A River Sutra

By Gita Mehta

With imaginative lushness and narrative elan, Mehta provides a novel that combines Indian storytelling with thoroughly modern perceptions into the nature of love--love both carnal and sublime, treacherous and redeeming.

"Conveys a world that is spiritual, foreign, and entirely accessible."--Vanity Fair.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
• Release date: Feb 23, 2011
• ISBN: 9780307780997

Reviews for A River Sutra

[janerawoof · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A Government official in India is in charge of a Government Rest House--a sort of inn. He is told stories about various individuals: a Jain monk previously from a wealthy family; a music teacher; a courtesan searching for her lost daughter; an insane playboy; a River Minstrel and an anchorite who worships Shiva. All this takes place near the river Narmada, a place of spiritual pilgrimage to Hindus. Gorgeous, lush writing that taught me something of Indian culture.

[mojomomma_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

A series of tales set in India all centered on the Namada River. Not really short stories, but many of the chapter could stand on their own. Maybe its more like folktales? Didn't like it as much as I had hoped I would.

[bookconcierge · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

An office-worker turned inn-keeper is the central character. He runs a guesthouse on the banks of the Narmada River, India's holiest river. The stories are told by his guests. Lush, beautiful writing.

[astrologerjenny · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A beautiful set of interlocking stories about the Narmada, India’s holiest river. The main character is a bureaucrat who has retired to run a guesthouse on the banks of the Narmada, and the stories are told by those who cross his path.

[nandadevi_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Having read this book, and assembled my thoughts prepatory to putting them ´down on paper´ (as it were) it also passes through my mind whether I might be accused of doing something here akin to shooting Bambi. It certainly feels like it. I´d best explain. There is an exquisite premise to this novel, an Indian civil servant renounces ambition and takes up the spiritual life, acting as custodian of a small travellers guest house. The location is both culturally and visually rich and well served by Mehta´s beautiful scene setting. The structure is also as perfect as you could ever see in a novel, a sort of Chaucerian set of tales, of travellers passing through, confiding in the narrator who is not only the custodian of the lodge, but also a custodian or stories and (potentially) the spiritual heritage of the locale.So where did the wheels fall off? Well, there is almost no sense of the custodian´s ´sense of being´ or having changed through his abandonment of his former life. He has moved into a spiritual location (and a visually splendid one), but there is no ´internal relocation´ apparent to the reader. The custodian and the locale seems like an excuse to put the episodes before the reader rather than being part of the story. And the episodes read almost like extracts from lodge´s booking diary, ¨Yes, so and so coming on the 12th, under a curse and showing suicidal tendencies, probably won´t be requiring breakfast on the 13th¨. Gita Mehta is authentically Indian, but something not quite authentic nags at the corner of my mind. The dialog is frankly discordant. The voices of the characters (the pitch, the language, the nuances) seem to wander (from page to page) between India, London and New York. And the references to religious or historical matters reads at times more like a high school assignment - scrupulously correct, but somehow lifeless, with no connection to the inner life of the characters.So, visually beautiful, and potentially wonderful, but let down by a complete absence of character development and woeful dialog. I wasn´t sorry I read it. But noting what amazing potential it had, I was sorry that someone with more talent for character and dialog hadn´t written it.