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BEFORE WE VISIT THE GODDESS

by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 19, 2016

A novel of quiet but deeply affecting moments.

Three generations of Indian women struggle with the complicated relationships between mothers and daughters.

In a novel spanning India and the United States over 60 years, richly drawn characters negotiate the desire for education against family obligations and romantic entanglements. Sabitri has never met her American-born granddaughter, Tara, but after receiving word the girl is considering dropping out of college, she begins to write a letter detailing her own life. Originally focused on education, Sabitri was dismissed from her sponsors' home after falling in love with their son. She would go on to marry one of her professors, have a daughter, Bela, and build a business baking sweets after the death of her husband. Bela also left school to elope to the United States with her boyfriend, after which she never returned to India or saw her mother again. In the U.S., Bela deals with her alienation from her family and culture, a disconnect which is passed on to Tara. Divakaruni’s novel explores the moments that reverberate across generations as well as the quiet erosions of culture that happen over time. Although the author skillfully handles the various decades and narratives at first, toward the novel’s end, the perspectives shift to those of minor—and much less developed—characters, such as Bela’s neighbor and her ex-husband. This movement away from the lyrical voices of Sabitri, Bela, and Tara is both disorienting and disappointing, as compelling plot threads are left abandoned and unexplored.

Pub Date: April 19, 2016

ISBN: 978-1-4767-9200-2

Page Count: 240

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Review Posted Online: Feb. 17, 2016

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2016

FAMILY LIFE & FRIENDSHIP

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THE NIGHTINGALE

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 3, 2015

Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.

Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II.

In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring  passeurs : people who aided the escape of others during the war. Cut to spring, 1940: Viann has said goodbye to husband Antoine, who's off to hold the Maginot line against invading Germans. She returns to tending her small farm, Le Jardin, in the Loire Valley, teaching at the local school and coping with daughter Sophie’s adolescent rebellion. Soon, that world is upended: The Germans march into Paris and refugees flee south, overrunning Viann’s land. Her long-estranged younger sister, Isabelle, who has been kicked out of multiple convent schools, is sent to Le Jardin by Julien, their father in Paris, a drunken, decidedly unpaternal Great War veteran. As the depredations increase in the occupied zone—food rationing, systematic looting, and the billeting of a German officer, Capt. Beck, at Le Jardin—Isabelle’s outspokenness is a liability. She joins the Resistance, volunteering for dangerous duty: shepherding downed Allied airmen across the  Pyrenees to Spain. Code-named the Nightingale, Isabelle will rescue many before she's captured. Meanwhile, Viann’s journey from passive to active resistance is less dramatic but no less wrenching. Hannah vividly demonstrates how the Nazis, through starvation, intimidation and barbarity both casual and calculated, demoralized the French, engineering a community collapse that enabled the deportations and deaths of more than 70,000 Jews. Hannah’s proven storytelling skills are ideally suited to depicting such cataclysmic events, but her tendency to sentimentalize undermines the gravitas of this tale.

Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015

ISBN: 978-0-312-57722-3

Page Count: 448

Publisher: St. Martin's

Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014

HISTORICAL FICTION | FAMILY LIFE & FRIENDSHIP

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THE LAST LETTER

by Rebecca Yarros ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 26, 2019

A thoughtful and pensive tale with intelligent characters and a satisfying romance.

A promise to his best friend leads an Army serviceman to a family in need and a chance at true love in this novel.

