BIJOU ROY

India’s recent past and her Hindu family’s own fragmented history complicate the new life sought in America by this dramatic first novel’s eponymous protagonist.

Indian-born Bijou lives and works in Washington, D.C., as a research resident at a prestigious medical institute. Traveling “home” to Calcutta to scatter the ashes of her recently deceased father Nitish (also an American resident) in the river running through his native city, she receives mixed welcomes from her indignant mother (who has never forgiven Nitish for his “desertion”—it’s complicated), her enthusiastically westernized younger sister and an extended family of relatives who both wish Bijou well and assume she’ll follow her father’s vagrant example yet again. A double structure of flashbacks immerses us periodically in Bijou’s own troubled Americanization (including the surrender of a possibly meaningful relationship with an admiring lover, to the shouldering of family burdens), and in Nitish’s story—that of a young intellectual participant in the “agrarian revolution” of the 1960s, who failed at commitments better kept by fellow idealistsf and who probably bears some responsibility for the sad fate of a beloved friend. When Bijou is drawn toward intimacy with Naveen, an ego-driven careerist who’s the son of her father’s oldest friend (and the possessor of secrets that trouble both their families’ memories), Bijou becomes obliged to confront issues which the well-meaning Nitish had never fully engaged. This is indeed something more than a conventional coming-of-age novel, thanks to Dhar’s sure-handed deployment of the impingement of 20th-century India’s political history on individuals struggling in its unpredictable currents. The connections aren’t made as swiftly as we might have hoped, but are there, in the story’s cumulative momentum, and they resonate strongly.

On balance, this impressive debut novel will leave readers grateful for Dhar’s thoughtful command of her material and eager to see her extend her range still further.