Going Home

by Freny Olbrich

From Publishers Weekly When Rosemary, his wife of a decade, suddenly leaves him, BBC producer Cyrus returns to his Indian family in Bombay to lay to rest some troublesome specters from his childhood. The mercurial history of his family blends with the troubled political history of India, as Cyrus's voyage of discovery leads him to a crisis of decision. Cyrus learns that his father, a wealthy doctor, unyielding patriarch and abusive husband, left a large legacy of destruction and deceit. As he listens to his alienated siblings, he pieces together the political events that led to the death of some of his close friends, and comes to an adult perspective on the loveless marriage endured by his adored mother. Though he has come home, he realizes there is no home for him in India. In this detailed narrative of pain and privilege in an Indian family of the 20th century, the reader is attendant at the varieties of Indian culture, an observer of a continuously roiling panorama, engagingly related in a wry and ironic tone. Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc. From Library Journal Cyrus has made a home in London with his wife, Rosemary. When she leaves him, he decides to "go home" to the Parsi community of his childhood in Bombay, where his roots are, where nothing has changed in the closely knit clan despite massive changes all around, where enmities and misunderstandings begun years before continue to make his old house a strained, unhappy place. As Cyrus resurrects the past in an attempt to understand and explain it to a much younger sister, the turmoil of 20th-century India is mirrored in the confrontations of the Marzaban family: the longing for freedom conflicting with respect for the past and reverence for authorityreligious, patriarchal, imperial; the tension between political and emotional expedience and inflexible idealism. The microcosm of the Marzaban family is a vivid and brilliant evocation of India and Indians. Compelling. Cynthia Johnson Whealler, Cary Memorial Lib., Lexington, Mass.Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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