Beckett Gentry is surprised when his Army buddy Ryan MacKenzie gives him a letter from Ryan’s sister, Ella. Abandoned by his mother, Beckett grew up in a series of foster homes. He is wary of attachments until he reads Ella’s letter. A single mother, Ella lives with her twins, Maisie and Colt, at Solitude, the resort she operates in Telluride, Colorado. They begin a correspondence, although Beckett can only identify himself by his call sign, Chaos. After Ryan’s death during a mission, Beckett travels to Telluride as his friend had requested. He bonds with the twins while falling deeply in love with Ella. Reluctant to reveal details of Ryan’s death and risk causing her pain, Beckett declines to disclose to Ella that he is Chaos. Maisie needs treatment for neuroblastoma, and Beckett formally adopts the twins as a sign of his commitment to support Ella and her children. He and Ella pursue a romance, but when an insurance investigator questions the adoption, Beckett is faced with revealing the truth about the letters and Ryan’s death, risking losing the family he loves. Yarros’ ( Wilder , 2016, etc.) novel is a deeply felt and emotionally nuanced contemporary romance bolstered by well-drawn characters and strong, confident storytelling. Beckett and Ella are sympathetic protagonists whose past experiences leave them cautious when it comes to love. Beckett never knew the security of a stable home life. Ella impulsively married her high school boyfriend, but the marriage ended when he discovered she was pregnant. The author is especially adept at developing the characters through subtle but significant details, like Beckett’s aversion to swearing. Beckett and Ella’s romance unfolds slowly in chapters that alternate between their first-person viewpoints. The letters they exchanged are pivotal to their connection, and almost every chapter opens with one. Yarros’ writing is crisp and sharp, with passages that are poetic without being florid. For example, in a letter to Beckett, Ella writes of motherhood: “But I’m not the center of their universe. I’m more like their gravity.” While the love story is the book’s focus, the subplot involving Maisie’s illness is equally well-developed, and the link between Beckett and the twins is heartfelt and sincere.

Pub Date: Feb. 26, 2019

ISBN: 978-1-64063-533-3

Page Count: 432

Publisher: Entangled: Amara

Review Posted Online: Jan. 2, 2019

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2019

Review Program: Kirkus Indie

GENERAL ROMANCE | ROMANCE | FAMILY LIFE & FRIENDSHIP | CONTEMPORARY ROMANCE

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Before We Visit the Goddess

Written by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni Review by Rebecca Kightlinger

“Without education,” Sabitri writes to Tara, the granddaughter she has never met, “a woman has little chance of standing on her own feet.” Recalling the desperate maneuver that enabled her own mother to send her to college, Sabitri urges Tara to stay in school. “If you are uneducated, people will look down on you. To survive, you are forced to accept crumbs thrown down from a rich man’s table. How can such a woman ever brighten the family name?”

Before We Visit the Goddess opens in Kolkata, India, in 1995, with Sabitri’s epistolary plea to Tara. Deftly blended with third-person narrative, the letter reveals Sabitri’s own ambitions, missteps, and shame, as well as the guts and hard work it took for Sabitri to ensure that her daughter, Bela – Tara’s mother – would have the opportunity to become educated and stand on her own feet.

When Sabitri lays down her pen, poet Divakaruni shifts the focus to 1963 and eleven-year-old Bela’s lonely, sometimes dreamlike existence with her quarrelling parents in Assam, India. Then, leaving Bela in a hospital bed feeling “a shift in the air, an imminent storm,” Divakaruni takes the reader to 1998 and Tara’s unsettled life in Houston.

This switchback journey from 1963 to 2020, between India and Texas, delivered in richly nuanced narratives, immerses the reader in the unforgettable lives of Sabitri, Bela, Tara, and the friends, lovers, and strangers who change their lives. In exquisitely wrought interwoven stories, each woman finds love, whether romantic, platonic, or filial; each makes an irrevocable choice based on love – or its detritus; and each must one day come to terms with feelings “as unambiguous as a knife” when confronted with the consequences of her choice.

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Review of Before We Visit the Goddess by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

Before We Visit the Goddess

by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

A moving, sometimes surprising story that examines the fallibility present in all of us as individuals, Before We Visit the Goddess is one of the briefest multi-generational tales I’ve ever tackled. Indeed, initially I was sceptical that Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni could tell three women’s stories in just over 200 pages. Fall On Your Knees , probably my gold standard for multi-generational storytelling, clocks in at twice that length. Yet I had faith in CBD’s writing—I cannot believe it has been six years since I read The Palace of Illusions . I recognized her name and her style as soon as I saw this book on the library’s New Books shelf, and I knew I had to get it.

