Under Review | Secret Daughter

I just finished reading Shilpi Somaya Gowda's gorgeous debut novel Secret Daughter, and I am completely awed.  I've had the book sitting on my shelf for about 2 years, and I've picked it up many times, but I wasn't in the right 'headspace' to read the book then.  My mom recently was given a copy of the book by one of her friends and started to read it, which reminded me of my own copy and I decided to give it a try.  I wasn't really sure what to expect but it completely blew me away.  

The book was nuanced, poignant and heart-achingly honest.  The intricacies, trials and triumphs of mother-daughter relationships were navigated with deep insight and careful realism; nothing was over-dramatized or depicted with fictitious perfection.  The realities of struggling mothers, children and families in India was portrayed with a subtlety that  evoked more of an emotional response from the reader than overtly graphic descriptions would have.  I came to love the characters - their faults, their strengths, their hopes, their regrets, their passion.  Writing from various perspectives and having a plot that extends several decades can often be a challenge, but Shilpi Somaya Gowda managed to strengthen her narrative by allowing the reader to see through the eyes of six pivotal characters, and seamlessly carrying the thread of the story through many years so the growth and development of the three main female characters can be clearly expressed.  It was a brilliant tale about family, love, loss, faith, culture, the disparities between genders, classes and nations, and self discovery.

The story certainly wasn't a chapter out of Pleasantville, but it was real.  I'm a big supporter of 'truth' in writing - maybe the plot of a novel has never actually taken place in the 'real world', but the essence of the tale, the personalities and actions of the characters, the likeliness of certain events can all be true to the human experience and the world in which we live.  Reading should challenge you to think, expand your horizons, lay your emotions bare and allow yourself to be vulnerable.  Only then are we truly receptive to a story and able to learn/grow from it.  Secret Daughter certainly facilitates such an experience.

I hope you will consider reading Secret Daughter; I'm giving it five golden-stars and a massive recommendation.  Happy Reading!

- H

Overview

SECRET DAUGHTER is a NY Times, USA Today, IndieBound and #1 International Bestseller. Foreign rights have sold in 23 countries.

Somer's life is everything she imagined it would be — she's newly married and has started her career as a physician in San Francisco — until she makes the devastating discovery she never will be able to have children.

The same year in India, a poor mother makes the heartbreaking choice to save her newborn daughter's life by giving her away. It is a decision that will haunt Kavita for the rest of her life, and cause a ripple effect that travels across the world and back again.

Asha, adopted out of a Mumbai orphanage, is the child that binds the destinies of these two women. We follow both families, invisibly connected until Asha's journey of self-discovery leads her back to India.

Compulsively readable and deeply touching, SECRET DAUGHTER is a story of the unforeseen ways in which our choices and families affect our lives, and the indelible power of love in all its many forms.