The Binding Vine - Tapa blanda

"Chekhovian... Deshpande's story of a woman who loses a daughter is linked to the politics of India and its tradition of patriarchy." --Baltimore Sun

"Veteran Indian writer Shashi Deshpande lays out the common threads of female experience." --Kirkus Reviews

"Haunted by fears, secrets, and deep grief... Tremendously sympathetic." --Washington Post

"The river of prose travels and you are borne along with it, effortlessly, slowly. Until you realize that you are not moving towards any particular plot-destination; you are simply traveling with a splendid writer." --Ashok Banker, Femina (India)

"There can be no vaulting over time," thinks Urmila, the narrator of Shashi Deshpande's profound and soul-stirring novel. "We have to walk every step of the way, however difficult or painful it is; we can avoid nothing." After the death of her baby, Urmila finds her own path difficult to endure. But through her grief, she is drawn into the lives of two very different women--one her long-dead mother-in-law, a thwarted writer, the other a young woman who lies unconscious in a hospital bed. And it is through these quiet, unexpected connections that Urmi begins her journey toward healing.

The miracle of The Binding Vine, and of Shashi Deshpande's deeply compassionate vision, is that out of this web of loss and despair emerge strand of life and hope--a binding vine of love, concern, and connection that spreads across chasms of time, social class, and even death. In moving and exquisitely understated prose, Deshpande renders visible the extraordinary endurance and grace concealed in women's everyday lives.