CBD accomplishes the multi-generational feat through narrative and stylistic choices that won’t work for everyone. This is a novel that jumps around in time a lot. Now, I’m a fan of straightforward, linear storytelling for the most part, with perhaps the occasional flashback for good expository and dramatic effect. So consider that when I compliment this novel on its disjointed narrative. You might almost say that CBD structures the story around the development of theme rather than plot—to say that it has an overall plot at all might be inaccurate—and while this can go horrendously wrong, I think it works very well here. The result is an intense study of three characters and the balancing act between the choices they make and the circumstances their lives thrust them into.

It’s intriguing to see CBD tease out the similarities among the three women. Sabitri, Bela, and Tara are all stubborn and driven to achieve their own goals. Each is intelligent and passionate about what interests her. Each chafes at the restrictions that constrain her, owing to her gender and class and race, within her time period. Although these women do not get along with each other, do not often see eye-to-eye regarding each other’s beliefs and decisions, they do so from a position of their own making. By showing us each woman’s experiences and crises, CBD helps us to understand why each one feels the way she does and judges the others accordingly.

So in this way, Before We Visit the Goddess reminds us that each person has their own story. That might seem obvious, especially when it comes to fictional characters, but I think it’s an easy fact for us to forget in daily life. How many of us hastily judge our parents, or coworkers, especially those who are older than us or who come from very different backgrounds? We smirk at their quaint ideas, frown at their socially-awkward or politically incorrect statements. We occasionally lack empathy , not because we are broken or defective, but simply because we are worn out by the challenges of our own lives. So it behoves us to stop, to think before we act or speak, to consider why someone else is acting the way they are. Conduct, rational or irrational, is typically the consequence of cumulative experiences. And while that doesn’t excuse bad conduct, it does shed light onto why we don’t always get along.

And so CBD shows us why empathy is so important. With each section, I felt sympathy for each of the women’s struggles. I saw how hard it was for Sabitri to build her business from the ground up following her husband’s death, the way she had to wrap herself in armour and refuse to let herself love or be too vulnerable. I saw how Bela, resentful of Sabitri’s inattentiveness, allowed herself to become infatuated with a man who promised more than he was able to give. Watching Bela’s friendship with Kenneth, and the way the two of them judge and misjudge each other, was easily one of my favourite parts of the book. I also enjoyed seeing Tara confront Bela on the eve of the latter’s move to an assisted living facility, that climactic discovery of the letter from Sabitri, and the tears and talk that resulted.

The ending of Before the Goddess is not much of an ending, as one might expect given the narrative’s non-linear structure. Nevertheless, the final scenes are at least fulfilling. We get a confrontation, and we get explanations as well as recriminations. It’s a little bit soapy, I suppose, but only in a good way. Like I said earlier, I don’t always—maybe seldom—like novels with this kind of structure, but CBD pulls it off. It’s a grand demonstration that you don’t need hundreds of pages of expositions and scenes in order to deliver character development; if you choose just the right moments, you can let the reader fill in the blanks.

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Submitting a book for review, write the editor, you are here:, before we visit the goddess.

There is something exciting about watching the pieces of a puzzle fall into place, even if you are not making the actual moves. And there is something satisfying about seeing characters in a novel you have grown to love become more than you had hoped. In BEFORE WE VISIT THE GODDESS, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni’s 16th novel, four generations of one family pass on the losses and misjudgments of one mother to her daughter, to her daughter, to her daughter.

The story begins with the decision of Durga to push her daughter, Sabitri, into getting an education, something she herself had always wanted. This leap toward a new life, as Divakaruni tells us, begins with a tray of sweets. Durga was legendary in her village for sweet delicacies served at parties, weddings and family dinners, and her genius at cooking had given her some cache with the upper class. She ingeniously convinces a wealthy, selfish woman in Kolkata to pay for Sabitri’s college as long as she earned good grades. Sabitri settles into schoolwork and a very isolated life, and she also falls in love with the young son of her benefactor. Unfortunately, Sabitri misjudges many things, and she is summarily dismissed from the situation with nothing but a satchel of her old clothing.

