Bitter Sweets

by Roopa Farooki

Book Overview

Nominated for the Orange Prize

With this spellbinding first novel about the destructive lies three immigrant generations of a Pakistani/Bangladeshi family tell each other, Roopa Farooki adds a fresh new voice to the company of Zadie Smith, Jhumpa Lahiri and Arudhati Roy.

Henna Rub is a precocious teenager whose wheeler-dealer father never misses a business opportunity and whose sumptuous Calcutta marriage to wealthy...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0312382065
• ISBN13: 9780312382063
• Release Date: September 2008
• Publisher: St. Martins Press-3PL
• Length: 384 Pages
• Weight: 0.80 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 5.3" x 8.4"

Customer Reviews

A Stunning Debut

It is tempting to compare the writing of Roopa Farooki with that of Jhumpa Lahiri, author of "Namesake." Both women hail from the Subcontinent, both write about dysfunctional Asian families living as ex-pats in the West. But I find significant differences between the two writers. Farooki, in her debut novel, "Bitter Sweets," seems more forgiving of the idiosyncrasies of her flawed characters, and ends her narrative on a note of wild abandonment and celebration. This remarkable book tells the compelling story of several generations of an ethnically mixed family of Bangladesh and Pakistani heritage who find their way to London. There is a thread of elaborate lying and deception that deems embedded in the DNA of three generations of family members. The complex ramification of this web of lies makes for entertaining reading. Farooki writes movingly and incisively about the slow death of a loving marriage: "Failure shouldn't be surprising - it's just a part of life, like breathing and eating and singing. We fail at something at every stage in our development, every small success preceded by failure after failure. And societies followed by it, too. Each first faltering infant step preceded by flump after flumpy fall chest-first on the floor or, if you're lucky, into someone's arms. We fail at exams at school, which seems terrible, until we leave school and then we fail in all sorts of new ways that we hadn't even known about before. At our driving tests, at having children, at understanding those children, in our financial decisions, in our workplaces . . . and then we fail to keep our tempers about our failures, and let our bad humour affect those unfortunate to be close to us. We shouldn't be surprised when we fail at love. But we are. Of course, everyone expects the odd hiccup at the start - kiss a few frogs until you find your true love, and all that. That's different - that's the search, the thrill of the hunt, the seeking of the One to make your life complete. But when you've found the woman of your dreams, when you look at her longingly and find out to your absolute surprise and delight that she's looking right back at you and sees to think that you are the man of her dreams too; and you make a relationship, a home, a life of shared love and shared ideals and infinite happiness - how could that possibly fail? Of course, you are astounded when it starts to go wrong. You absolutely deny it. How could that small errand she refused to run for you mark the beginning of the end? Don't be stupid, she just didn't want to go out of her way to the post office, there's not really one on her school run, and you could pop in on the way to work anyway. Of course she wasn't being difficult, of course you're not cross about it. It's nothing, just a letter you had to post to the bank. But then, how could you suddenly feel such intense, dramatic anger with her for simply scraping her fork on her plate at dinner? The dinner is still as ab

Great Debut Novel

Bitter Sweets is one of the best novels I've read this year. It is very well written, entertaining, and epic in scope, without being long and ponderous. This novel is about a family and its culture of lies, both spoken and unspoken, which shape the lives of three generations. The novel first introduces us to Henna Rub, a thoroughly unlikable teenager who is married off to Ricky-Rashad Karim, the scion of a wealthy family. But the marriage is built on lies as Karim does not realize how young and uneducated Henna is, and the marriage is quickly a sham. She and her father manipulate the Karim family into the marriage, the father essentially to get rid of the rebellious teen, and Henna to live a pampered life in a rich family to pursue her ultimately failed dream of being a dancer and an actress. Henna is the villain of the story, as her lying and deceitful ways become a way of life for the family, which soon effect Ricky, her daughter Shona, and eventually even Shona's children. Much of the novel ultimately revolves around Shona who learns to tell lies, white ones mostly, at an early age. But eventually the permeation of family secrets and deceit, ironically not even Henna's, ends up casting a long shadow over the entire family which ultimately creates a crisis. But the story includes the entire clan, as we walk through the lives of Ricky, Shona, and her children and empathize with the decisions they make throughout, even the more deceitful ones. There is a much to like about this book. First it is not only well written, but cleverly written as well, without being ponderous or pretentious. The characterization is fabulous. Not only does the reader intimately get to know the personalities and motivations of the key characters, but even the peripheral characters are so well drawn they leap to life in the reader's mind. Secondly, the book tells the story of three generations, and is well done with an economy of words so it is not a long, tedious novel, but a fast paced one that tells the story fully, but with brevity. Finally, the writing is so subtlety clever and funny at times I can only imagine the author winking at the reader after some of her more adroit passages. I thoroughly enjoyed this novel, and its characters, even the less likable ones, and I highly recommend it.

really liked this...

i know that Bitter Sweets may be Farooki's first novel. But i wasn't able to tell that with her way of bringing the reader into the lives of the different characters. Each one with so many secrets and lies to tell that it sometimes seemed that even they had a hard time getting them straight much less revealing them to the people that they loved cared about it. Whether it was Shona or her non caring, materialistic mother or her husband (Ricky/Rashid). Who had more than a couple skeletons going on in his closet little does he know. Its not much of a secret back in his home land. Shona's kids (Omar/Sharif) with a few things of their own that they hid or are hidden from for awhile but when they do come to light, wow!! It kind of takes you for a loop. Before i knew it Bitter Sweets had come to a close and while it may seem long to some. For me the book ended too quickly and i must say that i really enjoyed this one. I hope people don't pass this one off as a girlie story. Because i felt it was something that all of us can relate to. We all have some things that don't get told to others for fear of hurting others. But its those things that you dont tell that hurt them more in the long run than not telling them at all. Bitter Sweets, fun and engaging characters, story and really solid first outing by Roopa Farooki.

Entertaining look at a family through generations

This book was a more enjoyable read than I first thought it would be. The story captivates you as you read through the different events of a a family through several generations. I never would have thought such a book could keep my interest, but it held it and I was able to finish the book very quickly. Farooki's character development and story telling are instrumental in making the book a splendid success. A good read that is definitely worth a look.

I look forward to her next book

Nadim Rub's Most Magnificent Deception, the title of the first chapter, hooked me right away. The characters in Roopa Farooki's novel are wonderfully real and exotic at the same time. Perhaps it was because I was reading it during a week-long rainstorm, but India's color juxtaposed on England's dreary atmosphere kept me reading well into the night. When I wasn't able to read, I found myself thinking of Shona, her father, and her sons and their lives. Her characters were both people I had always known and new friends that I wanted to find out more about. I was intrigued from the start and enjoyed the book all the way to its emotional ending. The story spans a families life, with the family members reinventing themselves every 40 years or so. It traces an Indian family and their lives in England. Secret lives, secrets and lies run the family to the point that the truth becomes almost impossible to find and to confront. I look forward to her next book.