Marriage of a Thousand Lies

September 4, 2017
An unusual marriage of convenience sets in motion Sindu’s perceptive, subtle, and provocative first novel. Lucky, born Lakshmi, is a second-generation Tamil Sri Lankan who grew up in a wealthy suburb of Boston. She meets Indian Kris when he is on a student visa at the college they both attend, where she recognizes him as “the only other South Asian queer on campus.” The two realize that marriage will placate parents suspicious of their sexuality, permit Kris to stay in the country, and allow them to conduct their affairs in private. Lucky’s life gets complicated when her elderly grandmother is injured in a fall and she has to return to the family home to help care for her. Here, she reunites with her high school lover, Nisha, who is about to enter into an arranged marriage. Sindu’s characters, including Lucky’s divorced parents, are all believably complicated and compassionately observed, and she anchors the central tension between individuality and ties to family in concrete scenes from Lucky’s life, whether she’s learning to play rugby with some of Nisha’s friends or helping Nisha get dressed for her engagement party. The author’s quirky sense of humor and matter-of-fact take on a potentially fraught situation keep the tone of the novel deceptively light, resulting in a moving and memorable story.

June 1, 2017
What do you do when your life is built on a lieyour marriage, your family relationships, your entire identity? The heroine of Sindu's fine debut, who goes by the Americanized name of Lucky (her birth name is Lakshmi), is a lesbian married to a gay Indian man, Kris (short for Krishna), and to make matters worse, her economic situation is also precarious: she is an unemployed millennial programmer. The child of immigrants from Sri Lanka, Lucky is caught in a double bind: Does she acquiesce or be true to herself? She wants to please her traditional family, especially her mother and grandmother, who want her to live the conventional life of a good brown daughter. Her feelings are further complicated when she learns that her first love, Nisha, is about to get married to someone she doesn't love. When Lucky's grandmother is injured in a fall, Lucky returns to her mother's home to be her grandmother's caretaker, and to confront her present and future. A timely tale with themes of immigration, free will, identity, and personal choice.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)