Miss New India

Dear Reader,

Miss New India is my tribute to all women born with an irrepressible longing for self-fulfillment; to gutsy women who want more, much more, than their cautious parents and their decaying hometowns can offer them; to women who believe, above all, in their right to happiness. My protagonist, Anjali Bose, is such a young woman.  Over the last five years, on annual family visits to Bangalore -- an IT hub city, where outsourcing companies offer decent salaries -- I met and became friends with scores of Anjali Boses, living away from home for the first time, thrust into adventures for which they have no role models, experiencing emotions that they cannot yet name, giddy with the thrill of financial independence and the material rewards it can buy them, confronting corrupting temptations that come with a boom-time economy, and sometimes falling prey to them, but always fearlessly improvising rules to live happier lives in a time of seismic social change. As a woman, and a novelist, I am inspired by their failures as well as their successes.

Bharati Mukherjee 

Anjali Bose is "Miss New India." Born into a traditional lower-middle-class family and living in a backwater town with an arranged marriage on the horizon, Anjali's prospects don't look great. But her ambition and fluency in language stir in her a desire to take charge of her own destiny. So she sets off to Bangalore, India's fastest-growing major metropolis, and quickly falls in with an audacious and ambitious crowd of young people, who have learned how to sound American by watching shows like Seinfeld in order to get jobs as call-center service agents, where they are quickly able to out-earn their parents. And it is in this high-tech city where Anjali -- suddenly free from the traditional confines of class, caste, gender, and more -- is able to confront her past and reinvent herself. Of course, the seductive pull of modernity does not come without a dark side.

"Enchanting! Mukherjee's pitch-perfect ear for character and mood and her story-telling gifts capture the exhilarating restlessness of a young Indian woman's pursuit of happiness. Miss New India illuminates as brilliantly as it entertains."

-Author Amy Tan

"Each character fascinates, and every detail glints with irony and intent, as Mukherjee brilliantly choreographs her compelling protagonist's struggles against betrayal, violence, and corruption in a dazzling plot."

-Booklist (starred review)

To read an excerpt or see a trailer, visit the publisher's website.   

Bharati Mukherjee is available to speak with your book club by phone, via Skype, or in person.  Contact Bharati to arrange a discussion.

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Fiction / 304 pages / Paperback
Anchor Books / April, 2011

Dear Reader,

I wrote this book over a period of three and a half years, and during that time, I was thinking a lot about different sorts of sensitivities.

When do we tune in? When do we tune out? How do we balance the two? What might a spectrum of this look like? Magic seems to be a way for me to dig a little deeper into the emotional lives of the characters, so when I discovered that Rose Edelstein had this ability to taste tucked-away feelings inside cooked food, it helped me learn about the family, and find out more about her, too.

© Max S. Gerber

What's helpful, to me, about magic, in fiction, is that it's so physical -- that there's a lot of physicality to describe: food is still food, and I could write about mustard and lettuce and still be dealing with the more slippery worlds of their internal lives.   I didn't plan that, but I think it seems to be a repeated reason that I continually turn toward a skewed mode of storytelling.  For me at least, the skew seems to allow access to places I might not otherwise find.

I hope you enjoy it.

Aimee Bender

AIMEE BENDER IS GIVING AWAY 5 COPIES OF THE PARTICULAR SADNESS OF LEMON CAKE.  ENTER TO WIN A COPY.

 
Reviews of The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake 

"Moving, fanciful, and gorgeously strange."

-People

"Marvelous.... Few writers are as adept as Bender at mingling magical elements so seamlessly with the ordinary."

-San Francisco Chronicle

TRY AIMEE BENDER'S RECIPE FOR LEMON CAKE. 

 Visit Aimee's website or her publisher's book page, and read an excerpt.    

Not My Daughter

Dear Reader,

Seventeen and pregnant?  How does that happen?  Rebellion?  Peer pressure?  Bad parenting?   I started wondering about this in 2008 after reading about teen pregnancy in Gloucester, Massachusetts.  Not My Daughter is the result.

The girls in my book are from good homes, get good grades, are headed for college, and they've never done anything remotely rebellious.  Why now?  Why this?  Two interesting questions, but I added another slant.

The Good Mother.  It's a timeless issue that takes on new twists in the modern world but asks the age-old question: What does it take to be a good mother - at 17, 40, or 65?  Not My Daughter invites you to think about this.

Truly,

Barbara Delinsky

BARBARA DELINSKY IS GIVING AWAY 5 COPIES OF NOT MY DAUGHTER. ENTER TO WIN A COPY.      

When Susan Tate's 17-year-old daughter, Lily, announces she is pregnant, Susan is stunned.  A single mother, she has struggled to do everything right.  

Then comes word of two more pregnancies among high school seniors who happen to be Lily's best friends - and the town turns to talk of a pact.  But criticism of the girls quickly becomes criticism of their mothers, especially of Susan.

Set in a small Maine town that cherishes responsibility, Not My Daughter raises many issues, not the least of which is the age-old question:  What does it take to be a good mother? 

 
Reviews of Not My Daughter:
 
"Delinsky proves once again why she's a perennial bestseller with this thought-provoking tale of three teenage girls who make a pact to become pregnant and raise their babies together.  Timely, fresh, and true-to-life, this novel explores the multiple layers of motherhood."
-Publishers Weekly
 
"This novel features three Maine teens who blithely orchestrate getting pregnant together.  As the town erupts in outrage, the girls' moms grapple with anger, sorry, and the nagging question:  Where did I fail my daughter?  It's a topical tale that resonates with timeless emotion."
-People Magazine
 
Barbara Delinsky is available to speak with your book club. Please contact her through her website.