THE HOUSE OF BLUE MANGOES

An epic sweep and several strikingly imagined characters are the most impressive features of this nevertheless uneven debut: an ambitious three-generational saga that embraces the early 20th-century history of the Indian subcontinent, Gandhi’s pacifist revolution, and the collapse of the British Raj.

In a letter to the reader, Davidar (publisher of Penguin Books India) acknowledges the inspiration of García Márquez, Rushdie, and several contemporary Indian-born writers, including Rohinton Mistry and Arundhati Roy. In fact there’s a magical-realist feel to the novel’s long opening section, which depicts the lingering feud between rival patriarchs Solomon Dorai (owner of a grove that produces uniquely succulent mangoes) and Muthu Vedhar, a feud that eventually destroys the river village of Chevathar. Its sequences move swiftly whenever Davidar concentrates on Chevathar’s conflicted populace, but becomes turgid when excess exposition and background detail are attached to characters’ (mostly Solomon’s) thoughts. Things improve as Solomon’s sons Aaron and Daniel attain maturity, the former as a handsome extrovert involved in revolutionary politics, the latter as a physician who prospers as the inventor of “Moonwhite Thylam,” a medication that promises to lighten dark skins. Davidar handles the passing of years skillfully, and the story segues smoothly into an extended focus on Daniel’s son Kannan, a Western-educated idealist who defies his imperious father by marrying a woman deemed unsuitable, and working on a tea plantation in the hill country of Pulimed. The closing pages observe increasing tensions among English colonials and various Indian nationalists, and climax with a stingingly ironic account of Kannan’s pursuit of a man-eating tiger, in the equally dangerous company of a renegade white hunter.

A lavish tale that will evoke memories of such other disparate predecessors as Forster’s A Passage to India and Vikram Seth’s A Suitable Boy. Readers who persevere through its intermittent tedious passages will be generously rewarded.