{"id":2960,"date":"2019-01-14T09:27:49","date_gmt":"2019-01-14T17:27:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/?p=2960"},"modified":"2019-01-14T09:27:49","modified_gmt":"2019-01-14T17:27:49","slug":"sujata-massey-the-widows-of-malabar-hill-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/sujata-massey-the-widows-of-malabar-hill-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Sujata Massey: The Widows of Malabar Hill"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>I was a totally geeked out fan of Sujata Massey\u2019s Rei Shimura series about a Japanese American antiques dealer living in Japan.\u00a0 The books became progressively better and better as the series went forward, and Massey has apparently brought all the knowledge and expertise gained in writing those eleven books to good use in delivering this bravura work of historical fiction.<\/p>\n

Set in 1920\u2019s India, young Perveen Mistry is a lawyer \u2013 extremely unusual for the time and place \u2013 working for her father\u2019s law firm, and though she\u2019s not allowed to argue cases in court she can do all the research and contract work needed by the firm.\u00a0 Coming across her somewhat sparsely populated desk is the case of a will for three widows who were married to the same man.\u00a0 Their male agent has submitted documents stating that the women want to give up their inheritance and donate it to a charity instead, and the document is signed by all three.<\/p>\n

Perveen is suspicious of the intent and the signatures \u2013 two of which look the same \u2013 so she asks her father if she can go and speak to the widows.\u00a0 They live in purdah and only communicate with males through a screen; by virtue of her gender, Perveen will have far greater access to the women.\u00a0 He reluctantly agrees and she goes to meet them.<\/p>\n

She is far from charmed by the somewhat brutish male agent and goes to the other side of the house to meet the women.\u00a0 The oldest widow seems the most sophisticated; the second one has an advantage because she is the mother of the only son; and the third, an uneducated musician, is somewhat dismissed by the other two.<\/p>\n

Perveen meets with them individually and something does indeed seem amiss regarding the will. When the agent is found dead \u2013 stabbed in the neck \u2013 on a subsequent visit the investigation naturally ramps up and involves Perveen\u2019s father, the police, and a government official who lives up the street and happens to be the father of Perveen\u2019s best friend from university.<\/p>\n

The book has another mysterious thread involving Perveen herself.\u00a0 The narrative weaves back and forth \u00a0between 1921 and 1916, when Perveen was meeting a young and handsome man.\u00a0 Part of the mystery of the book is in discovering how Perveen starts as a naive young woman and ends up as a lawyer.<\/p>\n

In telling Perveen\u2019s personal story, Massey illuminates her culture, as much as she does when she is telling the story of the widows living in Purdah.\u00a0 While I found the first chapter a little difficult with a swirl of unfamiliar names and different sectors in Indian culture and religious beliefs, by chapter two I was completely hooked.<\/p>\n

This intimate novel is also a clever murder mystery and a look at Anglo-Indian culture from an almost epic perspective.\u00a0 Perveen is an incredibly appealing heroine and I am very much looking forward to book two, The Satapur Moonstone, <\/em>which will be published in May.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was a totally geeked out fan of Sujata Massey\u2019s Rei Shimura series about a Japanese American antiques dealer living in Japan.\u00a0 The books became progressively better and better as the series went forward, and Massey has apparently brought all the knowledge and expertise gained in writing those eleven books to good use in delivering … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[35,10,21],"class_list":["post-2960","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","tag-1921-india","tag-historical","tag-legal-thriller"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2960","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2960"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2960\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2961,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2960\/revisions\/2961"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2960"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2960"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2960"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}