Book Review: Six Days in Bombay by Alka Joshi
This is a brand new release. It was published on April 15th. I think it was available just slightly earlier from Book of the Month. I got it right at the beginning of April. The genres for this book are historical fiction and mystery. Alka Joshi has also written a trilogy. The first one in the series is called The Henna Artist, which I have in my collection somewhere. I couldn't get my hands on it right at the moment. But anyway, I know I have it and I have not read that. So this for me was my first Alka Joshi book.
Previous to beginning her writing career, Ms. Joshi worked in advertising and marketing. She was born in India, but she has lived in the United States since the age of nine.
So what is Six Days in Bombay about? Well, I'm going to do my best to have little to no spoilers here, and I think I'll be able to do that. This is about a young nurse who works at a hospital in India in the 1930s. Her name is Sonia. One of the patients in her care is named Meera, and Meera is a painter. She paints portraits, landscapes, things like that. She has lived a very different life than Sonia. She is well-traveled. She's known romance. She has met many people all over the globe.
Sonia, however, lives somewhat of a sheltered life. She has lived with her mother. Her dad was British and had an assignment from the British government in India when he met Sonia's mom. Remember, this is the 1930s during the time when the British were occupying India. Later he returned to the UK and, as far as Sonia knows, he has never contacted her mom since Sonia was very, very small. So she has not seen her dad or had contact with him in many years.
As I said, Sonia lives a sheltered life with her mom. Mostly the problem is the fact that their finances are very tight. Her mom has had to work very hard to provide a living for her and Sonia. Now that Sonia has become a nurse, she'll be able to provide some income for the household as well. But since becoming a nurse, she's also had a little bit of a difficult time in keeping and being happy in a job. She really enjoys her patients and she tends to kind of get herself involved with them, much to the consternation of the hospital administrators.
In just a few days, in fact, she begins to really befriend Meera and spends a lot of time at her bedside. Meera is being treated post-miscarriage, but she doesn't seem to really be getting any better. Meera continues to have pain despite her treatment, and she is being given morphine for that pain.
One day, Meera goes into respiratory failure and she passes away. Now it is surmised that she has received too much medication. And although no one seems quite sure how it happened, Sonia seems to be the one to get the blame. Sonia is also the recipient of several of Meera's paintings. Meera leaves her the paintings and a note to ask her to bring the paintings to several of her friends in three different locations: Prague, Paris, and Florence.
So Sonia sets out to complete this mission, even though she does not know any of these people nor has she ever really traveled very much previously. Luckily, she has some help from another patient of hers who was a doctor, and his son works as an ambassador. So he is able to get in touch with the officials who can provide contact information for Meera's friends.
Also, Sonia comes into some money in actually several different ways that I won't talk about here, but it does help her in the long run to be able to fund her trip. Throughout the course of her adventures, Sonia begins to lose her naïveté. She becomes better adapted to reading people and to understand that people can be good and bad at the same time. She learns that there's generally more to people than what meets the eye, both in the positive and negative sense.
She learns that there's a lot more to Meera's story than she first understood to be true. She learns that there's a different way maybe to look at her relationship with her mother, and she starts to see her in a totally different light. Eventually, she begins to see her father in a different way as well. She's always had a lot of anger towards him for abandoning their family. So Sonia really learns to grow and change throughout the course of the novel.
So, what did I think of this book? Well, I thought the writing was good and the characters were interesting. I liked the international aspect of the book. I enjoyed that it took place in India, but then we also get to travel in several different cities in Europe. So that was interesting as well.
Now, the plot to me was actually not much of a real mystery. We don't really find out what happened to Meera until the end, but it's not like anyone was really going through a process of investigating that either. So in that way, it's not really like a traditional mystery, although there is a mystery within the story.
On Goodreads, this book has 3.76 stars and on Amazon it has 4.3. I would go a little bit lower. I would give three and a half stars. There was something with the book that just kind of fell flat for me. I think the plot was kind of just okay—enough to keep you marginally interested, but not really anything that I would necessarily be quick to recommend to others.
Also read: It's Okay By Jaya Kishori Book Summary
Also read: I Don't Love You Anymore By Rithvik Singh
Also read: The Emperor Of Gladness By Ocean Vuong Summary
Also read: Problematic Summer Romance by Ali Hazelwood
Also read: To the Beginning of the End of Karma by Meetu Bisht
Comments
Post a Comment