Wilted Away

Pages: 304

Early on in Chitra Banerjee Divakarunis new novel,Oleander Girl,Korobi,named after the flower,is visited by the ghost of her dead mother,perhaps in a dream. The apparition silently points her towards an ocean and

Korobi is convinced that she must cross oceans to find something,to discover her past and,in the process,herself. Korobis journey may have supernatural origins,but the voyage of discovery she undertakes and the secrets,lies and buried tensions she unearths along the way is the stuff of a classic coming-of-age story,with the added excitement of a quest. But though Divakarunis language is lyrical,Oleander Girl rarely transcends its tropes to be anything more than serviceable.

Korobi,the teenaged protagonist,was orphaned at birth. Cosseted by her loving grandparents,raised in a traditional,distinguished Kolkata family,she wants for nothing. But there is a sense of a yearning: she wishes to learn more about her parents,a feeling that only intensifies after she discovers an unsent love letter from her mother to her father. Only 17,for her,the note epitomises a passion she longs to feel. Enter Rajat,the rich scion of another prominent family. Korobi falls in love,believing she has found what her mother did. But on the night of her engagement party,her idyll is shattered: her beloved grandfather dies of a heart attack,setting in motion events that reveal Korobi’s past to be a lie. Reeling from what she sees as betrayal by the only parents she has known,Korobi embarks on a quest to America to learn the truth.

When the novel begins,Korobi is certain of her role and her place. But it is the confidence of youth,the certainty that comes with ignorance. Set adrift by the events at her engagement party,Korobi must build herself anew,and Divakaruni is able to articulate well her confusion and sense of displacement. A subplot with Rajat,her fiance,complements her crisis of identity; both are forced to consider what they can do,and what is acceptable for them to do,particularly in relation to each other. Rajats transformation from Prince Charming to a more complex romantic interest is one of the books more pleasurable aspects. He embodies a struggle between the traditional and the modern,the product of a time and a country that has yet to define itself. Divakaruni sets a good scene,too her Kolkata is a teeming cosmopolis,the beating heart of the book.

Still,Oleander Girl lacks the intensity and insight that is the hallmark of a truly good book. It is also overstuffed,with a plot line about communal tensions adding little. Korobis search in America culminates in an all-too-predictable fashion,and the denouement is unsatisfying and rather convenient.