Book Review: Splendor of Silence by Indu Sundaresan

Hello friends! Let me tell you about my most recent read - The Splendor of Silence by Indu Sundaresan.

This lushly descriptive book began slowly (read a description here...) with the first 200 pages foreshadowing the heart-rending tragedy and giving historical backgound of the time of British occupation in India. I felt like I had to trudge through these 200 pages, as a Georgia girl slogging through knee-deep snow, and it took me weeks to do so. However, the story then began to pick up pace and snowballed to a finish that was suspenseful up to the last five pages off the book.

I enjoyed the lyrical writing of Sundaresan, flowing and descriptive in a detailed way that is obiously Indian. She does not waste one single word, and her descriptions of the Sukh dessert, chiffon saris, curried food, and round characters left me feeling as if I had taken a quick trip east. She obviously has a great love for India.

How did I like it? Well, it was a very sad story. Compared to The Bronze Horseman, I would rate this a six and a half out of ten... (I would rate The Bronze Horseman an 11 of ten...) The passion and love was there, the story good, but I wanted a little more, er, how shall I say it, detail of this passion and love. I think I prefer more epic type books. I enjoyed this book, but I will not likely seek out more by this author.

You will remember that I'm part of a reading challenge called Mixology 2010. And I hate it that must admit this early in the year that I'm straying slightly from my goals. I had challenged myself to read every selection chosen by my book club this year, and I'm not going to complete that challenge. One person chose a German theological depresser entitled Letters from Prison by Dietrich Bonhoeffer. I did purchase the book. My friendly reader HK will be delighted to know that I even know the person who translated from its original German into English. I even tried to read this book. But I just couldn't do it. It was as much a struggle to read one page as if it were still IN German, and I just decided that book club books should be more fun. Since the person who selected that book didn't even read it, I'm letting myself off the hook with this one. So here's one more tick for the category of "Book Club Books."