The Storyteller's Secret

Author: Sejal Badani

Genre: Fiction

Rating: 2 out of 5

Date Started: 14 June 2021

Date Finished: 1 July 2021

This was recommended by Goodreads, and the storyline sounded interesting. Goodreads also had more than 4 stars for this book, and I trusted the reviews. I also tend to read books by South Asian authors since I can relate to them easily.

Jaya, who is a journalist in New York, has had three miscarriages and has separated from her husband Patrick. Jaya was born and brought up in the USA by her Indian parents. Her father is a doctor, and Jaya does not so a good relationship with her mother and considers her cold. One day Jaya finds a letter addressed to her mother about her mother Lena's father Deepak being serious in India.

Jaya tries to find reasons for her never visiting India as a child to see her grandparents and Lena has no answer for that. Faced with separation from Patrick due to her miscarriages, and needing a change of scenery, Jaya decided to go to India to visit her grandfather against the wishes of her mother. She lands in the ancestral village and learns that her grandfather Deepak passed away a few days before her visit. Her grandmother Amisha died when Lena was a child.

She meets the family's loyal servant Ravi, and he narrates the stories about the family. Ravi comes from a lower caste and is considered untouchable. Jaya's grandmother Amisha does not believe in the caste system and takes Ravi as one of the servants in the house along with others. Ravi tells Jaya about Amisha, who loved to write stories and taught story writing in the local Raj (British) school. Amisha is fond of learning and tries to learn English from Lieutenant Stephan.

The story walks through the family life, Amisha's love for English and learning in general, society, and the interactions with Stephan. Jaya gets to meet Ravi's family as well. Ravi, in honor of Amisha, names his great-granddaughter as Misha. Ravi talks about Amisha and the relationship she has with everyone in the family and in the village. During the trip, Jaya realizes the reasons for her mother's cold behavior, and why she never visited India.

My favorite character in the book was Ravi. He was the best friend and a great confidant Amisha could have. He not only supported Amisha in everything she wanted to do. He was the one Amisha could trust to keep her secrets. Ravi seemed like he was indebted to Amisha because she treated him an equal, and paid him way more than anyone else in the village, which helped him and his family build a better life. He keeps all her secrets as promised and lets Jaya know about Amisha.

Where do I start! I was glad the book ended! The books could have been not more than 150 pages, and the story dragged on. Amisha's story was way longer than it should have been, and I felt that story development was slower than it should have been. Both the story and the end were very predictable and had no surprise element. If I could I would not have read this book!

Favorite lines from the book:

• Sometimes loving something isn't enough.
• Sometimes, Jaya, it is best to leave things if they cause you harm.
• Living in New York, I am used to beggars. As guilty as others, I give my standard response, shaking my head and walking away. But never have I ever been faced with children. The sight of them begging, some barely old enough to walk, turns my stomach.
• Amisha, also married at fifteen, knew girls are married at all ages. A poor family could barter its newborn away for a bag of rice. Fifteen, in some villages, was thought too old.
• Hope was her life raft that tone day they would be valued. Hope is a four-letter word and one of the simplest in the English language; contrast that with floccinaucinihilipilification, one of the most complicated.
• Death was a gift given to them because, once dead, they longer had to fear life. Death was freedom. Never should the hand of death be fought; rather, it should be welcomed as a savior into the home.