" This is a novel about status and how people are born into either a life of luxury or a life of servitude. The story opens in Sri Lanka with Thara, a spoiled little rich girl and her servant, Latha. Latha thinks Thara is her friend, but Thara and her mother definetly do not treat Latha like a friend. They boss her around, parade their fancy clothes and shoes in front of her, deny her even the smallest luxuries like bar soap, make her bathe in a well, and sleep on the floor. Latha is treated like a slave. The novel follows this household as the girls grow up with Thara getting everything and Latha getting nothing. Latha has sexual relations with Thara's childhood crush, resulting in a baby and a scandal that changes the entire household's life forever. After being sent to a convent where she gives up her baby she (for some crazy reason that I cannot yet understand!), goes back to be Thara's servant again. Now Thara has her own household, but except for having a different "master" and "mistress" Latha is treated much the same. She proceeds to raise Thara's children while at the same time pining for the one she herself gave away and aborting another. Except for agreeing to sleep with a man here and there, Latha never makes any decisions of her own and never tries to better herself or change her life in any way. She is simply a servant. The most courageous thing she does is slap and spit on the "master's" mother.
Meanwhile, every alternating chapter is about a woman named Biso that lived ten years earlier. (NOTE: The actual years are never identified. You must either have a familiarity with Sri Lanka's political history or Princess Diana's to figure out what time zone this takes place in.) Biso is running away from her abusive husband that murdered her lover. While we learn Latha's entire life history, Biso spends most of the entire novel on a train. Between reminscing about her past, watching her three children, and purchasing food from miscellaneous vendors every other page, bad things happen to Biso. There is a connection to Biso of ten years previous and to the current Latha. I had it figured out halfway into the book.
To sum it up, this was an entertaining book, but if you like strong heroines, I would skip it. Latha grows rather infuriating, constantly doting after Thara and allowing her life of servitude to continue. Biso makes some aggravating and obviously stupid decisions that change the course of her and her children's histories, and not for the better. "
— Tara, 1/1/2014