They could offer their wines, carefully paired with the cheese and other tasty treats, and the farm would get an epicurean reputation. Her methods of control – frequently likened by Jay to those of a brutal dictator – rely on constant wrong-footing, the capricious dispersal and withholding of favours and rewards, the sudden thump of a punishment, usually undeserved. Suddenly these two strong-willed women from such very different backgrounds, who see life so differently, are alone together in a home that each is determined to run in her own way—a situation that ultimately brings into question the very things in their lives that had seemed perfect and permanent . In one of the beginning chapters, Rachel meets up with a group of wives who are also married to Indian men and are from different countries. Little did I know that I was on the threshold of a rabbithole of a really gripping, well written, perfect-for-quarantine novel!

I keep pouring things into my body to fill it up, to make it full of something that will make me feel less. Savageau retells and re-imagines creation stories, revealing a landscape of trees, ponds, rivers and mountains rich in meaning for Abenaki people, and weaves traditional, personal and family stories, with stories of colonization and resistance. The everyday challenges faced by Rachel, a main character in Leah Franqui’s second novel, Mother Land, may resonate with anyone who has spent considerable time in a new country or even in a new community . In addition to the places where each of these women is struggling to find herself, they are facing a mindset where a woman making her own choices and decisions is regarded as shameful. Franqui has written a beautiful novel featuring nuanced characters struggling to find their way through the landmines of the inevitable culture clashes with surprising, didn’t-see-that-coming moments that carry through to the last page.

Hestia shouted an obscenity at the driver, an older man in a baseball cap, who sat impassively, not looking at her, just tending his idling truck until she was out of the way. From this childhood where one might wear a dress of fall grass, cut ankles on witchgrass, and peer into a refrigerator to delineate a hummingbird from a moth; in the land of mothers, grandmothers, and their later lineal offspring, we come to terms with crossroads and swallows, rivers and oceans, and they lead us back home from which we began—the Motherland. Rachel had been convinced that, 'Dhruv would make her happy, he would make her life something stable, something solid. For example, Swati is unyielding in her view that a proper household needs both a full time cleaner and a cook. Though it could as easily have been named Goat Island, since the islanders used to bring their goats to fatten themselves on the lush grasses that sprouted after the spring rains.

A] tender tale of two women who are lost and alone, but who eventually become allies and each other’s biggest champions. I enjoyed the story and the writing although the character of Rachel seemed a bit immature and whiny and not always likeable. mae'r llyfryddiaeth wedi'i ddiweddaru yn dangos bod 'Our Mother's Land' yn parhau'n llyfr hanfodol ar hanes menywod yng Nghymru.The unusual story of a young Jewish woman moving to India with her husband is turned on its’ head when his mother moves in, unexpectedly and permanently. I liked that Swati and Rachel went on to live independently and remained friends, but this is pretty much the only part of the book I enjoyed. She has an MA in Linguistics from UCLA and an MFA in Creative Writing in Fiction from Rutgers University, Newark. Maybe part of this is because it's grounded in differences in culture so it provides extra depth and dimension by exposing you to the perspective of someone who has lived with different life expectations, ascribed and imposed. Leah Franqui had me in awe for much of the book - her rendering of India, especially Mumbai, was so nuanced and perceptive.

It investigates the mutual and compounding complications of these two shifts in identity while examining legacy, history, ancestry, land, home, and language. It's an ambitious coming-of-age novel from debut author Jo McMillan, which is wonderfully written and filled with quirky details and descriptions . Then he too falls into the obscurity that devours all, and Tenedos melts into darkness as if it had never existed. But as this beautiful dual narrative book so eloquently displays, they are experiencing the same things, just in their own ways.

Thus, Franqui resurrects the age-old struggle between mother-in-law and daughter-in-law—and topples it with a spot-on exploration of what it means to stand up against other people’s expectations. Rachel and Swati’s] credible learning from each other make this a worthy tale of bridging a cultural divide. One can read Mother Land, then, in a state of appalled fascination, the transgression of full-on family hatred licensed, but also safely displaced on to another family.

Sure, now you’re verging on broke and holed up in a mildly entropic corner of Cape Cod (Jay rather than Paul, who pings between Massachusetts and Hawaii when not on farther-flung trips), but this deliberately downbeat assessment of imaginary others’ assessment seems an act of projection and self-protection too far.As my eyes linger on its curves and indentations, something else steps forward to claim the stage – something I have not seen or thought of in many years.