The City Son

March 31, 2014
After learning that her husband—the Masterji, a tutor living and working in a nearby city—has a secret second family, Didi packs up her two young sons and meets the conflict head-on, forcing her way into Masterji’s urban home. Before long, she has staked claim and evicted the beautiful but troubled Apsara and her preteen son, Tarun. But as Apsara spirals into deep depression, Didi takes a strong interest in Tarun, who visits on weekends, and this interest turns both physical and psychological. Tarun grows into a young man, yet he cannot escape the grip of Didi, who molests him weekly, latching onto his every sexual desire and manipulating his thoughts. And as Apsara dips further into melancholy and mental distress, Didi supplants her as Tarun’s sole mother figure. Author Upadhyay (Arresting God in Kathmandu) tells his story with simple and direct prose. Though Apsara and Tarun find refuge with wealthy Mahesh Uncle, who takes them in and trains Tarun to be his business protégé, the young man cannot shake his past to fully grasp prosperity. Close third-person perspective wanders from character to character, and though the book loses some of its focus by the end (at which point it’s following the exploits of Tarun’s discarded wife), most of the multicharacter narration adds dramatic depth.

April 1, 2014
The arc of Upadhyay's narrative is like that of a soap opera, though rather more lurid. Things begin calmly enough in a village in Nepal, though they heat up quickly when Sulochana, otherwise known as Didi, finds out from a local gossip that her husband, the Masterji, has been having a relationship with a woman named Apsara and even has a son by her. This relationship has been made easier logistically because the Masterji, a renowned teacher, has been spending much of his time away from the village teaching in a city. Didi, who's known more for her fiery temperament than for her pulchritude, immediately takes charge by seeking out Tarun, the Masterji's son by Apsara, and bringing him home to live with her; the Masterji; and their two sons, Amit and Sumit. Didi is immediately struck by the beauty of her 11-year-old stepson and begins to favor him, much to the revulsion of Amit in particular. Soon it becomes clear that Didi's relationship to Tarun is becoming increasingly abnormal and sexualized. She finds excuses to spend time alone with him, and as he grows older, their relationship remains highly charged though unconsummated. When Tarun gets married at age 23, he and his wife, Rukma, immediately have problems in the bedroom, and eventually Rukma discovers her husband's appalling secret. This is a story more sad than salacious, and the human cost of the quasi-incest is exceptionally high.

COPYRIGHT(2014) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

June 1, 2014
As if a woman scorned isn't enough of a story, Upadhyay (The Royal Ghosts, 2006) also examines the vengeance of a truly evil woman scorned. Didi, a rural Nepal housewife and mother of two boys, tends the home front while her husband, the Masterji, lives and teaches in a nearby city. The day she learns that the Masterji has another, and more beautiful, wife, Apsara, and son, Tarun, Didi packs up her kids and moves into her cheating spouse's city home. It's a Herculean passive-aggressive parry as she willfully ignores the other woman to the point of driving Apsara to the brink of madness. As for Tarun, Didi showers him with suffocating love and attention, at the expense of her own sons. Her sick devotion to the spawn of her bigamist husband metastasizes into both an emotional and a literal hold on the boy. All this under the spineless Masterji's nose. Upadhyay's depiction of incestuous relations can be lurid, but this makes for a succinct portrayal of Didi's depravity. Not for the faint of heart.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)