Beautiful and enchanting ( )

Fifteen year old Vidya and her family, Amma, Appa, and Kitta, her brother,live in British occupied Bombay, India in 1941. She has led a carefree life unconstrained by the duties or something of young girls of her station as Brahmins. Her father, Appa, is a well-respected doctor who assists the injured in India’s struggle for independence, when he is brutally rendered brain damaged after being beaten by a British soldier at a protest march, Vidya and her family are forced to go live with her father’s family in Madras. Vidya feels responsible for this change in the family’s circumstance, especially since before the beating her father had promised that she could go to college. Her father’s older brother, Periappa, and his wife, Periamma, are very different from her parents and run a traditional household where the men are separated from the women and never eat together. They are caricatures of the evil aunt and uncle. Her cousin Malati, who is the same age as Vidya, can’t wait for her arranged marriage. While taking care of her Chinni chithi’s baby as one of her chores, Vidya sneaks up the stairs to the men’s wing and into the library. Vidya’s life revolves around school, her chores, music lessons with her cousin, the library and more chores. While in the library she meets her cousin Raman who treats her as an equal. This stiff coming of age tale in exotic India leaves many questions unanswered. For example, Appa’s character is insufficiently developed to give any indication that he would have such modern views about educating his daughter. The overuse of similes in the first half of the book is distracting. ( )

Before I start this review, I do have to say that I have met the author, and like her very much, but have tried to make this review fair and unbiased. Climbing the Stairs by Padma Venkatraman is a YA historical fiction about a fifteen-year-old girl named Vidya that takes place in India during the struggle for Indian independence and WWII. Outspoken and willful Vidya is excited about her future, but when her father is injured in a freedom rally, Vidya’s hopes of entering college are shattered when her family is forced to move in with her grandfather and his straight-laced, traditional household. Her only way to escape is to climb the stairs to her grandfather’s library where she is forbidden to go.

Vidya is a delightful protagonist, but at first she seems a little naïve and immature for her age. For example, in a strange scene in the first chapter, she is unable to identify a stain on her father’s shirt as blood, despite the fact that she is fifteen years old and the daughter of a physician. However, after witnessing a British officer brutally beat her father, she becomes a much more believable character as she struggles with guilt about her role in her father’s injury and shame about her father’s resulting brain damage. I also thought that a few of the interactions Vidya has with her love interest, Raman, are sometimes very awkward and her uncle’s family comes across as a little too mean to be realistic.

Despite these shortcomings, I would highly recommend this novel to anyone who is interested in in Indian history. The setting and time-period covered by this book are not often covered in American literature and especially not in such a truthful, open way. Sometimes I find that Indian-American authors tend to romanticize India and their novels read as odes to a perfect country where problems such as caste-based discrimination and sexism don’t seem to exist. However, through Vidya’s eyes, the author unflinchingly shows us her view of what it was like to live in a male-dominated society and where oppression was a fact of life. We see shocking events and difficult social problems portrayed honestly, and this important time in India’s history comes to life in a believable and interesting way.

3.5 stars.
A Young Adult book about India and the struggle for freedom from British rule, from the caste system, from the tradional roles for women. ( )

MSBA Nominee 2009-2010

I liked this one quite a lot. Set during WWII in India, Vidya has a relatively liberal upbringing in a family that believes in non-violent protesting. When an unfortunate accident occurs, she is forced to live with her uncle and his very conservative family, which means that she lives downstairs and is stuck there doing chores a good portion of the time, while the men live upstairs. I think to give away more than that will ruin the story. ( )