Julia's Reviews > Bitter Sweets

(really 3.5 stars)

Interesting (although not gripping) narrative of three generations of a Bangladeshi/Pakistani family whose entire lives are based on lies. The story runs from the initial arranged marriage based on trickery to the suspicious birth of a daughter, to that daughter's own lies and dissembling from girlhood to middle age, to her sons' deceptions and hidden truths, all the while everyone telling themselves that the lies are necessary to keep the family together. Eventually all lies are exposed (some quickly, some take generations) but by the end I felt that the characters' lives were much more interesting with the deceptions than without, and there is only one character who is entirely truthful throughout the entire novel (you can tell which one it is by the character's name, blithely given with all the subtlety of a cartoon mallet on the head). Worth the read, though.