The Girl in the Garden

March 7, 2011
Nair's accomplished debut is a familial drama spanning multiple decades. Rakhee Singh has spent years avoiding memories of the transformative summer when she turned 11, but her betrothal forces her to realize she needs to acknowledge her past before she can move forward. "Keeping secrets had become second nature, an inheritance passed down from mother to daughter like an heirloom." As a young child in Minnesota, Rakhee senses her mother's unhappiness, and this feeling intensifies after a batch of mysterious letters arrives from India. Her mother's moods become unpredictable, culminating in the decision to visit her family in rural Kerala with Rakhee, leaving her husband behind. In India, Rakhee longs to explore the jungle surrounding the family's home, but is warned about a superstition prohibiting children from entering it. Rakhee disobeys and what she discovers there is a tangled web of deceit that will haunt her for years. Nair creates a satisfying coming-of-age tale with smooth prose and a lustrous backdrop.

January 1, 2011

On the eve of her marriage, Rakhee Singh recalls being taken to her mother's ancestral home in India as a ten-year-old and discovering that family secrets lay buried in the lush jungle behind the house. Pitched as a cross between Frances Hodgson Burnett's classic The Secret Garden and Jhumpa Lahiri's The Namesake, this debut could do well with reading groups. Watch.

Copyright 2011 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

April 15, 2011
On the verge of marriage, Rakhee Singh must return to India to rectify childhood notions of marriage and love that were shattered during an adolescent summer spent in India. Just as Rakhees adolescence was beginning, her Indian immigrant mother, facing deep depression and unhappiness in Minnesota, decided to bring her to India for the summer. There, Rakhee built strong friendships with her cousins, met her dying grandmother, and found her once-rich family struggling to stay afloat. She discovered as the summer unfolded that the financial hardship was deeply involved in her mothers affair with an old friend and with a mysterious garden deep in the forest behind the family home. What Rakhee discovered within the walls of the garden changed her life forever. A daring fairy tale of a story, Nairs first novel audaciously tackles issues ranging from puberty to friendship to abuse, providing plenty of adventure as well.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)