An entertaining if occasionally cheesy love story in the rich historical setting of strife-torn Bangladesh.
Two generations of Bengalis weather religious tensions, political upheaval, and star-crossed love in this fizzy romance.
He’s Bakhtiar Khan, a Muslim physics student in Dhaka, Bangladesh; she’s Pooja Roy Chowdhury, a Hindu philosophy student in Kolkota, India. They meet cute in a Bangkok hotel and soon realize they are soulmates. Pooja’s prejudiced grandmother hates the idea of her marrying a Muslim and starts fasting to protest the wedding but relents when Pooja counters with her own fast. The interfaith marriage goes swimmingly, and the couple moves to Florida. They both become professors, and the novel’s focus shifts to their son, Satya, a prodigy who, at age 7, speaks six languages, has a physics lab in his bedroom, and relentlessly fact-checks fairy tales. At 17, he gets his math Ph.D. and is offered a position as CEO of a tech startup, but he opts instead for a grander vision: establishing a retirement home for indigent old folks back in Bangladesh with a school attached for poor kids, all financed by produce fields and a fish pond. Satya’s meticulous plan for the project, called Shanti Kunja, goes great, and love softens his austere intellect. He friendzones his besotted assistant, Roma, but is smitten himself by fetching journalist Aratrika. Passion erupts when Satya and Aratrika are drenched in a downpour, and Aratrika demands that Satya help remove her bra—the clasp is stuck—so she can change into dry clothes. Then turmoil breaks out with the (real-life) overthrow of Bangladesh’s Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina in a 2024 uprising led by Islamic fundamentalists, and violence threatens to undo the new relationship and sink Shanti Kunja. Mohit’s yarn is an energetic take on Bengali-style romance, reigned over by matriarchs and gal-pal matchmakers, prodded along by whirlwind courtships and happenstances that fling lovers into each other’s arms, and written in throbbing, heartfelt prose (“The moment I saw you, my soul was trapped in your eyes”). Threading through is an earnest, philosophically complex critique of organized religions— “Religion is the progression of early sorcerer’s magic,” says Satya, a stance that puts him dangerously at odds with mullahs—and a plea for tolerance and freedom of thought. The result is a somewhat contrived but still affecting story of people pushing past antagonistic faiths to find love.
An entertaining if occasionally cheesy love story in the rich historical setting of strife-torn Bangladesh.Pub Date: Nov. 10, 2024
ISBN: 9798344031187
Page Count: 284
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Dec. 31, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An evocative and moving tribute to the death-defying, heart-opening, infinitely redemptive power of storytelling.
A chance meeting in a museum unlocks a long-closed door in a family’s past.
Of a piece with her last three novels—Commonwealth (2016), The Dutch House (2019), and Tom Lake (2023)—Patchett’s latest explores the evolution of families over time, romantic secrets, and step-relationships, again giving these topics the wry and tender treatment that is distinctively hers. As it begins, Daphne Fuller’s attentive husband, Jonathan, notices that a man has been following them through the Metropolitan Museum of Art. At first they chalk it up to the fact that “old guys love [Daphne],” as she told Jonathan decades ago, a notion he has held onto "like a souvenir postcard from another era." But it turns out that, though Daphne doesn’t recognize him, Eddie Triplett is her former stepfather. Like the author herself, as recalled in her 2020 essay “Three Fathers,” Daphne has had three dads. Her biological father, a deep-sea fisherman named Buddy Zabriskie, left the family early; her current stepfather, Lucas Ekker, lives with her mother in retirement in Massachusetts. Ekker is an unprepossessing sort Abby met working as the publicist for his self-help books, Positivity!, Positively Positive!, The Positivity Workbook!, Positive Every Day!, ad infinitum. The man in the museum, Eddie Triplett, was also someone her mother met through her job in publishing, and once Daphne realizes who he is, she remembers that “[their] hearts were forever stitched together.” This is because Daphne and Eddie were in a serious car accident when she was 9 years old, after which her mother immediately divorced him and evicted him from their lives. The details of that accident—among them lies the reason the novel is named after a horse called Whistler—are gradually wheedled out of Daphne by her younger sister, Leda, a clinical psychologist in New York and a reliable source of insight on the narrative’s key issues. “‘You make it sound like I’ve been keeping all this from you, but I’m not,’ [Daphne] said. ‘Who goes through life thinking about what happened when they were nine?’ ‘It’s all people think about,’ Leda said.”
An evocative and moving tribute to the death-defying, heart-opening, infinitely redemptive power of storytelling.Pub Date: June 2, 2026
ISBN: 9780063511637
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: April 6, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2026
PERSPECTIVES
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
An affecting portrait of a prickly woman.
A lifetime’s worth of letters combine to portray a singular character.
Sybil Van Antwerp, a cantankerous but exceedingly well-mannered septuagenarian, is the titular correspondent in Evans’ debut novel. Sybil has retired from a beloved job as chief clerk to a judge with whom she had previously been in private legal practice. She is the divorced mother of two living adult children and one who died when he was 8. She is a reader of novels, a gardener, and a keen observer of human nature. But the most distinguishing thing about Sybil is her lifelong practice of letter writing. As advancing vision problems threaten Sybil’s carefully constructed way of life—in which letters take the place of personal contact and engagement—she must reckon with unaddressed issues from her past that threaten the house of cards (letters, really) she has built around herself. Sybil’s relationships are gradually revealed in the series of letters sent to and received from, among others, her brother, sister-in-law, children, former work associates, and, intriguingly, literary icons including Joan Didion and Larry McMurtry. Perhaps most affecting is the series of missives Sybil writes but never mails to a shadowy figure from her past. Thoughtful musings on the value and immortal quality of letters and the written word populate one of Sybil’s notes to a young correspondent while other messages are laugh-out-loud funny, tinged with her characteristic blunt tartness. Evans has created a brusque and quirky yet endearing main character with no shortage of opinions and advice for others but who fails to excavate the knotty difficulties of her own life. As Sybil grows into a delayed self-awareness, her letters serve as a chronicle of fitful growth.
An affecting portrait of a prickly woman.Pub Date: May 6, 2025
ISBN: 9780593798430
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2025
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