Fiction Review: The Secrets Between Us

Back in 2009, I read The Space Between Us by Thrity Umrigar for one of my book groups and loved it, as did the other book group members. I just realized, while looking for the link to that review, that I also read another Umrigar novel, Everybody's Son, and enjoyed that one, too. The author has a talent for creating deep, real-feeling characters and emotionally complex stories. That gift once again shines in The Secrets Between Us, a sequel to that earlier, best-selling novel, as she brings back one of her most memorable characters.

The Secrets Between Us picks up right where The Space Between Us ended (no spoilers here and you don't have to read that earlier novel to enjoy this one). Bhima, the servant woman from the first novel, is no longer working for Sera, a wealthy, upper-class woman. She is looking for a way to support herself and her granddaughter, Maya. The two of them live in a small shack with a mud floor in the Mumbai slums, and Bhima's sole goal is for Maya to have a better life: to graduate from college, get a well-paying job, and move out of the slums. Bhima is aging but still working very hard, juggling multiple smaller cleaning/cooking clients, including one young woman who astounds Bhima by breaking all the societal "rules" she's lived by her whole life. One day in the open-air produce market, Bhima meets Parvati. She's noticed the older, bitter woman before, with the disfiguring growth on her neck, often spewing an angry diatribe at some unlucky soul. Bhima has never spoken to her before, but now circumstances bring the two women together. They form a tenuous business partnership, selling fruits and vegetables together in the market. Gradually, the two women, who've both lived hard lives, begin to develop a friendship, though each of them harbors shameful secrets. Bhima is illiterate and ashamed of the reason why she had to leave Sera's employ, while Parvati hides the secrets of her disgraceful, shocking past. As Bhima makes the first real friends of her lonely life, her and Maya's lives are changed for the better by the wonderful new women who've expanded their world.

This beautifully written novel was just as compelling as The Space Between Us, and I loved being in Bhima's world again. The intriguing story again digs into the traditional class differences in India, while here exploring the changes occurring in the modern world. It's also a deep, tender look at the power of women's friendships. The audio production was excellent, with Sneha Mathan's narration pulling me into the story. I will miss Bhima, but I am so glad that Umrigar returned to this beloved character to give her the ending she deserves.  

400 pages, Harper Perennial

HarperAudio

This book fits in the following 2023 Reading Challenges:

 

 

Visit my YouTube Channel for more bookish fun!

 

Listen to a sample of the audiobook here and/or download it from Audible.

 

Or get this audiobook from Libro.fm and support local bookstores.

 

You can buy the book through Bookshop.org, where your purchase will support the indie bookstore of your choice (or all indie bookstores)--the convenience of shopping online while still buying local!

 

It's Monday 8/14! What Are You Reading?

Hosted by The Book Date

Life

Happy Monday, Reading Friends! 

It was a quiet week mostly at home here. I haven't seen any friends in weeks, so I tried mightily to invite friends for dinner this past weekend. Unfortunately, everyone I texted or called was either traveling, about to travel, or wrapped up in other stuff. So, it was just my husband and I most of the week, with our son running in and out. We lost power Monday night in a terrible storm. Our power was out for 10 hours, and we were the lucky ones! There are still trees down and roads closed in our area. We also got lucky that the storm cooled things down, so it wasn't too bad sleeping that night. Our son is a sales manager for a company that makes battery-powered tools, lawn & garden tools, and other stuff, so we made use of his many battery-powered lights and fans. And pro tip: always get a grill with a side burner! We were in the middle of making dinner when the power went out.

Finishing dinner on the grill's burner

Freaky orange sky just after the storm

I don't know if you were aware but last Thursday was National Lazy Day! We both had pretty busy, productive days, but when my husband suggested getting take-out instead of cooking and cleaning up, I agreed. We splurged on huge burgers and delicious fries. I've been on a very restrictive diet due to chronic illness issues for the past two months, so this was a treat!

Celebrating National Lazy Day, August 10!

 

This weekend, we wanted to do something fun on Sunday. It was too hot and humid for a hike, so we went to the movies! I talked my husband into seeing the Barbie movie with me. He was a very good sport, especially since his name is Ken! We relaxed in recliner seats with popcorn in the cool theater, and we both enjoyed it. It's smart, sharp, funny, and a whole lot of fun. And it is definitely aimed more at adults than kids!

