Poetic Story That Sometimes Feels Too Still
Rosarita is a slow, reflective exploration of a young Goan Catholic girl trapped between tradition and desire. Anita Desai’s strength lies in the lyrical atmosphere she builds — the rosaries, the lace veils, the hush of religious rituals, and the silent pressure of generations of women. Rosarita’s inner world is beautifully drawn, filled with guilt, longing, fear, and a constant struggle to understand herself within her rigid family.
The arrival of Peter brings a spark of life to the narrative, offering Rosarita the possibility of freedom and emotional connection. Her conflict between faith, family duty, and personal happiness forms the core of the story. The themes of generational expectations, religious suffocation, and unspoken rebellion are powerful and deeply human.
However, the book’s pace is extremely slow, and the emotional tone often remains so subdued that some moments lose impact. Rosarita’s inner turmoil is vivid, but the plot moves quietly, almost too quietly at times, making the story feel static. Readers looking for stronger narrative movement may find themselves drifting.
Still, Rosarita succeeds as a subtle, atmospheric character study. It doesn’t shout — it murmurs. And while that makes it memorable in its own gentle way, it also limits how strongly it lands.
A thoughtful, delicate read — but one that may leave some readers wanting more.
Rosarita is a slow, reflective exploration of a young Goan Catholic girl trapped between tradition and desire. Anita Desai’s strength lies in the lyrical atmosphere she builds — the rosaries, the lace veils, the hush of religious rituals, and the silent pressure of generations of women. Rosarita’s inner world is beautifully drawn, filled with guilt, longing, fear, and a constant struggle to understand herself within her rigid family.
The arrival of Peter brings a spark of life to the narrative, offering Rosarita the possibility of freedom and emotional connection. Her conflict between faith, family duty, and personal happiness forms the core of the story. The themes of generational expectations, religious suffocation, and unspoken rebellion are powerful and deeply human.
However, the book’s pace is extremely slow, and the emotional tone often remains so subdued that some moments lose impact. Rosarita’s inner turmoil is vivid, but the plot moves quietly, almost too quietly at times, making the story feel static. Readers looking for stronger narrative movement may find themselves drifting.
Still, Rosarita succeeds as a subtle, atmospheric character study. It doesn’t shout — it murmurs. And while that makes it memorable in its own gentle way, it also limits how strongly it lands.
A thoughtful, delicate read — but one that may leave some readers wanting more.
May 3, 2024
This was beautifully written, truly the words were a joy to read. The story is an important one that must be remembered in history, however I found it quite indigestible in this manner. The pov was clunky and strange to read at times - it took me out of the story rather than planting me in it.
It is clearly written poetically, though the story lacked context and crucial backgrounds for me; meaning I wasn’t overly enthralled by the characters.
It is clearly written poetically, though the story lacked context and crucial backgrounds for me; meaning I wasn’t overly enthralled by the characters.
March 30, 2025
A short book but still too many word. The book description as “haunting” is pretentious. While reading this, I was thinking more about the puffery writing style than the meaning of the words. Not as good as it pretends to be. A pretty cover.
June 12, 2025
Imagine sitting alone on a bench in a foreign country you’ve just set foot in… when suddenly, a stranger walks up to you and claims to have known your mother — a mother who, as far as you know, has never been to that place. Intrigued yet?
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Rosarita by Anita Desai begins with this captivating premise and takes off instantly. It’s a fast-paced, second-person narrative set in San Miguel, Mexico, and from the very first page, it pulls you into a quiet storm of memory, mystery, and emotion.
I immensely loved Anita’s writing style. It felt like sitting on a calm beach with a beautiful book in your hands, no one around, just the sound of waves lashing the rocks in a soothing loop. The writing is crisp — urgent when it needs to be, and deeply descriptive when it wants you to pause and soak in the surroundings. Interestingly, whenever Desai slows down to describe nature or architecture, it never feels sluggish — in fact, it draws you in more.
As far as the plot is concerned, it was incredibly interesting, engaging, and even thrilling right from the start. I was genuinely eager to see how it would all end — but, unfortunately, the ending didn’t quite land for me. It felt abrupt, like it crash-landed, leaving behind too many unanswered questions.
The story captures Bonita’s internal conflict as she attempts to piece together fragments of her mother’s past. Was her mother really here? Did she really paint? And if so, why does nothing in this place confirm it?
One thing I especially admired is how Anita Desai subtly introduces the harsh reality of patriarchal constraints in Indian society — how many women are forced to settle for the life offered to them, even when they carry ambitions and desires of their own.
The mysterious stranger who claims to know Bonita’s mother is a whole other drama in herself — brilliantly written, elusive, and constantly keeping you on edge. She gives nothing away about her authenticity, making you question everything she says.
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I'd love to recommend this book more for the Writing style than the Plot itself. It was a lovely experience for me.
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Rosarita by Anita Desai begins with this captivating premise and takes off instantly. It’s a fast-paced, second-person narrative set in San Miguel, Mexico, and from the very first page, it pulls you into a quiet storm of memory, mystery, and emotion.
I immensely loved Anita’s writing style. It felt like sitting on a calm beach with a beautiful book in your hands, no one around, just the sound of waves lashing the rocks in a soothing loop. The writing is crisp — urgent when it needs to be, and deeply descriptive when it wants you to pause and soak in the surroundings. Interestingly, whenever Desai slows down to describe nature or architecture, it never feels sluggish — in fact, it draws you in more.
As far as the plot is concerned, it was incredibly interesting, engaging, and even thrilling right from the start. I was genuinely eager to see how it would all end — but, unfortunately, the ending didn’t quite land for me. It felt abrupt, like it crash-landed, leaving behind too many unanswered questions.