"A completely satisfying conclusion does not happen that often --- and a surprising and touching ending is even more rare. Divakaruni allows the last segment...to be both richly emotional and enlightening."

This embarrassing failure shapes her life, and a discovery of who she was before she married and became a beloved wife and mother shapes the lives of her daughter Bela and granddaughter Tara. Divakaruni weaves the near past with the distant past and brings us to the present, all in a few chapters spanning over 50 years. She emphasizes the extraordinary importance of heritage and family stories, repeating the proverb Good daughters are fortunate lamps, brightening the family’s name. Wicked daughters are firebrands, blackening the family’s fame .The truth of this saying is reflected in the relationships among Sabitri, Bela and Tara.

Through a collection of characters interacting over many years, including a young man whose lover left him because it just didn’t feel right, Divakaruni asks us: “What is more painful? The misplaced past or the runaway future?” When Tara must accompany a traveling Indian to a Meenakshi temple in Pearland, Texas, the visitor placates the old priest by claiming her as a member of his own family. She is surprised but discovers she needed that connection. “Without a birth chart, how would you know who you really were? Adrift in the universe, how would you navigate your life?” Divakaruni also invites us to imagine if a disappearing magician even matters. N.B. he does.

A completely satisfying conclusion does not happen that often --- and a surprising and touching ending is even more rare. Divakaruni allows the last segment, “A Thousand Words: 2020,” to be both richly emotional and enlightening.

Reviewed by Jane Krebs on April 22, 2016

Before We Visit the Goddess by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

• Publication Date: April 25, 2017
• Genres: Fiction , Women's Fiction
• Paperback: 240 pages
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• ISBN-10: 1476792011
• ISBN-13: 9781476792019

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Before We Visit the Goddess by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

• Publication Date: April 25, 2017
• Genres: Fiction , Women's Fiction
• Paperback: 240 pages
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• ISBN-10: 1476792011
• ISBN-13: 9781476792019
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Book summary and reviews of Before We Visit the Goddess by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

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Before We Visit the Goddess

by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

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A beautiful, powerful new novel from the bestselling, award-winning author of Sister of My Heart and The Mistress of Spices about three generations of mothers and daughters who must discover their greatest source of strength in one another - a masterful, brilliant tale of a family both united and torn apart by ambition and love.

The daughter of a poor baker in rural Bengal, India, Sabitri yearns to get an education, but her family's situation means college is an impossible dream. Then an influential woman from Kolkata takes Sabitri under her wing, but her generosity soon proves dangerous after the girl makes a single, unforgiveable misstep. Years later, Sabitri's own daughter, Bela, haunted by her mother's choices, flees abroad with her political refugee lover - but the America she finds is vastly different from the country she'd imagined. As the marriage crumbles and Bela is forced to forge her own path, she unwittingly imprints her own child, Tara, with indelible lessons about freedom, heartbreak, and loyalty that will take a lifetime to unravel. In her latest novel, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni explores the complex relationships between mothers and daughters, and the different kinds of love that bind us across generations. Before We Visit the Goddess captures the gorgeous complexity of these multi-generational and transcontinental bonds, sweeping across the twentieth century from the countryside of Bengal, India, to the streets of Houston, Texas - an extraordinary journey told through a sparkling symphony of voices.

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"A novel of quiet but deeply affecting moments." - Kirkus "Divakaruni's gracefully insightful, dazzlingly descriptive, and covertly stinging tale illuminates the opposition women must confront, generation by generation, as they seek both independence and connection." - Booklist "Sparkling writer's writer Divakaruni, winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Award for Mistress of Spices , offers a new novel featuring a poor baker's daughter in India, named Sabitri, who dreams the impossible dream of obtaining a college education." - Library Journal

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Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni Author Biography

© Anand Divakaruni

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni is an award-winning and bestselling author, activist, and professor. Her work has been published in over fifty magazines, including The Atlantic and The New Yorker , and included in The Best American Short Stories and The O. Henry Prize Stories . Her books have been translated into twenty-nine languages, including Dutch, Hebrew, Bengali, Russian, and Japanese. Several have been used for campus-wide reads and made into films and plays. She teaches at the University of Houston.

