Intersections - Poornima Manco

Author: Poornima Manco

Genre: Literary Fiction

Rating: 3.75 stars.

In a Nutshell: A complicated story of friendships and betrayals among four friends, beginning with their tween years and ending when they are in their early forties. Most of the elements in the book worked well.

Story Synopsis:

Pari: A Tamilian staying in Delhi. Wants to fit in.

Samira: Half Indian half English. Wants to be loved by her mum.

Roma: Bengali. Wants to live life on her own terms.

Madhu: Bihari. Wants to reach far beyond her financial circumstances.

The lives of these four girls first intersect when they are between 8-12 years old. Thus begins a saga that lasts four decades, and involves plenty of secrets, broken hearts, shattered trust, healing and redemption.

The book is divided in four parts, each covering a specific age (tween, teen, early thirties, early forties). Each part has 28 chapters - 7 chapters from the first person point of view of each girl. (A part of me is highly impressed at this accurate division of the plot across each character.)

Where the book worked for me:

✔ Indian readers will notice the diversity in the background of the four girls. Not just their states of origin but also their financial status and family situations are different from each other. This brings in plenty of regional angles into the story, including representation of the cuisines, culture and attitudes of the regions.

NOTE: As an Indian, I had an advantage because I could distinguish between an Amma and Appa, and a Mataji and Pitaji, simply because of the geographical familiarity. I am not sure how international readers would fare with this.

✔ Unlike most Indian authors settled abroad, the author actually does justice to the representation of India and doesn’t restrict herself to the stereotypes alone, à la Alka Joshi or Thrity Umrigar. It was also a pleasure to see Hindi words spelt the right phonetic way in English. (I still haven’t recovered from the butchered Hindi of ‘The Henna Artist’ and ‘the Space Between Us’.)

✔ I loved how the author balanced the conservative as well as the modern sides of India. Doing justice to the complicated structure that is contemporary India isn’t easy and hardly any author can do justice to the country, This one came very close.

✔ MOST of the main characters are layered and don’t fit easily into either good or bad moulds. This gives them a very realistic appeal. This is a character-driven novel, and this complex characterisation works perfectly for the story.

✔ The primary theme is friendship in all its aspects – trust, dependency, betrayal, memories, bonding, forgiveness, communication,... The story covers most of these well.

✔ The plot is quite complex, with plenty of interconnections between the characters. The multi-decade unfolding adds to the intricacy. But the author keeps firm control of the story and it moves exactly where she is driving it. Hardly anything felt superfluous.

✔ Uncommonly for a story with Indian women, romance/marriage isn’t the primary goal of three of the characters. What a welcome change! (The ending did spoil this point for me, but still, it was good while it lasted.)

✔ The writing is clean and straightforward without being simplistic. There is no purple prose to jazz up the plot.

✔ Despite the length (400+) pages, the quick-paced writing ensures that the story moves ahead steadily.

⚠ There are a few “issues” worked into the plot such as drunk driving, casteism, alcoholism, marital cheating, and many more. Mixed feelings about this, though somewhat towards the positive side. Many of these work for the story; a few felt shoehorned.

Where the book could have worked better for me:

❌ There are plenty of references to physical characteristics. Pari’s “ugliness” because of her buckteeth and tall and lanky frame, Samira’s unusual attractiveness, Roma’s weight and Madhu’s slender charm – all come up time and again. I dismissed this initially because the four characters were just little girls. But the body-shaming (and praising) continued right into their forties. This was the biggest downer for me.

❌ Four individual first-person perspectives became too much to handle. Sometimes, I got confused about which character was speaking as their voices created “intersections” in my head. A third person narration would have been easier to handle for such a complex storyline.

❌ There are hardly any time references at the start of a fresh perspective/part. I would have liked a clear year to be mentioned so that I could match the characters’ behaviour with the era.

❌ The ending was a bit OTT. It tried too hard to tie things neatly. For such an impactful story about flawed characters, a perfect ending clashes with the rest of the content.

Considering everything, I did like the story a lot because it kept me invested in the proceedings. I have read only short stories by this author (which I mostly loved), but was a bit apprehensive of picking this up as very few writers are able to do justice to varying lengths of fiction. But she ended up surprising me.

Think you might enjoy a good, medium-paced, character-driven story set in (mostly) contemporary India with multi-faceted characters? Do give this a try.

My thanks to the author Poornima Manco for a complimentary copy of “Intersections”. This review is voluntary and contains my honest opinion about the book.