Sunday morning movie!

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On the Blog

Fiction Review: The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck - this outstanding classic was even better than I remembered from high school! Gripping, thought-provoking, heart-breaking, and even humorous.

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On Video

July Reading Wrap-Up - not a lot of quantity last month, with Big Book Summer, but a whole lot of quality! What I read and listened to last month (and what my husband read, too).

Friday Reads 8-11-23 - my brief weekly update

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 What We're Reading

We are still all reading Big Books for the last stretch of the #BigBookSummer Challenge! 

I am still reading The Lincoln Highway by Amor Towles and loving it! His previous novel, A Gentleman in Moscow, tied for my #1 book of the year in 2021, and this one is entirely different but also excellent. It's the story of two brothers in Nebraska in 1954: 18-year-old Emmett and eight-year-old Billy. Emmett was just released from a juvenile work farm after accidentally killing someone, and their father has just died. Their mother left when Billy was just a baby, so they are on their own now. Since their small town has a long memory and many still blame Emmett for the death of the other boy, they decide to take Emmett's Studebaker and drive to California. Billy is a precocious kid who reads a lot, and he wants to drive the Lincoln Highway. As you might expect, things don't go quite according to plan. I am fully immersed in their world, and the characters all feel real. This is my very first Buddy Read with a Booktube friend, Nikki of Red Dot Reads, and I am loving this approach! We're leaving voicemail messages for each other after each of the ten sections, and we both agree this is enhancing our experience and enjoyment of the novel. It's like a book group for two ... with a friend who lives on the opposite side of the globe!

 

I finished listening to The Secrets Between Us by Thrity Umrigar, a sequel to the best-selling The Space Between Us, and it was just as wonderful as the first book. Now, I am listening to a middle-grade historical novel, Lines of Courage by Jennifer Nielsen. I enjoyed Nielsen's excellent novel, A Night Divided, about the Berlin Wall, so I've been looking forward to this one. Lines of Courage takes place in Europe during WWI and focuses on five young people, ages 12-15, each struggling with different aspects of the war in different countries, whose lives cross in unexpected ways. It's excellent so far, very good on audio, and I am learning a lot. I've read so many books--fiction and nonfiction--about WWII but almost nothing about WWI.

 

My husband, Ken, is reading the much-anticipated new novel from Justin Cronin (author of The Passage and its sequels), The Ferryman. It is about a utopian island in the midst of a deteriorating world. Island residents live a long life, but when their health drops to a certain point, they board a ferry to a separate island known as the Nursery, where their bodies are renewed, memories wiped clean, and they start life fresh. The focus here is on one ferryman who is himself beginning to decline, must accompany his own father to the Nursery, and worries about what is next for himself. It sounds fascinating, and I know what a great writer Cronin is. Ken's enjoying it so far.

 

Our son has been very busy with work, but reading is how he relaxes. He finished reading book 11, Thaumaturge, of the Spellmonger series by Terry Mancour, and immediately jumped into book 12, Arcanist. This one is a mere 845 pages! He's loving this series and has been reading nothing else for months. It's a great escape from the stresses of work.

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What Are You Reading Monday is hosted by Kathryn at Book Date, so head over and check out her blog and join the Monday fun! You can also participate in a kid/teen/YA version hosted by Unleashing Readers.

You can follow me on Twitter at @SueBookByBook or on Facebook on my blog's page.  

What are you and your family reading this week?

Fiction Review: The Grapes of Wrath

Every summer, I choose one classic for my #BigBookSummer Challenge (in addition to all my more modern big books), and this year that classic was The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck. Technically, this was a reread because I read it in high school in tenth grade (and liked it), but I didn't remember much more than the basic plot--and high school was 40 years ago--so this was like reading it for the first time. I absolutely loved this gripping novel that was suspenseful, moving, heartbreaking, and funny.

