Good Reads / Community Library Notes
SLEEPING ON JUPITER
Anuradha Roy
Review by Priscilla Comen
SLEEPING ON JUPITER
Anuradha Roy
Review by Priscilla Comen
Sleeping on Jupiter by Anuradha Roy is a beautifully written, almost-folk tale told by a young girl whose family has been killed by bandits. She is then taken by boat to an ashram in another part of India. As she grows older, she is considered “special” by the head monk of the ashram. This is also about three elderly women who travel by train together in India, and about a young man, Badal, who is poor but has a job of guiding tourists through the sacred temple of Vishnu.
The women are Vidya, Latika, and Gouri, who rides the scooter with Badal. She loves the wind in her face and hair. Gouri forgets and loses things. Her friends worry about her. There’s also Nomi and Suraj who have come to the temple on a photographic project. Nomi was adopted and thinks she might have been born here. She wears outlandish clothes, beads and bracelets. Suraj’s wife left him five months ago and he hopes she will return. Author Roy weaves all these characters together into one fascinating pattern. The three women, Nomi, and Suraj are all staying at the same hotel. Author Roy shows us their past lives through their dreams. Nomi’s childhood with a foster mother was not a happy one. She recognizes the aged monk at the temple as the one who abused her as a child.
Surprisingly, but typical of author Roy’s skill, Vidya’s son is found to be Suraj. He’s with a girl whom the elderly women recall as the girl on the train. Gouri is not in her hotel room in the morning. Later they see her on the beach. At dawn, Suraj goes for a swim, leaving his clothes and mobile phone at the tea shack. He swims too far, and thinks about drowning himself. He’s picked up by a fishing boat and men who return him to the tea shop.
Author Roy has won many prizes and lives in India. In the interview with her in the back of the book, author Roy explains how she started the story and how she created the structure of present days and past, and how she brought them together. Find this excellent book on the new fiction shelf of your community library.
The women are Vidya, Latika, and Gouri, who rides the scooter with Badal. She loves the wind in her face and hair. Gouri forgets and loses things. Her friends worry about her. There’s also Nomi and Suraj who have come to the temple on a photographic project. Nomi was adopted and thinks she might have been born here. She wears outlandish clothes, beads and bracelets. Suraj’s wife left him five months ago and he hopes she will return. Author Roy weaves all these characters together into one fascinating pattern. The three women, Nomi, and Suraj are all staying at the same hotel. Author Roy shows us their past lives through their dreams. Nomi’s childhood with a foster mother was not a happy one. She recognizes the aged monk at the temple as the one who abused her as a child.
Surprisingly, but typical of author Roy’s skill, Vidya’s son is found to be Suraj. He’s with a girl whom the elderly women recall as the girl on the train. Gouri is not in her hotel room in the morning. Later they see her on the beach. At dawn, Suraj goes for a swim, leaving his clothes and mobile phone at the tea shack. He swims too far, and thinks about drowning himself. He’s picked up by a fishing boat and men who return him to the tea shop.
Author Roy has won many prizes and lives in India. In the interview with her in the back of the book, author Roy explains how she started the story and how she created the structure of present days and past, and how she brought them together. Find this excellent book on the new fiction shelf of your community library.