Reply To: If You Finished, How DId You Rate This Book?

Melissa – I agree!  This is my first book by Thrity Umrigar, and she is clearly a gifted writer who knows how to craft complex characters. But this book just left me hanging. I was thinking, maybe from the author’s perspective, every one of the main characters had some kind of resolution – Kavati came to terms with her sexual identity  and “came out” to her closest friend, Laleh forgave herself for the past and had renewed appreciation for her husband and family, Armaiti made peace with dying and would get to see her friends (and know that they would be there for her daughter), and Nishta made the difficult decision to leave her husband (and betray her SIL) and country to seek a new life in America. But as a reader, I needed more resolution to the story, especially because the airport scene occurred so late in the book and was maybe the most heart-wrenching and dramatic. Iqbal had been unable to talk to his his wife or sister, the two people he loved the most, so they couldn’t understand him. The one person he did confide in, who understood him, betrayed him (first by helping his wife leave, after promising not to, and then capitalizing on the prejuduce that Iqbal has struggled against his whole life to have him arrested). And clearly, Adish was distraught about what he did, and he was a sympathetic character. And we don’t get to see what happens! Just an odd choice, and definitely unsatisfying.  I wanted some of those loose threads to be tied up.