Author Interview Link to Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni's Website

Name Pronunciation Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni: chi-TH-rah ban-ERH-jee deewah-karoonee

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Before We Visit the Goddess Audible Audiobook – Unabridged

A beautiful, powerful new novel from the best-selling, award-winning author of Sister of My Heart and The Mistress of Spies about three generations of mothers and daughters who must discover their greatest source of strength in one another - a masterful, brilliant tale of a family both united and torn apart by ambition and love.

The daughter of a poor baker in rural Bengal, India, Sabitri yearns to get an education, but her family's situation means college is an impossible dream. Then an influential woman from Kolkata takes Sabitri under her wing, but her generosity soon proves dangerous after the girl makes a single unforgivable misstep.

Years later, Sabitri's own daughter, Bela, haunted by her mother's choices, flees abroad with her political refugee lover - but the America she finds is vastly different from the country she'd imagined. As the marriage crumbles and Bela is forced to forge her own path, she unwittingly imprints her own child, Tara, with indelible lessons about freedom, heartbreak, and loyalty that will take a lifetime to unravel.

In her latest novel, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni explores the complex relationships between mothers and daughters and the different kinds of love that bind us across generations. Before We Visit the Goddess captures the gorgeous complexity of these multigenerational and transcontinental bonds, sweeping across the 20th century from the countryside of Bengal, India, to the streets of Houston, Texas - an extraordinary journey told through a sparkling symphony of voices.

• Listening Length 7 hours and 54 minutes
• Author Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
• Narrator Sneha Mathan, see all
• Audible release date April 19, 2016
• Language English
• Publisher Blackstone Audio, Inc.
• ASIN B01DTC14M8
• Version Unabridged
• Program Type Audiobook
• See all details

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Customers find the narrative provocative, satisfying, and hopeful. They also appreciate the diverse, well-developed characters.

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Customers find the narrative provocative, engaging, and simple. They also say the plot is realistic and compelled them by the story of survival. Customers also say that the books are a treat and a challenge that need to be savored to appreciate.

"...The ending is realistic and a great point to end . (I just need like 4 more generations and clarification on certain events please)..." Read more

"...The plot is simple and would almost be a comedy of errors if the results weren’t so frequently tragic...." Read more

"...That said, Before We Visit The Goddess is a thought provoking book with emotional resonance - well worth reading." Read more

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Before We Visit the Goddess

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Table of Contents

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• Rave and Reviews

About The Book

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About The Author

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni is the author of sixteen books, including Oleander Girl , The Mistress of Spices , Sister of My Heart , Palace of Illusions , One Amazing Thing , and Before We Visit the Goddess. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker , The Atlantic Monthly , and The New York Times , and has won, among other prizes, an American Book Award. Born in India, she currently lives in Texas and is the McDavid professor of Creative Writing at the University of Houston.

Product Details

• Publisher: Simon & Schuster (April 25, 2017)
• Length: 240 pages
• ISBN13: 9781476792019

Browse Related Books

• Fiction > Family Life
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Raves and Reviews

“Emotionally accessible…[Divakaruni] balances the ache of separation with the thrills of independence and self-discovery…her characteristic passion, nerve and insight into the troubled soul are here in full.”

– The Wall Street Journal

“Divakaruni proves herself adept with all the tools in the writer’s toolbox…Divakaruni makes use of two major writerly tools that seldom go together — tragic drama, and screwball comedy. What’s more, she finds entirely fresh ways to mete out the tropes of the South Asian immigrant story…hilarity deepens and clarifies the story’s dark tones…an heirloom tapestry.”

