No Money to Travel - Reading Journeys Part 1

So once again I find myself totally broke. As much as I would love to head out on a real summer voyage, I've decided instead that all of my journeys this season will have to be via book.

I begin my journey with a jaunt to India ala Miss Timmins' School for Girls by Nayana Currimbhoy and a trip to London thanks to Forbidden by Tabitha Suzuma... If only I could get the stamps on my passport to commemorate these trips!

Miss. Timmins’ School for Girls, by Nayana Currimbhoy, was the perfect read for the start of a summer when I myself cannot travel. This book takes its readers on a journey back in time to India, to a British missionary’s run boarding school for girls; the year, 1974, the season, monsoon. It is here on her way to Miss Timmins’ that we meet one of our narrators, Charulata Apte. Charu is leaving home for the first time to teach English literature. She has led a very sheltered family-centric life up until this point. The reasons for this sheltering are explained as the story goes on. Firstly her family was forced to flee Bombay for the coast in order to escape scandal, and secondly Charu has a blot that covers part of her face. What begins as Charu’s coming of age tale as she breaks out of her shell and once befriended by the campus wild woman Moira Prince, begins a dance with the forbidden, eventually becomes an Agatha Christiesque whodunit, as one night Moira is pushed to her death off of a cliff of the nearby tablelands. The suspects are many, and it is through the eyes of Charu and one of her students, Nandita, that we piece together the events of that evening.

Ms. Currimbhoy has a wonderful way with words. Her passages were both highly descriptive and beautifully worded. She made India come alive for me as she wove foods, scents, texture, and history into her story, yet I feel that for all of this beauty, elements of the plot were choppy. Though I enjoyed the book, I found the pacing rather uneven. The story would come to fits and starts, rolling slowly uphill to suddenly lose control and veer left as it crested the hill. I suggest that any readers who find themselves frustrated, and have trouble with the pacing, continue stick with the story, for in the end it is all worth it. I also hope that next time around Ms. Currimbhoy stick to a simpler plot line so her soaring prose can have a true chance to shine.

Miss Timmins' may have taken me back in time, but Forbidden rocked my world and threw it off of its axis. While Miss Timmins' came into my life through NetGalley.com, I dove into Forbidden on a total whim (sans description) thanks to Simon and Schuester's E-Galley program. A note before you continue reading: Forbidden is not for the faint of heart!

Forbidden tells the story of the Whitley family through the eyes and alternating voices of Lochan, an almost 18 year old boy suffering from crippling social anxiety disorder, and that of his 16 year old sister Maya. Anxiety disorder is the least of Lochan and Maya's problems, for they have been handed a truly (to borrow a word from the U.K.) SHITE hand in life.

The reader quickly learns that Lochan and Maya's father abandoned the family years ago and their mother is an alcoholic who is happy to believe that she can still party like she is childless and in her early 20s. The care and keeping of the house and their three younger siblings (Kit, Tiffin, and Willa) falls solely on their shoulders. I can barely take care of myself now, so I sure as hell can't picture caring for a family at almost 18 and 16. Lochan and Maya's lives are anything but normal, but they try to soldier on.

It is here at Chapter 2 that I was suddenly struck with the awful feeling that I knew exactly where this story was heading ... all that was missing was arsenic coated powdered donuts and a psycho grandmother. Forbidden wasn't messing around and it wasn't going to hold back any punches. We were truly heading into forbidden territory! To be completely honest I wasn't sure if I wanted to continue on once I glimpsed where the train was headed. Incest isn't my cup of tea, but Suzuma's hypnotic writing kept calling to me.

Her talent is so strong and her characters were so vividly written that I couldn't look away because Lochan and Maya are that gut wrenching of characters. I couldn't look away even as the train ride came to a crashing end ... an end I didn't see coming, and an end which (when I realized what was about to happen) caused me to cry out "no, anything but that ... haven't they already been through enough!?!?". Suzuma and her heart breaking creations cause her readers to question their beliefs. Even though everything is so, so, so absolutely wrong you find yourself rooting for Lochan and Maya, even as you realize how so, so, so absolutely wrong their situation is. Romeo and Juliet has nothing on these two, and as with Romeo and Juliet you will need tissues!

Reading Forbidden shook me so much that even though it was 11:30 on a weeknight when I finished, I had to call my best friend to tell him all about the story. I knew that there was no way that I would sleep that night if I didn't try to process through what I had read. As I said to my friend once I was finally calm, "Forbidden was one hell of a book and I will read ANYTHING that Tabitha Suzuma writes ... even if it's the back of a cereal box ... she's that good!".