It’s hard not to judge this book by its cover, a scintillating play of halftones, silver and gray and black circles and semicircles. Once between the pages, however, the spheres fall into place, with the metaphors dividing the sections into the moon and its quarters. The heroines of Ghose are cosmic: Sashi the moon, a grandmother named after the crescent moon, Nayantara, the star in the eye, and Poornima the maid, the full moon. The Illuminated are the women who light up the pages, the Bengal mothers and daughters, who get tangled up with the issues of loss, whether it is a spouse or a lover. The novel is set at a time when you relied on central phone lines and the helpful women who run inns. When the sun of life for Sashi, her husband Robi, goes down, she is in New Jersey with her son Surjo, another son-sun play.

The story is slow to build, lingering on the details until the emotions of those involved reach a boiling point and the connection between the reader and the character is made.

Ghose is a tale interwoven between the experience of the loss of the mother and the very different one of her daughter. It is an exploration of the different states of loneliness and love or the lack thereof. It is also a story of everyday details that add up to the whole encompassing women’s lives. A flower cruelly trampled on for unspecified reasons; tea leaves unfolding in boiled water in a copper saucepan…. Sashi’s textures are richer, more traditional colors and surface textures, while those of Nayantara are tactile, related to body and flesh, from the men who wear Penhaligon and Paco Rabanne, although the green smoothies and the spilled coffee rival her mother’s tea.

These are worlds that we have visited before – the Indian diaspora in the United States, the great houses of Bengal with its hierarchical levels and the world of disturbed young people who are being taken back for the greater good of themselves and the community. company. Sections of the moon, perhaps, shards that gradually increase and decrease.

The worlds are parallel to each other, sometimes seemingly unrelated. Nayantara, unlike her mother, considers herself a Sanskrit nayika always on an eternal rendezvous. She focuses on the eroticism of Sanskrit literature and she meets her partner in a distinguished Kashmiri scholar in Chicago who has collided with the right wing but is allowed to enter Mysore to set up a language lab. for the study of Sanskrit. The connections arise at different stages of life, such as a throwback to the early days of Sashi’s marriage and the disappearance of the beautiful Dolly, another supernatural spirit whose brightness seems to damn her.

It is at the end, with all wheels in the wheels, a story of love and loss or love and betrayal. Sashi knows who she is and what she wants; Nayantara, despite all her confident sexual release, does not. But then, Nayantara appears to be an alien in many worlds, including being cast out by the salty waters of love that she has bathed in many times before.

Ultimately, it’s about escaping a world dominated by patriarchal gender norms where women can be themselves – a world ruled by a CM from the fishing fleets who runs an imaginary state somewhere. goes to the southern region of Maharashtra; She is the Shakti option for sevaks who are determined to surround women with their obsessive protection. Ultimately, the expected threat of violence never comes true, though it does creep into women’s lives, demanding some sort of denouement from Gauri Lankesh. Women are survivors, although unexpectedly embarrassed.

Ghose’s unusual metaphors – Himalayan peaks stacked like Lego bricks or rubbery frangipani petals, make their impact in a text where words, like stories, are juxtaposed in a careful balance. Although the beloved Bengali amsotto should really be transcreted because “mango leather” remains in doubt.

(This appeared in the print edition as “Memories In Moonlight”)