This epic novel, written in free verse poems in a diary format, straddles two countries and the clash of Indian cultures in the tale of 15-year-old Maya. Raised in Canada, Maya is the product of a marriage between her Hindu mother and Sikh father, a union that upset both families. Her 1984 trip to India with her father, after her mother's suicide, thrusts her life into further chaos when her father disappears during riots that follow Indira Gandhi's assassination. In her first YA novel, Ostlere (Lost: A Memoir) makes Maya's subsequent muteness believable in the wake of the many traumas she endures. Burdened with guilt over her parents' fate, as well as that of a Sikh man burned alive in front of her, she asks, "Is my silence unfounded too?/ No. I do not deserve to be found./ Or loved." A family in a desert town takes Maya in, and 17-year-old Sandeep (who contributes kinetic, lovestruck journal entries) takes special interest in her. In contrast to the hatred, mistrust, and violence, the friendship—and then love—between Maya and Sandeep offers hope, rebirth, and renewal. Ages 12–up. (Mar.)
Gr 8 Up—This epic tale unfolds through the pages of alternating diaries from October 28th through December 16th, 1984. Yet countless layers peel off with the turn of each page, leading readers deeper into the rich and sometimes tortured history beneath the tale's present. Fifteen-year-old Maya, half Hindu/half Sikh, has lived her entire life in rural Canada. Her family's religion and ethnicity set them apart from their community, but also from one another. Maya's name itself signifies the tension between her parents, lovers who forsook their families for each other, but who have lived in different states of mourning and regret since. Her given name is Jiva or "life," yet her mother blasphemously calls her Maya or "illusion," an insult to her Sikh father. Thus, when life and loss lead Maya and Bapu back to India at the time of Indira Gandhi's assassination, they are plunged deep into a nation in bloody turmoil. Maya's sense of otherness escalates dramatically as she is forced to consider it on a personal and near-universal scale. The middle diary belongs to that of Sandeep, with whom Maya experiences love, tragedy, ancestry, and loyalty at an intimate (yet physically innocent) level. The novel's pace and tension will compel readers to read at a gallop, but then stop again and again to turn a finely crafted phrase, whether to appreciate the richness of the language and imagery or to reconsider the layers beneath a thought. This is a book in which readers will consider the roots and realities of destiny and chance. Karma is a spectacular, sophisticated tale that will stick with readers long after they're done considering its last lines.—Jill Heritage Maza, Greenwich High School, CT
Canadian author Ostlere's first novel in verse sweeps across North American and the Indian subcontinent with a force so violent and life altering one might mistake the teen protagonists caught in the vortex of large-scale religious strife and local isolation as slightly sanitized transplants from The Thorn Birds . During the course of about six weeks in late 1984, 15-year-old Maya returns from school in her remote town near Winnipeg to find that her Hindu mother, overwrought by unbearable loneliness, has hanged herself. Maya's father, a Sikh, then decides to travel with Maya and his wife's ashes back to India, from which they had emigrated shortly before Maya's birth because their families would not accept the union of Hindu and Sikh. While in India, Indira Gandhi's assassination at the hands of her Sikh bodyguards sparks a gruesome religious massacre that separates Maya from her father and threatens to orphan her. The narrative, which, to that point, had consisted of Maya's verse diary entries, switches to that of the kind boy, Sandeep, who—in a mere month, mind you—helps Maya emerge from her post-traumatic muteness, assisting her in finding her voice, her father and, surprise: true love. Brimming with mature themes, graphic violence and page-ripping twists of plot, this over-caffeinated loosely based historical saga is for sophisticated teens at best. (Fiction/poetry. 15 & up)
Canadian author Ostlere's first novel in verse sweeps across North American and the Indian subcontinent with a force so violent and life altering one might mistake the teen protagonists caught in the vortex of large-scale religious strife and local isolation as slightly sanitized transplants from The Thorn Birds . During the course of about six weeks in late 1984, 15-year-old Maya returns from school in her remote town near Winnipeg to find that her Hindu mother, overwrought by unbearable loneliness, has hanged herself. Maya's father, a Sikh, then decides to travel with Maya and his wife's ashes back to India, from which they had emigrated shortly before Maya's birth because their families would not accept the union of Hindu and Sikh. While in India, Indira Gandhi's assassination at the hands of her Sikh bodyguards sparks a gruesome religious massacre that separates Maya from her father and threatens to orphan her. The narrative, which, to that point, had consisted of Maya's verse diary entries, switches to that of the kind boy, Sandeep, who—in a mere month, mind you—helps Maya emerge from her post-traumatic muteness, assisting her in finding her voice, her father and, surprise: true love. Brimming with mature themes, graphic violence and page-ripping twists of plot, this over-caffeinated loosely based historical saga is for sophisticated teens at best. (Fiction/poetry. 15 & up)
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