3 Star
Meera is happily submerged in the role of corporate wife and cookbook writer. Then, one day, her husband fails to come home. Overnight, Meera, disoriented and emotionally fragile, becomes responsible not just for her two children, but also her mother, grandmother and the running of Lilac House, their rambling old family home in Bangalore.
A few streets away, Professor J.A. Krishnamurthy or Jak,
cyclone studies expert, has recently returned from Florida,
to care for his nineteen-year-old daughter, the victim of a tragic
accident. What happened on her holiday in a small beachside village? The
police will not help, Smriti’s friends have vanished, and a wall of silence and
fear surrounds the incident. But Jak cannot rest until he gets to the
truth.
Meera and of Jak's paths intertwine as they uncover the
truth about the secrets of their pasts and the promise of the future. The
Lilac House is a sweeping story of redemption, forgiveness and second
chances.
Lydia - 3 Star
The
Lilac House is a novel about starting over and finding the truth.
Initially intrigued, this novel slowly unraveled for me and
unfortunately I didn’t end up enjoying it as much as I had hoped.
Part
of my problem was that The Lilac House wasn’t really written in scenes.
It was more like snapshots – sometimes up to three in a page, separated
by spaces. Initially this confused and irritated me because I was
prepared to have moved on to a new scene only to discover we were still
in the same one, it was just another thought or the continuation of the
scene or it jumped to a flashback and then back to the scene instead of
just a memory inserted into the prose. Once I got used to it (about half
way through the book), I got over it, but I don’t know it was
completely necessary and deterred from the novel for me. It seemed to be
a gimmicky way to create a sense of urgency to the read, as did the
really short sentences used for most of the novel, and unfortunately it
didn’t really work for me.
There
was also a lot of jumping around in this novel in addition to the short
snapshot scenes which also caused some confusion as we hopped and
skipped all over the place from the past to the present to the same
scene to another, from Mera’s perspective to Jak’s. I was never clear
where I was going to go during the multiple transitions and this
aggravated me more than I would have liked as it sometimes took me
paragraphs to realize where the next scene landed.
There
were aspects I appreciated and could relate to such as Mera’s struggles
with her failed marriage and her need to move on, her worries about her
children, especially her daughter after meeting Jak and Jak’s desire to
find out the truth, but I didn’t really like either Mera or Jak’s
characters. I didn’t find them really warm or entirely likeable. I felt
Mera’s children to be the most real in this novel and had one of the
most touching scenes. The story of Jak’s daughter was intriguing enough
to continue reading to watch whether he can uncover the truth.
There
were some details surrounding Jak and his daughter that I really didn’t
appreciate finding them shocking, repulsive and cringe inducing. I’m
not going to spoil, but I shudder even writing this and unfortunately it
is for this reason that The Lilac House will likely stay with me rather
than for the characters or the story itself. Anyone looking for a more literary and heavier read may enjoy though!
Thank you to St. Martin's Press for our review copy!
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