– The Miami Herald

“ Before We Visit the Goddess is full of different voices, going back and forth in time, with beautifully written chapters that could stand on their own as short stories but add layer upon layer of complication, wonder, humanity and empathy when joined together…Divakaruni builds her female characters as multidimensional — highly complex, intelligent and nobody’s doormat… Divakaruni guides us along their journeys with beautiful writing, surprising laughter and a truly memorable ending…I can’t recommend this book enough. When it comes to fiction, Divakaruni is a new goddess on the Texas landscape.”

– The Austin American Statesman

“Divakaruni elegantly leads the reader through the twists and turns of life given the complications of culture, family expectations, and words left unsaid…the writing was crisp and clear. The characters were realistic and the dialogue believable. The story explores the dynamics of mothers and daughters caught in the cross-hairs of cultural and generation differences, as well as the complications of expectations, believed or real… Before We Visit the Goddess will leave the reader wondering about the relationship they have with their parents and what should be said before it is too late.”

– The Portland Book Review

“A novel about female strength and ambition and how one mother’s decision can affect the lives of her family for generations to come.”

“Takes readers on an exotic, visceral journey beginning in the mango and saffron-scented kitchens of 1950s India and ending in present day Houston, Texas.”

– The Santa Cruz Sentinel

"Three generations of headstrong Bengali women, their passions, secrets, regrets and mysteries, come to life through Divakaruni’s storytelling wizardry… Divakaruni brings us from the poor villages to the upper crust urban families, from India to Texas, to show how three courageous women struggle toward independence.”

"The best storytellers always keep you coming back. They have their unique signatures, a unique voice, that enchants the reader and draws them back to listen to one story, then the next and then the one after that. Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni is one such masterful story smith. I am done with reading Before We Visit The Goddess for now, but I keep thinking about the characters, and I know that a re-reading is in store for the future.”

– The Reading Desk

“Divakaruni has created characters to be embraced despite their difficulties with each other; learned from when they stumble and fall; and celebrated as the picked themselves up again. There is grace and compassion in her writing as emotions spike and subside. Life-changing disappointments are tempered with kindness, and at no time does the author chastise a character for her imperfections.”

– India Currents

“[Divakaruni is] one of my favorite recent discoveries. Before We Visit the Goddess is full of different voices, going back and forth in time, with beautifully written chapters that could stand on their own as short stories but add layer upon layer of complication, wonder, humanity and empathy when joined together.”

– Austin 360

“The always enchanting and enlightening Divakaruni spins another silken yet tensile saga about the lives of women in India and as immigrants in America…Divakaruni’s gracefully insightful, dazzlingly descriptive, and covertly stinging tale illuminates the opposition women must confront, generation by generation, as they seek both independence and connection."

– Booklist (Starred Review)

“Richly drawn characters…a novel of quiet but deeply affecting moments.”

– Kirkus Reviews

“An extraordinary journey told through a sparkling symphony of male and female voices."

– Indo American News

"There are few writers who get the setting, characters and story pitch perfect, like Divakaruni does, every single time. Before We Visit the Goddess is no exception. Brilliantly magical, lyrical and powerful, it is in keeping with the tradition Divakaruni has made of capturing the Kolkata spirit and the strength of its women. A richly woven tapestry of three generations of ancestresses, goddesses and women… Divakaruni's finest work yet, given its polished writing and intense, passionate characters.”

– India Today

"This book turned out to be the perfect palate cleanser…for the burgeoning bright glory of summer.The greatest strength of the book is Divakaruni’s three unapologetically complicated, fierce female protagonists.”

– Hyphen Magazine

“Masterful.”

– ReadItForward.com

“I will never forget Sabitri, Bela, and Tara: grandmother, mother, and daughter after my own heart. Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni cycles through generations of time, until we come to know our ancestresses — and the goddess. A lovely book.”

– Maxine Hong Kingston, author of I Love a Broad Margin to My Life

“Tender, bittersweet, beautifully wrought tales about love and longing, exile and loneliness. I was reminded of the songs of separation sung by Bhojpuri women: Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni discovers new nuances in the ‘biraha’ that creeps into the lives of migrants.”

– Amitav Ghosh, author of The Glass Palace

Awards and Honors

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