Seduction of Silence

Publishers Weekly

Sydney-based writer Le Hunte makes her American debut with this story of several generations of Indian women who span decades and continents in their quest for enlightenment. In the 1930s, the sage and wealthy landowner and patriarch, Aakash, and his son, Ram, head for the highest mountain peaks in search of spiritual awakening, leaving behind Aakash's daughter, Tulsi Devi, and his rigidly traditional wife, Jyoti Ma, at the family's Himalayan farm. Tulsi Devi would have liked to go on a spiritual quest of her own, but instead is sent to a convent school at Lahore, where a traumatic incident lands her in a loveless marriage. She manages to imbue her daughter, Rohini, with a more independent spirit. Rohini becomes a doctor, but she also marries an Englishman, a move that leaves her estranged from all her family-except, that is, for the spirit of her grandfather Aakash, who communes with her regularly and guides her on her own spiritual path. The magic realist touches scattered throughout the novel have won Le Hunte comparisons to Isabel Allende and Salman Rushdie, but Le Hunte has a snappy, more commercial style (when Rohini tells her pregnant daughter to stop complaining, the acid-tongued daughter thinks, "Thanks, Mama. Can you remember to tell me your worst birth stories just before I go into labor? We'll put some time aside, OK?"). Those who are not yet weary of multigenerational women's sagas will appreciate Le Hunte's fluid storytelling and vivid scene setting. (Jan.) Forecast: This book, which launches Harper San Francisco's new literary fiction line, was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writer's Prize in 2001 and has been attracting much attention in India. A five-city author tour will help launch Le Hunte in the U.S. Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

A kaleidoscopic debut by Anglo-Indian Le Hunte about several generations of an Indian family through the 20th century and across several continents. Aakash was the son of a well-to-do family in a small village near the Himalayas who at an early age became known for his powers of healing; when he cured the hemophiliac son of a local maharaja, he was rewarded with a gift of land, which he turned into an "ayurvedic farm." Although the farm prospered greatly and Aakash had two healthy children by his wife Jyoti Ma, he could never settle down to enjoy the life of a patriarch, and he eventually left his family to live in a distant ashram. His son Ram also grew up to be a wandering holy man, while his daughter Tulsi Devi was sent to a convent school where she was seduced by her math teacher and gave birth to a son (Jivan) out of wedlock. She later married a retired British Army officer and had a daughter (Rohini) by him. The sickly Jivan, who contracted polio as a small boy, was sent to a foster home to be raised by strangers, and Rohini grew up entirely ignorant of her half-brother. Years later, she would marry an Englishman and move to London, where she trained as a midwife, gave birth to a daughter (Saakshi), and became connected with the Spiritualist Church in Belgravia, where she attended regular séances to contact the spirit of her grandfather Aakash. The medium in charge of these séances stunned Rohini one day by confiding to her that her daughter Saakshi was going to give birth to an avatar, a reincarnation of Aakash's spirit. Rohini has put much of her Indian traditions behind her. Can she really believe that her grandchild will, in fact, be her grandfather? Just think of the old Hindutotem of the serpent eating his own tail. A splendidly conceived saga weaving the history of an entire culture into the portrait of one family: vivid, compelling, utterly fascinating.