The story captures Bonita’s internal conflict as she attempts to piece together fragments of her mother’s past. Was her mother really here? Did she really paint? And if so, why does nothing in this place confirm it?
One thing I especially admired is how Anita Desai subtly introduces the harsh reality of patriarchal constraints in Indian society — how many women are forced to settle for the life offered to them, even when they carry ambitions and desires of their own.
The mysterious stranger who claims to know Bonita’s mother is a whole other drama in herself — brilliantly written, elusive, and constantly keeping you on edge. She gives nothing away about her authenticity, making you question everything she says.
---
I'd love to recommend this book more for the Writing style than the Plot itself. It was a lovely experience for me.
December 14, 2024
As the author explains in an afterword, Rosarita found its beginnings in artwork produced by two art students from India during their time in Mexico. Inspired by works documenting events during the Mexican Revolution, these students began creating work documenting the extreme violence of the partition of India and Pakistan. That's an interesting place from which to begin a novel, but Rosarita only touches on those artists and their work briefly.
The plot of Rosarita (as opposed to its inspiration) tells the story of an unnamed present-day student from India who is in Mexico to study Spanish. A key part of our student's back story is the relatively recent death of her mother and how little her daughter actually new about her. Our student is approached one day by an elderly woman who claims to have been a friend of her mother and who insists the student's mother studied art in Mexico. However, as far as our student knows, her mother never traveled beyond India and never made art, so she's torn between the possibility of coming to know her mother a bit more and the possibility that the older woman is either delusional or running an elaborate con of some sort.
The novel leaves readers in a state of unknowing, which seems appropriate. What our student doesn't know about her mother and what she doesn't know about herself should remain a mystery to us as well. If you like novellas that make wonderful use of language and don't spell everything out in detail, you'll enjoy Rosarita. If you're a reader who wants extended and certain plotting, you will probably find Rosarita both interesting and frustrating.
I received an electronic review copy of this title from the publisher via NetGalley; the opinions are my own.
The plot of Rosarita (as opposed to its inspiration) tells the story of an unnamed present-day student from India who is in Mexico to study Spanish. A key part of our student's back story is the relatively recent death of her mother and how little her daughter actually new about her. Our student is approached one day by an elderly woman who claims to have been a friend of her mother and who insists the student's mother studied art in Mexico. However, as far as our student knows, her mother never traveled beyond India and never made art, so she's torn between the possibility of coming to know her mother a bit more and the possibility that the older woman is either delusional or running an elaborate con of some sort.
The novel leaves readers in a state of unknowing, which seems appropriate. What our student doesn't know about her mother and what she doesn't know about herself should remain a mystery to us as well. If you like novellas that make wonderful use of language and don't spell everything out in detail, you'll enjoy Rosarita. If you're a reader who wants extended and certain plotting, you will probably find Rosarita both interesting and frustrating.
I received an electronic review copy of this title from the publisher via NetGalley; the opinions are my own.
January 19, 2025
After an alluring first chapter, this kind of went downhill for me. It’s not bad, but certainly not as enlightening as I hoped it would be.
Can we ever really know someone? A young Indian woman is on a bench in Mexico. By chance an elderly woman approaches her, claiming to have known her mother when she was younger. And we go from there, with the younger woman wondering if this older woman is telling the truth. Could her mother have had a completely different life kept hidden?
It’s interesting how once the older woman starts talking, the narrator (the young woman) begins using those tidbits to fill in the gaps of her mother’s disappointments. But could this stranger be influencing and reshaping these memories?
ROSARITA is a beguiling slim little book with wonderful prose. However, I did think it had the potential to offer more, but tapered off instead.
On the strength of Desai’s prose, I will definitely seek out more of her works. So, that’s the good news.
Can we ever really know someone? A young Indian woman is on a bench in Mexico. By chance an elderly woman approaches her, claiming to have known her mother when she was younger. And we go from there, with the younger woman wondering if this older woman is telling the truth. Could her mother have had a completely different life kept hidden?
It’s interesting how once the older woman starts talking, the narrator (the young woman) begins using those tidbits to fill in the gaps of her mother’s disappointments. But could this stranger be influencing and reshaping these memories?
ROSARITA is a beguiling slim little book with wonderful prose. However, I did think it had the potential to offer more, but tapered off instead.
On the strength of Desai’s prose, I will definitely seek out more of her works. So, that’s the good news.
July 20, 2024
3,5
An intriguing little novella about a young Indian language student taking Spanish classes in Mexico. By pure chance, she meets an old woman who claims, unbelievably, to have known her mother. The two women go on to explore the mother's past as an artist, but all the while it remains doubtful whether the old woman is telling the truth.
From the Afterword the story appears to be inspired by the scholarship of Indian artist Satish Gujral and the parallels he drew between India's Partition and the Mexican revolution of the 1910s.
An intriguing little novella about a young Indian language student taking Spanish classes in Mexico. By pure chance, she meets an old woman who claims, unbelievably, to have known her mother. The two women go on to explore the mother's past as an artist, but all the while it remains doubtful whether the old woman is telling the truth.
From the Afterword the story appears to be inspired by the scholarship of Indian artist Satish Gujral and the parallels he drew between India's Partition and the Mexican revolution of the 1910s.
November 25, 2024
A short, atmospheric portrait of a woman discovering a possible hidden chapter in her mother's life. I liked the way Desai shows how a narrative can be created or reconstructed out of the flimsiest, most unreliable evidence, and yet hold an essential truth.
May 24, 2025
Beautiful cover, absolute nonsense
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