The Folded Earth

January 30, 2012
After her husband, Michael, dies in a mountain-climbing mishap, Maya flees to the tiny Himalayan town of Ranikhet to escape her past and find peace. While teaching English at a Christian school, she befriends her teenage neighbor and milk delivery girl, Charu, whose lover, Kundan, has recently left the village to work in Delhi. Though he sends Charu letters, she cannot read or write. Maya takes on the role of interlocutor initially, but soon begins teaching Charu so that she can continue the epistolary romance on her own. Meanwhile, Maya finds herself caught up in an unexpected love affair with her landlord’s nephew, Veer. Though she has acclimated well to life in the village (“I became a hill person who was only at peace where the earth rose and fell in waves like the sea”), the premature death of her husband still haunts her. Veer seems to be the key to overcoming her grief, but revelations of his past threaten the emotional enclave Maya has fashioned for herself in the lush Indian hills. Similar to the pace of life in the village, Roy’s follow-up to An Atlas of Impossible Longing is occasionally slow going but her musical writing and strong imagery compensate, and individual moments sparkle.

Starred review from June 25, 2012
In the Himalayas of northern India, Maya—whose husband recently died in a mountain-climbing accident—travels to the small town of Ranikhet to assume a teaching position and find solace. There she begins to teach a peasant named Charu to read and write—an effort to help the young girl secretly communicate with her lover, a cook employed in Delhi. But Maya’s efforts to find peace are quickly disrupted—by her past, an unexpected love affair, local politics, and sectarian violence. This audio edition is skillfully performed by Sneha Mathan, whose narration is crisp, engaging, and even slightly soothing. She creates a host of unique voices for the book’s characters, employing appropriate accents and dialects, deepening her voice for male characters, and ably capturing the essence of the diverse cast. A Free Press paperback.