The Henna Artist By Alka Joshi

This book was our January D'Anna Lady book club book. I audiobooked it since it was chosen from Reese Witherspoon's book list and all of those books have a very long wait time. Again, the typical challenges of trying to follow a story by listening were present. 

This is not a book that I would have chosen for myself to read and I don't mean that in a bad way. I tend to stick to memoirs and historical fiction commonly. However, after reading this, I'm glad to have read it because it exposed me to Indian culture and customs in the 1950s and the complexity of the women's roles in society. 

It followed a women who has become a renown henna artist with rich clientele and is used to a life of taking care of herself. She is confronted by a unknown younger sister who then proceeds to complicate her relatively carefree and controlled life. 

I enjoyed this story for many reasons, first because I enjoyed the vivid descriptions that were easy to imagine, it makes sense to me that it was written by a woman. The story increased in complexity and I found myself becoming attached to the characters. The author did a wonderful job of presenting difficult situations that are encountered by many in our world and the emotional struggle that the parties involved have. I felt as overwhelmed by the situation as the people involved. I liked the focus on pregnancy and birth since that is somewhat currently relevant to my life. Lastly, I liked this because I had a feeling that everything was going to turn out well. However, I did feel like sometimes I could predict the story a bit which I don't always enjoy. 

All in all I give this 4/5 stars since I loved nearly all aspects of it. 

Finished January 20, 2020. 

Comments

  1. AnonymousJanuary 25, 2021 at 5:33 PM

    I think I have heard of this book before. That sounds like a good read! The last India book I read I didnt finish lol but I think I like the sound of the deeper aspects of this book, the conflict, better than the other story( that piano book).

    ReplyDelete
  2. Martha D'AnnaFebruary 4, 2021 at 1:44 PM

    Hahaha the Piano book was much different and not in a good way. This one is a very easy read, you could do it in a day.

    ReplyDelete
  3. AnonymousFebruary 13, 2021 at 7:38 AM

    Nice I have so many books to read......

    ReplyDelete

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