One morning, with no warning, Gopal, respected professor, devoted husband, and caring father, walks out on his family for reasons even he cannot articulate. His wife, Sumi returns with their three daughters to the shelter of the Big House, where her parents live in oppressive silence: they have not spoken to each other in 35 years. As the mystery of this long silence is unraveled, a horrifying story of loss and pain is laid bare—a story that seems to be repeating itself in Sumi's...
“There can be no vaulting over time,” thinks Urmila, the narrator of Shashi Deshpande’s profound and soul-stirring novel. “We have to walk every step of the way, however difficult or painful it is; we can avoid nothing.” After the death of her baby, Urmila finds her own path difficult to endure. But through her grief, she is drawn into the lives of two very different women—one her long-dead mother-in-law, a thwarted writer, the other a...
