Chitra Divakaruni’s hard-hitting story of a woman’s “disappearance” is told from her Indian-American husband’s point of view. After a year of denial, he accepts that she has left him. Their arranged marriage, although blessed with a son, had become intolerable for her. Years later, living in a nursing home and estranged from their son, he reflects on how much his wife must have hated him to leave the boy. The old man still fails to appreciate the effect his repression and sexual abuse would have had upon the poor woman! Themes: insensitivity, authoritarianism, marital rape.
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