Book Review - The Pleasure Seekers

When I posted last Monday I said I would do a review of this book.





From the book jacket:


Meet the Patel-Joneses—Babo, Sian, Mayuri, and Bean—in their little house with orange and black gates next door to the Punjab Women's Association in Madras. Babo grew up here, but he and Sian, his cream-skinned Welsh love, met in London. Babo's parents disapproved. And then they disapproved unless the couple moved back to Madras. So here they are. And as the twentieth century creaks and croaks its way along, Babo, Sian, and the children navigate their way through the uncharted territory of a "hybrid" family: the hustle and bustle of Babo's relatives; the faraway phone-line crackle of Sian's; the eternal wisdom and soft bosom of Great-Grandmother Ba; the perils of first love, lost innocence, and old age; and the big question: What do you do with the space your loved ones leave behind?


My review:
I enjoyed most of The Pleasure Seekers— but I was not satisfied with a lot of it. It wants to be a  multigenerational epic. However it doesn't quite do it. It is mainly a story of a family much like any other family and the trials and tribulations of everyday life.

I had high hopes for a really good read, but was left unsatisfied, particularly with the ending. It just ended....leaving me annoyed.

The sisters' characters are not well developed and then suddenly they are the featured cast members towards the end.

The relationship between Sian and her devastation when her father died bothered me as I never felt that she ever real connection with him on her visits back to Wales with the girls.

There are other sections that also had me wondering. the character development just didn't work in some cases.

This is her first book of fiction, and it is evident by her writing that she is a poet.