Mirror made of rain A novel

Patel's gut-wrenching debut offers a looking glass into the luxurious homes of Indian high society in Kamalpur, Mumbai, and New Delhi. Noomi Wadia is under scrutiny, in provincial Kamalpur, as her peers and extended family look for any sign that Noomi will end up like her disgraced alcoholic mother. She is also targeted and sexually assaulted by more than one golden boy, who (like their families), blame her: "You're a whore, like your mother," one spits. Ambitious and exhausted, Noomi flees to Mumbai, where she becomes a successful journalist and meets the love of her life, Veer, a workaholic from a rich and traditional New Delhi family that expects stricter adherence to ritual and gender norms than Noomi can abide. As preparations for their wedding ramp up, Noomi seeks solace in alcohol, and this choice portends a future more like her mother's than she planned. Determined to get her life back on track, she seeks treatment. Patel succeeds in depicting the ways the upper class can be a gilded cage for women: while men enjoy the freedom of public life and conspicuous consumption, the women are merely another thing to be judged, used, and discarded: "Women are Bombay real estate," says Noomi's cousin. It's a chilling story. Agent: Julia Kardon, HG Literary. (May)

Addiction dominates a comfortable Indian family and pushes its daughter to the edge. Patel's debut is a dark, unhappy story of alcoholism and a broken mother-daughter relationship. On good days, Noomi Wadia's mother, Asha, "could be amazing," but such days are rare since Asha lost her second child and, subsequently, her mental health. Now she's an alcoholic, dominating the lives of Noomi and her father, Jeh: "My parents' marriage is destroying them, slowly, like termites eating a house." Noomi, 23, has grown up lonely and rebellious, blaming her parents, struggling in her own relationships, and tempted by alcohol, too. Eventually she will break free of her home in Kamalpur and move to Bombay, where she works as a journalist and meets Veer, the man she will marry. When we next encounter Noomi, she's arriving in New Delhi with the ever tolerant Veer, to meet her future-in-laws. But, as in the preceding sections, Patel undermines her story with overemphasis, juxtaposing Noomi against casts of two-dimensional secondary figures--corrupt businessmen; mean, spoiled, and critical female elders; and contentedly privileged male peers. This heavy delineation coarsens the storytelling, sapping sympathy for its beleaguered central character, who will struggle with her own alcoholism, depression, and hard choices. At times Patel demonstrates a graceful descriptive style, but it's her tendency to accentuate that predominates, even during a redemptive--and not quite convincing--conclusion. A shortage of nuance drains impact from a painful tale. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.