Queen of Dreams
Chitra Divakurani
(Reviewer - Rebecca Brown)
2004 Doubleday
ISBN: 0385506821

All-American Rakhi searches for the stories of her mother's life in India.

Rakhi is a struggling artist living in Berkeley, California. After a painful divorce, she must also compete with her ex-husband for their daughter's affections. Like all single mothers she must juggle her priorities especially now that the tea shop she founded with her friend is threatened by a franchise coffee house setting up business right across the street, & all the time frantic to find her artistic voice

Rakhi has always been vaguely aware of her mother's gift for interpreting dreams: her ability to foresee & guide others through their fates. Demonstrations of affection & those intimate things mother usually do, are not part of Rakhi's. Now her mother has been killed in a freak auto accident, & she wants to know more about her past. With her father's help, she sets out to decipher her mother's dream journals, hoping to uncover some insights into her parents life before they came to America. What happened when her mother found out she was pregnant with Rakhi, & why did her parents leave India? & how has her parents' past come back to haunt Rakhi in America? Then, Rakhi discovers that her daughter, Jona, has inherited her grandmother's gift. Will it control her daughter as it did her mother?

Queen of Dreams, alternates between passages from her mother's “Dream Journals” & Rakhi's frenetic life, & is a fascinating tale of self-discovery, told in a very different way. Within the mystery, suspense & the supernatural, Rakhi also learns more about her father & the man she married.

Queen of Dreams is richly woven & charged with scalding political overtones when the horrors of 9/11 ripple out to the West Coast, & Rakhi's heretofore unremarkable citizenship is questioned, as is those of her family & friends.

Be prepared for an entirely different world view. Chitra Divakurani's writing is impeccable & mesmerizing. I was entranced.

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni's work has appeared in The New Yorker; Atlantic Monthly, Ms, Zoetrope & Good Housekeeping. She teaches creative writing at the University of Houston & divides her time between Texas & California.

More from Chitra Divakurani:
The Mistress of Spices
Arranged Marriage
Sister of My Heart
The Vine of Desire
The Conch Bearer
The Unknown Errors of Our Lives
(08/29/04)

Rebecca