The Heart Is a Shifting Sea

May 15, 2018

Journalist Flock's intention to write about "the Indian love story"--"because it seemed more honest and vulnerable," especially when compared to her parents' multiple failed marriages--began in 2008 when she first lived in Mumbai. Although a spinal injury unexpectedly sent her back to the States, Flock returned in 2014 to finish the book--her first--she started about three couples she calls "romantics and rule breakers": celestially misaligned Veer and Maya, who live separate lives together; childless Shahzad and Sabeena, haunted for decades by infertility; and online-matched Ashok and Parvati, who marry as near-strangers and grow to love each other. While the majority of Sunil Malhotra's narration is expectedly straightforward reportage of what's on the page, Malhotra sprinkles the narrative with spot-on characterizations: a young woman's shy agreement to marriage, a blustering father-in-law, a fortune-telling sage, an understanding doctor, and a sniping stepmother-in-law, among many others. VERDICT Western readers intrigued by distant cultures will appreciate the novel-like exposition here; literary purists might bristle at the visitor's white lens through which the most intimate details are revealed. ["All readers interested in Southeast Asian culture, as well as scholars of anthropology, sociology, and other social sciences, will be fascinated with this accessible account": LJ 2/1/18 review of the Harper hc.]--Terry Hong, Smithsonian BookDragon, Washington, DC

Copyright 2018 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Two experienced narrators, Sunil Malhotra and Nicol Zanzarella, deliver this extended reportage about modern love in Mumbai, India. Zanzarella gives voice to the author, American Elizabeth Flock, and her explanatory comments about the story behind this collection. Malhotra then takes us into the lives of three real-life couples: Veer and Maya, Shahzad and Sabeena, and Ashok and Parvati. In alternating sections of each chapter, he retells the intimate details of how these couples come together and how hard they have to work to hold onto their relationships. Malhotra's delivery is steady and firm, like a father telling his children the stories of days gone by--except these tales could be of any two people passing on Mumbai's busy streets. M.R. � AudioFile 2018, Portland, Maine

Starred review from October 9, 2017
Journalist Flock invites readers into the homes, lives, and marriages of three couples—one Marwari Hindu, one Sunni Muslim, and one Tamil Brahmin Hindu—living in Mumbai in this multifaceted portrait of love and marriage in modern India. Layered with history and glimpses of the varied cultures compressed into one vivacious city, the book pays as much attention to the lives of its subjects as it does to that which binds them together: the rituals of courtship and intricacies of marriage law, religious observances and festivals, and changing conventions that are seeing more couples choosing to live apart from their families and more women choosing to work outside of the home. Flock finds people trying to find happiness within the slipknot of tradition, longing for film-style romance within their arranged marriages, and searching peace with their lives inside a city and a country undergoing rapid population growth, Western influence, and rising far-right sentiment. There’s Ashok and Parvati, who get to know one another while planning a wedding (their courtship was arranged by their parents using an online matchmaking service); Shazhad and Sabeena, whose failure to conceive leads them to a more liberal practice of Islam (Sunni law doesn’t recognize adoption); and Maya and Veer, career-oriented individuals who deal with infidelity and Maya’s need for independence. Flock approaches the histories, hopes, dreams, and disappointments of her middle- and upper-middle-class couples as a reporter, not a storyteller, and the book is better for it, steering clear of caricature and sentiment, and letting each of her subjects emerge in the details of his or her own circumstances. Ostensibly a study of marriage as experienced by the people in it, Flock’s book also provides a vivid portrait of a nation in transition, through the lives and desires of its most progressive city’s residents.