First Darling of the Morning

August 11, 2008
Freelance journalist Umrigar alternates between sweet and biting accounts of her middle-class Parsi upbringing in 1960s and 1970s Bombay. With a mixture of rawness and warmth, she recalls moments from her tumultuous childhood through her teenage years, and finally into her early 20s when she leaves India for the U.S. She describes her mother's strictness with her and other children (her mother doesn't think twice to strike disobedient kids with a cane), tempering these scenes with memories of the tight bond with her father as well as her Aunt Mehroo's unflappable love. As she encounters worker strikes and student protests, she begins to understand class differences and the gap between her privileged, private school background and India's poverty. In the end, Umrigar's memoir is colorful and moving.

August 15, 2008
Umrigar's fictional works ("Bombay Time; The Space Between Us; If Today Be Sweet") evoke nostalgia for a particular moment in India: the postcolonial but still preliberalization 1960s and 1970s, the period of Umrigar's childhood in Bombay. Persuasively re-creating voices and scenes, this memoir (first published in India in 2004) could almost be read as another novel. Umrigar builds a literary bridge between personal and historical truths. As she traces her over-the-top Parsi family life, complete with sadistic mother and Anglophile convent school against the backdrop of Bob Dylan ("the biggest influence on my life") and disillusionment, Umrigar is narrating not just her personal heartache but also that of a global middle-class cohort. American readers may not understand the Indian political context, but the underlying chords in this story about growing up and going away will certainly resonate. Recommended for all large public libraries as well as academic libraries that collect women's memoirs.Lisa Klopfer, Eastern Michigan Univ. Lib., Ypsilanti

Copyright 2008 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from September 1, 2008
A melancholy mood suffuses Indian author Umrigars eloquent coming-of-age memoir (after If Today Be Sweet, 2007). Born in Bombay to middle-class Parsi parents, smart, precocious Umrigar spent much of her childhood feeling out of place. She was very close to her gentle father and her beloved aunt, but her mother was menacing and cruel, frequently mocking her and beating her with a switch. Umrigars life changed when she met Jesse, a forward-thinkingand rebelliousyoung woman five years her senior, who introduced her to the wonders of literature and art. Umrigar soaked it all in, even shunning her familys privileged existence after reading Irving Stones Lust for Life (1934), a novel based on the life of Vincent Van Gogh. Umrigars upbringing in an apolitical family left her unprepared for the passion she felt after participating in a demonstration against the government. A sense of restlessness, combined with relentless family discord, fed her desire to escape to the U.S. The memoir ends with Umrigar at 21, departing for America, where she now works as a journalist and associate professor of English at Case Western Reserve University. But she has never forgotten her native land, brilliantly rendered in three critically acclaimed novels and now in this latest bracingly honest and bittersweet memoir.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2008, American Library Association.)