Sister of My Heart: A Novel
by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
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Book Summary Information
Author: Chitra Banerjee DivakaruniEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2000-01-18
ISBN: 038548951X
Number of pages: 322
Publisher: Anchor
Book Reviews of Sister of My Heart: A Novel
Book Review: An inspirational story of two sisters...
Summary: 5 Stars
Set in a world of harsh reality, Anju and Sudha Chaterjee, two women born as cousins who assume the roles of sisters, attempt to brighten their short-lived days with their imaginations. In Calcutta, India, where they live, the Chaterjees are known as an upper caste family, despite the shame of not having a male figure in their house. But even their high status doesn't hide their dwindling wealth and Anju and Sudha's mothers' desperate attempts at changing that. With personalities and minds as different as the sun and moon, Anju, the intelligent one, and Sudha, being beautiful, create stories of princesses, their princes, and hope. Hidden in these intricately twisted tales are their own sorrows of money, family, education and even jealousy. Chitra Divakaruni's purpose of this spellbinding tale is to show how even in the challenging parts of our lives, if we stay with those we love and remain hopeful, the time will pass, and the good times will come. But it is not a promise that there will only be a few hard times in life, because for every yin, there is a yang, meaning that everything is balance, and we are constantly being tested to see how well we can manage in the tricky game called life.
Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni is an award winning author as well as a poet. With the publication of over 50 magazines, including The Atlantic Monthly and The New Yorker, she is a world renowned author. In fact, her books have been rewritten in sixteen different languages, including Hebrew, Russian, Japanese and Dutch. Being torn between two cultures herself, Divakaruni usually writes of the immigrant experiences of Indians when they come to America. Also, all of her main characters are women. She decided to write about women and their encounters in life as they come from conservative India to the land of the free, America. After leaving India, Divakaruni came to America and studied in Berkeley. Here was where she volunteered at a woman's battered home, at which her first interest in the topic of battered women arose. She then started a group organization called Maitri, which led to her first series of books which are stories of women faced with abusive marriages who confront them with new found courage. As time went on, she wrote various stories through different feminine points of view, which led to two of her most acclaimed novels, one of them being Sister of My Heart, which were made into feature films.
Of all the detail put into this novel, Divakaruni has definitely achieved her goal of this story. Its points of conflict, confrontation, betrayal, secrets, and shocking surprises leave the reader gaping at the twists and turn of events. Not only is it an interesting book for pass time, but it is a great explanation of morality and its reasons. It cleverly explains the troughs of life and how everyone has their own way of jumping past them by explaining how two women, close enough to be sisters, change their lives in their own ways, with their own goals and grieves, and their own answers.
Sister of My Heart is a wonderfully written story for anyone to read because it provides life lessons tied together with rarely found culture. It is also a small view in to the large and demanding world of Indian society and its indirect impositions and demands. It also shows a deep link between two women who cannot even be considered sisters, but end up being the two halves of one bond that is tested repeatedly with secrets, lies, passion and love. But finally, Anju and Sudha realize that there is nothing that could possibly break them because, in the end, they are sisters, best friends, and each other.
Summary of Sister of My Heart: A Novel
From the award-winning author of Mistress of Spices, the bestselling novel about the extraordinary bond between two women, and the family secrets and romantic jealousies that threaten to tear them apart.Anju is the daughter of an upper-caste Calcutta family of distinction. Her cousin Sudha is the daughter of the black sheep of that same family. Sudha is startlingly beautiful; Anju is not. Despite those differences, since the day on which the two girls were born, the same day their fathers died--mysteriously and violently--Sudha and Anju have been sisters of the heart. Bonded in ways even their mothers cannot comprehend, the two girls grow into womanhood as if their fates as well as their hearts were merged.
But, when Sudha learns a dark family secret, that connection is shattered. For the first time in their lives, the girls know what it is to feel suspicion and distrust. Urged into arranged marriages, Sudha and Anju's lives take opposite turns. Sudha becomes the dutiful daughter-in-law of a rigid small-town household. Anju goes to America with her new husband and learns to live her own life of secrets. When tragedy strikes each of them, however, they discover that despite distance and marriage, they have only each other to turn to.
Set in the two worlds of San Francisco and India, this exceptionally moving novel tells a story at once familiar and exotic, seducing readers from the first page with the lush prose we have come to expect from Divakaruni. Sister of My Heart is a novel destined to become as widely beloved as it is acclaimed.
Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni made an indelible impression on the literary world with her first novel, The Mistress of Spices, a magical tale of love and herbs. Sister of My Heart is less reliant on enchantment but no less enchanting as it tells the tale of two cousins born on the same day, their premature births brought on by a mysterious occurrence that claims the lives of both their fathers. Sudha is beautiful, Anju is not; yet the girls love each other as sisters, the bond between them so strong it seems nothing can break it. When both are pushed into arranged marriages, however, each discovers a devastating secret that changes their relationship forever.
Sister of My Heart spans many years and zigzags between India and America as the cousins first grow apart and then eventually reunite. Divakaruni invests this domestic drama with poetry as she traces her heroines' lives from infancy to motherhood, but it is Sudha and Anju who give the story its backbone. Anju might speak for both when she says, "In spite of all my insecurities, in spite of the oceans that'll be between us soon and the men that are between us already, I can never stop loving Sudha. It's my habit, and it's my fate." Book lovers may well discover that reading Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni is habit-forming as well. --Margaret Prior
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