In the 1930's, Tom Joad has just been released from prison, after serving his sentence for killing a man in a bar fight. He's hitchhiking and walking back to his family's farm in Oklahoma. Along the way, he meets up with Jim Casy, who used to be the preacher in his community but has given up his profession and spent a lot of time thinking about life and humanity. The two men travel together through drought-dried land back to the Joad farm, to find the small house empty and pushed off its foundation. Jim explains that this has been happening all over the area: hardworking sharecropping families have been forced off the land they've worked for years by the land owners, who have decided they can make more money with high-volume farming with machines. Jim and Tom find the rest of the Joad family, staying temporarily at Tom's uncle's house. They've decided to pack up what they can and head west to California. They've seen flyers and heard rumors that there is plenty of farm work in California, which is verdant and lush with all kinds of fruit and vegetable farms. The entire family (plus Jim)--12 people in all--pile into a homemade truck, along with cookware, mattresses, and some food, and head west on Route 66. They soon see that they are not alone; tens of thousands of other families are making the same journey, with heavy traffic westbound, and the eastbound lane mostly empty. They encounter all kinds of challenges and losses on their long trip, and once they finally arrive, they discover that California is not the Utopia they'd been led to believe. In fact, the locals make it clear they don't want the "Okies" there at all. The Joad family struggles to make a life for themselves and earn enough money to at least feed the family, but it's an ongoing challenge.

This novel blew me away--Dust Bowl pun intended! Obviously, this is a classic, so I'm not the first to notice how outstanding it is, but it greatly exceeded my expectations. Steinbeck writes so cleverly, interspersing chapters about the Joad family with chapters about all of the migrants, as an entire population, what they were experiencing, and what factors were affecting them. In this way, he's provided a very intimate, poignant story of one family--that the reader gets to know very well and care about--alongside the larger picture of what was happening in the western United States, making such drastic changes in economy and culture. He zeroes in on the path of a turtle across the dusty land of Oklahoma, focuses on the Joad family and how they made their decision to leave, and pulls out further to describe how all of the sharecropping families were forced off their land. And all of it is written in an engrossing, compelling way that completely immerses you in theses places and times. Parts of the novel are heartbreaking, but he's also woven plenty of humor into the story, too, so that the book echoes real life: the highs and lows, the challenges, and the victories and defeats. I can see why this moving, thought-provoking book is such a renowned classic, and I am still thinking about it, after finishing it last week. I only wish I could discuss it again with my high school English class and my wonderful 10th grade teacher! My husband plans to read it next.

455 pages, Penguin Classics

This book fits in the following 2023 Reading Challenges:

 

Mount TBR Challenge

Classics Challenge - a 20th century classic

Literary Escapes Challenge - Oklahoma

Big Book Summer Challenge

 

Note: This post contains affiliate links. Purchases from these links provide a small commission to me (pennies per purchase), to help offset the time I spend writing for this blog, at no extra cost to you.

 

Visit my YouTube Channel for more bookish fun!

 

Listen to a sample of the audiobook here and/or download it from Audible.

 

Or get this audiobook from Libro.fm and support local bookstores.

 

You can buy the book through Bookshop.org, where your purchase will support the indie bookstore of your choice (or all indie bookstores)--the convenience of shopping online while still buying local!

It's Monday 8/7! What Are You Reading?

Hosted by The Book Date

Life

After our very hectic few weeks of visitors and travel, I was looking forward to a quiet week at home last week, with plenty of time to catch up and maybe see a friend. But my chronic illness had other ideas! I "crashed" (i.e. a bad flare-up) and was on the couch or in bed for most of the week. It took me awhile to figure it out, but I finally realized I was probably exposed to some virus at the wedding last weekend. Just being exposed to even a mild cold can trigger my immune system to go into overdrive, which is probably what happened. I did wear a mask for the wedding and reception, but I took it off to eat (at a table with seven other family members), and I didn't wear a K-N95 (instead, just a surgical mask) because they're too big for my face and keep sliding up over my eyes!

So, it was an even quieter week than I'd planned with lots of old Grey's Anatomy episodes ... and, of course, reading. I did manage a short walk on Tuesday, before I crashed, and by yesterday, I was feeling much better (once I realized what was going on, I piled on the antiviral supplements) and enjoyed a nice catch-up day to myself, while my husband and son golfed together.

Pretty view at our local park

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On the Blog

Just one new post last week:

TV Tuesday: The Diplomat - this is our new favorite! Outstanding, suspenseful, and very funny. 

