Tag Archives: family mystery

#Secrets ‘Beneath an Indian Sky’ by @RenitaDSilva #family #mystery

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Women’s ambition, women’s capability to lie and manipulate, and women’s ability to love, cherish and recover. Beneath an Indian Sky by Renita D’Silva is the cautionary tale of Sita and Mary and how their lives, from childhood to old age, are entwined in India. It is a symmetrical story, but the permutations of its angles and consequences are not clear until the end. Be patient, relax into the story, because the ending is worth it. Renita D’Silva

1925, India. Sita’s parents despair of her acting like a girl so, to encourage more restrained behavior, they arrange for her to become friends with Mary. Mary’s parents encourage individuality, freedom and learning, but Mary secretly envies the rules and ordered life of Sita’s home. And so the two girls become friends. Until in 1926 something happens which splits them apart.

This is a tale of opposites; two little girls who, despite being different, become friends. What happens when they grow up turns into a darker more difficult story about friendship, honesty, betrayal, loss, anguish and regret. Renita D’Silva takes you to another world, India pre- and post-partition, with all its scents, colours, flavours, wealth and poverty. She is a magical writer of the setting into which she lays an emotional story of the twists and turns of women’s treachery and ability to heal.

The girls are born into an India where women must defer to their husbands and sons, where endless wealth and dirt-grovelling poverty exist side-by-side; where women do not always support each other and mistakes are not forgotten. Behind the story is a ‘be careful what you wish for’ moral that applies to both girls. Intertwined with their story is the modern one of Priya, a documentary film-maker, who lives in London and is unable to have a child.

I really enjoyed this book, read quickly over a weekend. Be warned, secrets have a way of being found out.
BUY THE BOOK

Try these other books by Renita d’Silva:-
A Mother’s Secret
The Orphan’s Gift

If you like this, try:-
‘The Lost Ancestor’ by Nathan Dylan Goodwin 
‘The Carer’ by Deborah Moggach 
‘Ignoring Gravity’ by Sandra Danby 

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
BENEATH AN INDIAN SKY by @RenitaDSilva #bookreview https://wp.me/paZ3MX-fc via #AdoptionStoriesBlog

#Family #mystery ‘A Mother’s Secret’ by @RenitaDSilva #birthfather

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What a tangled web some families weave. A Mother’s Secret by Renita D’Silva is a fragrant tale of mothers and daughters stretching from England to India. Gaddehalli is a tiny village in Goa but I could smell the spices, hear the wind in the trees, and see the buffaloes in the fields as if I was there. Renita D’Silva

This novel about identity starts with a young girl, Durga, who must stay with her grandmother in Gaddehalli after an accident to her parents. The ruined mansion where she lives, which is avoided by the locals as haunted and full of bad luck, is the centre of this story. The modern-day strand follows Jaya, a young mother in England mourning the loss of her baby son and whose mother Sudha has recently died. Sudha was an emotionally-withdrawn mother, but when Jaya discovers some of her mother’s hidden possessions, including diaries, she pieces together the story of Sudha’s early life. Jaya is looking for the identity of her own father; she finds so much more.

From the beginning, it is a guessing game: how is the story of Durga connected to Kali, Jaya and Sudha? Halfway through, all my ideas of the twist had been proven wrong and I was wondering if the storylines would come together. At times I got the girls confused, but I read the second half of the novel quicker than the first and the twist, when it came, was a big surprise. A clever novel about families and how the important, simple things in life can sometimes be forgotten because of pride, selfishness or shame.
BUY THE BOOK

Try another novel of family secrets by Renita D’Silva… The Orphan’s Gift.

If you like this, try:-
‘Fred’s Funeral’ by Sandy Day
‘Innocent Blood’ by PD James 
‘File Under Fear’ by Geraldine Wall 

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
The scents of India: A MOTHER’S SECRET by @RenitaDSilva #birthfather #identity https://wp.me/paZ3MX-f7 via #AdoptionStoriesBlog