Short description
Kokila, a young orphan, refuses an arranged marriage, a decision that condemns her to a life of poverty and isolation in which she must fight for a place in a society that measures a woman's worth through her marriage and children.
Long description
A sweeping epic set in southern India, where a group of outcasts create a family while holding tight to their dreams.
Barely a month after she is promised in marriage, eleven-year-old orphan Kokila comes to Tella Meda, an ashram by the Bay of Bengal. Once there, she makes a courageous yet foolish choice that alters the fabric of her life: Instead of becoming a wife and mother, youthful passion drives Kokila to remain at the ashram.
Through the years, Kokila revisits her decision as she struggles to make her mark in a country where untethered souls like hers merely slip through the cracks. But standing by her conviction, she makes a home in Tella Meda alongside other strong yet deeply flawed women. Sometimes they are her friends, sometimes they are her enemies, but always they are her family.
Like Isabel Allende, Amulya Malladi crafts complex characters in deeply atmospheric settings that transport readers through different eras, locales, and sensibilities. Careening from the 1940s to the present day, Song of the Cuckoo Bird chronicles India's tumultuous history as generations of a makeshift family seek comfort and joy in unlikely places-and from unlikely hearts.
Review
A sprawling, gorgeous intergenerational saga, in which the spice and savor of traditional India progresses painfully into the present-the changing of women's lives and the dimunition of the man as household god. Told through the mysterious embroidery of one family's tapestry-its life, loves, regrets, secrets, deaths, and even what comes after death-Song of the Cuckoo Bird is mesmerizing.
-Jacquelyn Mitchard, author of The Deep End of the Ocean and The Breakdown Lane