A Silence of Desire by Kamala Markandaya

2009, Penguin

Kamal Markandaya

This book is beautiful in a subtle way. The writer is soft and gentle with her characters as they try to live their lives in the midst of difficulties and changes. The main characters are a couple who love each other, but don't see the world in the same way. The husband is desperate to help his wife who is ill, but for him help equals going to a doctor in a hospital. The wife prefers to seek wellness in traditional methods, like religious offerings and visits to a guru.

The subtlety and gentleness lie in the way the characters try to accept each other, and in how the author brings a reader like me, who like the husband finds it natural to seek help from a doctor and certainly not from a guru, to a form of understanding or at least insight into another way of seeing things.