No Other World

March 13, 2017
In this meandering coming-of-age novel, Mehta (Quarantine) follows a gay Indian-American man’s struggle to quell his childhood demons. Though 12-year-old Kiran’s parents are assimilated enough to fuel their traditional puja lamp with Crisco rather than ghee, he still doesn’t quite fit. Instead of taking the bus from school, “he walked. Two hours. Three hours. Sometimes four.” When Kiran’s sister, Preeti, begins dating a white kid, Shawn, he listens to their phone calls, delighted by how Shawn’s voice runs through his “small boy body, resonating, filling his chest.” He begins his own, proto-sexual relationship with Shawn, and because of it does nothing when he finds nearly naked Preeti in the woods, where Shawn left her tied to a tree with a jump rope. The relationship between Kiran’s guilt and his sexuality becomes evident as the story continues with his struggles in college and adulthood, when his parents force him to return to India following his “unraveling” in New York. But Mehta’s discursive style allows little room to dwell on Kiran’s quest for redemption, and instead follows the lesser dramas that bloat the book. All of the characters do share with Kiran “the desire, if only fleeting, to live another life,” one where they had made different choices, but little is added by each, in turn, being forced to accept the impossibility of doing so. As Kiran writes in his coming-out letter to his parents, “things are the way they are.”

December 15, 2016
Members of an Indian immigrant family in upstate New York struggle with their individual fates and burdens over two decades. This novel opens by setting two scenes: in 1985, a boy named Kiran Shah is spying on his neighbors across the road, the Bells, hinting at traumatic events that have transpired in the recent past and others that will occur in the future; and in 1998, in western India, Kiran, now a young adult visiting relatives, meets two members of the transgender caste, hijras, who come to the door. All of this will be spun out in succeeding sections that move back and forth in time and place to follow several narrative threads. Dominating the early part of the book are the troubled connections between the Shahs and the Bells, which include both the adults and the children. Shanti Shah, unhappy in an arranged marriage and demeaning jobs as a housecleaner and a bank teller, is powerfully drawn to the blond pastor who lives across the way--and he's interested in her, too. Her daughter, Preeti, dates Shawn Bell, a boy who ends up sexually abusing both Shah children in incidents that resonate through the book, affecting the siblings' relationship and Kiran's coming-of-age as a gay man. The title of the novel refers to the notion that in another world, different choices might have been made, different lives might have played out--but there is no other world. That may be so, but the book's very omniscient narrator spends a lot of time telling us what didn't happen, what the characters aren't thinking, didn't notice, or can't know yet. This commentary ultimately begins to smudge the sharpness of what does happen. Mehta's (Quarantine, 2011) ambitious novel follows a well-received collection of short stories; he is a writer worth watching. Good, if muffled by an overcomplicated structure and a talky narrator.

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May 1, 2017

Having moved halfway across the world, the Shahs contend with life in western New York in the 1980s and 1990s. A father, mother, brother, and sister all grapple with secrets and desires that draw them toward their American neighbors, while their Indian culture and the family they left behind maintain a hold on them. At the center of the family is Kiran, a young boy coming to terms with his sexuality. Told in third person, this is an intimate meditation on the occurrences that shape us as people and the immigrant experience in the United States. Tiny details-the print on a bedspread, the tassel on a pristine loafer-fully immerse readers in the Shahs' world. Mehta deftly draws each perspective, carefully laying bare the distance between the characters' desires and their actions. While this novel focuses on Kiran's growth, it also illuminates the points of view of his family members, ultimately providing a more complete picture of the protagonist's childhood, adolescence, and adulthood. Though there is some explicit content, it is never prurient, and mature teenage readers will see it as simply a piece of the puzzle that is Kiran. VERDICT The meticulously detailed tale of one Indian family, this is at once a character study and a universal immigrant story. For fans of literary fiction.-Erinn Black Salge, Morristown-Beard School, Morristown, NJ

Copyright 2017 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from February 1, 2017
Buried secrets, suppressed desires, and the hardships of western New York threaten to tear apart an Indian-American immigrant family in Mehta's (Quarantine, 2011) ruminative first novel of identity and loss. Nishit Shah brought his family to this chilly, relentlessly white place in hope of a better life, but he is preoccupied with worries about money and his troubled brother back in India. His wife, Shanti, endures menial jobs and racial tokenism and burns with forbidden love for a hunky neighbor. Sexually abused by an acquaintance, their daughter, Preeti, rebels, finding solace in evangelical Christianity. Kiran, a witness to both his mother's infidelity and his sister's trauma, grapples with his own sexual identity, his loneliness increasing as he heads off to college. Perhaps he can learn perspective from Pooja, a new friend whose status as a transgendered hijra has forced her to discover her own resilience. Mehta uses vivid, memorable imagery to present likable, complex characters whose conflicts are mostly internal, the invisible things we hold in our hearts, as Pooja puts it. The result is a plot that feels muted and ultimately secondary to shimmering descriptions of emotionally resonant moments.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)

September 15, 2016

The winner of Lambda and Asian American literary awards for Quarantine, also honored by ALA's Over the Rainbow Committee, Mehta tells the story of Kiran Shah, who as a teenager struggles to adjust to America and his homosexuality. Later, he finds closeness and healing with a teenage hijra, a member of India's ancient transgender community.

Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.