Chandra

Chandra is a bright, 11-year-old schoolgirl living in New Delhi. In Chapter One she is to be married to a boy aged sixteen, an altogether family affair reminiscent of Vikram Seth's A Suitable Boy. By Chapter Four she is married, widowed and enslaved by the dead groom's parents to pay penance for the loss of their son. The remainder of the book charts the feisty and resourceful Chandra's fight for freedom and escape from what she increasingly sees as the shackles of cultural traditions. The closing chapter's flight from India to Glasgow sets the scene surely for at least one sequel from a writer quite practised in the quest-genre. Chandra is first and foremost a great page-turning adventure story, a fact evinced by a 12-year-old to whom I lent the review copy and who assures me she read it during one break, lunchtime and on the train home from school! What distinguishes the novel is the way its 15 episodic chapters skilfully evoke the heat and dust of rural Rajasthan, urban Delhi, and the frightening intensity of familial and religious violence. More than that, there is an energy and originality to the narrative and an attention to detail of place and people that is guaranteed to capture and young teenage reader. The Glossary is a further excellent addition to a superbly researched and crafted short novel.