14. Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, The Mistress of Spices

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

14. Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, The Mistress of Spices

A sort-of fantasy novel about Tilo, a 'Mistress of Spices'- immortal, mystical women, trained in magic and secret knowledge, sent out into the world to help people. Tilo is sent to Oakland, California, where she slowly becomes personally involved in the lives of the people around her, and begins to reveal her own backstory.

This novel is very hard to describe, because it doesn't have much of a plot for most of its length. Instead, it's full of beautiful, poetic descriptions of spices and food, magic, Oakland and imaginary places like the Island where Mistresses are trained. Some parts are very realistic; others involve rampaging pirate queens or singing sea serpents. It took me a while to get into this book, because the beginning is very slow, but by the end I was in love. The language is incredibly evocative, and the resolution felt just right. I really grew to like the characters, particularly Tilo, who shows herself to be much more of a flawed human than any mystical fairy.

Highly recommended.

Comments

[alankria.livejournal.com]

Instead, it's full of beautiful, poetic descriptions of spices and food, magic, Oakland and imaginary places like the Island where Mistresses are trained. Some parts are very realistic; others involve rampaging pirate queens or singing sea serpents.

I'll, uh. Be in my bunk buying this in the near future.

Thanks for bringing it to my attention! =D

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

*grins* Those were my favorite parts, too. But so as not to get your hopes up too much, the pirate queen only has about two pages. But she is important thematically!

[alankria.livejournal.com]

Oh, I guessed from what you said that it was only a minor element. Still sounds great. I suspect I'll be buying it in a fairly early month next year.

Mostly it's the beautiful, poetric descriptions of spices and food that entice me. =D

[tesseract26.livejournal.com]

Yay Divakaruni! She's one of my favorite authors. I highly recommend her short stories and the series of novels that starts with Sister of My Heart.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Thanks! I've read her 'Palace of Illusions' and really enjoyed that also, so I very much need to check out the rest of her work.

[zahrawithaz.livejournal.com]

I also love Divakaruni, and I would highly recommend her collections of short stories, with The Uncommon Errors of Our Lives being the best of the best.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Thanks! A lot of people have recommenced the short stories to me; I will clearly have to read it soon.