Sharon Maas - Of Marriageable Age

An orphan boy adopted by an English doctor, living near Madras, in the Southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu: Nataraj.
A headstrong teenager, daughter of an Indian lawyer in Georgetown, British Guiana: Sarojini.
Back in Madras, earlier, a cook's daughter, of Brahmin descent but a servant girl in an affluent English family: Savitri.
And a cast of colorful supporting characters: a strong-minded but utterly fallible and therefore most ‘human’ father; several brothers, one mean-spirited, one good-natured but weak, and another one, in another family, loving and mischievous; a willful girlfriend with a penchant for the arts; a mother at times more feminist politician than mom; a busybody mother with a constant need to organize, control and meddle; and last but not least, a wise and patient teacher.
Sprinkle this mixture generously with compassion, humor, love in all its incarnations and that profound understanding of the Indian society which only comes from personal experience; then add the author's personal secret touch.
These are the ingredients of the literary feast offered to the reader in Sharon Maas's debut novel Of Marriageable Age, bringing together the imaginative powers of a born storyteller with a lifetime's worth of personal experience. And like an Indian meal, her novel is rich in flavors, slowly and skillfully blending a myriad of exquisite parts into a perfectly tempered composition, leaving enough room for each ingredient to develop its full perfume while at the same time creating a new, perfectly composed oeuvre of its own.

This wonderful, unique book was one of the best, and probably even the best, I have ever read. The author has an incredible and incomparable writting style, the characters of the novel are authentic and wonderful described.