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On Video

Birthday Book Haul - the books I got for my birthday this month

Friday Reads 8-4-23 - my brief weekly update of what I am reading and listening to   

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 What We're Reading

We are still enjoying Big Book Summer here, with all Big Books!

 

 I finished The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck, and it blew me away (no pun intended). I last read it in 10th grade (my 40th high school reunion is this fall, so ... yeah, a long time ago!). Tom Joad comes home from prison to his family's small sharecropper cabin in Oklahoma to find the house empty and knocked off its foundation. The Joad family--along with hundreds of thousands of other farming families during the Dust Bowl in the 1930's--has been kicked off their land and forced to pack all of their possessions (plus twelve people!) into a homemade truck and head west. They've heard there is farm work in California, so they and the rest of the new migrant class follow the rumors. Steinbeck has written the novel so cleverly: it is both the intimate portrait of this one family, that you get to know well, and also the story of an entire population in this place and time. It's a gripping, emotionally complex, and even funny novel, and I loved reading it. I definitely want to read more Steinbeck.

 

I am now--finally--reading The Lincoln Highway by Amor Towles. His previous novel, A Gentleman in Moscow, tied for my #1 book of the year in 2021, and so far, this one is also excellent. It's the story of two brothers in Nebraska in 1954: 18-year-old Emmett and eight-year-old Billy. Emmett was just released from a juvenile work farm after accidentally killing someone, and their father has just died. Their mother left when Billy was just a baby, so they are on their own now. Since their small town has a long memory and many still blame Emmett for the death of the other boy, they decide to take Emmett's Studebaker and drive to California. Billy is a precocious kid who reads a lot, and he wants to drive the Lincoln Highway. As you might expect, things don't go quite according to plan. So far, I am loving all of the characters (even the ones who get in the way of their journey) and am fully immersed in their world. Besides, I love a road trip ... and a book with a map at the front!

 

I am still listening to The Secrets Between Us by Thrity Umrigar, a sequel to The Space Between Us, which I read back in 2009 (review at the link) and my entire book group enjoyed. This second book picks up right where the first book left off, and the focus here is on Bhima, the servant from the first book. Bhima is no longer working for Sera but is determined to find a way to support her granddaughter, Maya, so that she can graduate from college, have a better life, and escape the slums. A new character is introduced in this novel, Parvati, an older woman who is struggling with serious medical issues and homelessness. Bhima is making some real friends for the first time in her life. Just as with the first book, the narrative immediately pulled me in, and I am completely engrossed. It's excellent on audio.

My husband, Ken, finished reading Scythe by Neal Schusterman (my review at the link). He and I and our son all loved Schusterman's Unwind dystology, and Scythe creates a wholly different future world, where life is ideal and humans are immortal. There is no more disease; injuries are healed by nanites in the bloodstream; even middle seats on airplanes have been abolished! But, in a world where everyone is immortal, there must be a way to control population, so certain people are chosen to be scythes who will glean (i.e. kill) enough people to balance things out and keep population steady. The focus in this first of three novels is on two teens chosen to be scythe apprentices. It's a suspenseful page-turner with Schusterman's usual thought-provoking insights into human nature and "perfect" societies. Ken enjoyed it.

 

Ken is now reading another Big Book, the much-anticipated new novel from Justin Cronin (author of The Passage and its sequels), The Ferryman. Coincidentally, Ken says the plot shares some things with Scythe. This new novel is about a utopian island in the midst of a deteriorating world. Island residents live a long life, but when their health drops to a certain point, they board a ferry to a separate island known as the Nursery, where their bodies are renewed, memories wiped clean, and they start life fresh (there is a similar renewal process in Scythe). The focus here is on one ferryman who is himself beginning to decline and must accompany his own father to the Nursery. It sounds fascinating, and I know what a great writer Cronin is.

 

Our son has been very busy with work, but reading is how he relaxes. He finished reading book 10, Necromancer, of the Spellmonger series by Terry Mancour. And he immediately moved onto book 11, Thaumaturge!

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What Are You Reading Monday is hosted by Kathryn at Book Date, so head over and check out her blog and join the Monday fun! You can also participate in a kid/teen/YA version hosted by Unleashing Readers.

You can follow me on Twitter at @SueBookByBook or on Facebook on my blog's page.  

What are you and your family reading this week?