Divakaruni uses their Bengali names-halud, lanka, kalo jire-to deftly conjure a sense of their exotic possibilities, to give their users strength or courage, instill compassion or forgiveness, promote love.
The spices are a strong motif, each chapter being named for a spice that Tilo puts to some supernatural use in the narrative. The result is rather as if Isabel Allende met Laura Esquivel in the pages of India Currents-and it works. The author of a well-received collection of short stories, “Arranged Marriage,” Divakaruni has written an unusual, clever and often exquisite first novel that stirs magical realism into the new conventions of culinary fiction and the still-simmering caldron of Indian immigrant life in America. And Tilo breaks her vows as the Mistress of Spices.įorgive the fragments-Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni’s style is catching. Until Tilo, using her otherworldly knowledge to relieve pain, suffering and immigrant angst, meets Raven, an elusive American in quest of an earthly paradise. Transmigration, in an old woman’s body, to an Indian grocery store in Oakland, Calif., there to serve her community through her spices.
An enchanted island, where she is tutored by a mystical figure she calls the First Mother. Kidnapped by pirates, whom she then rules.
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