Hardcover
640 Pages, 6.51 x 9.25 x 1.54 in
November 20, 2009
Random House of Canada
0307356329
9780307356321
From the Publisher
In south India in 1896, ten-year old Sivakami is about to embark on
a new life. Hanumarathnam, a village healer with some renown as an
astrologer, has approached her parents with a marriage proposal. In
keeping with custom, he provides his prospective in-laws with his
horoscope. The problem is that his includes a prediction, albeit a
weak one, that he will die in his tenth year of marriage.
Despite the ominous horoscope, Sivakami's parents hesitate only
briefly, won over by the young man and his family's reputation as
good, upstanding Brahmins. Once married, Sivikami and Hanumarathnam
grow to love one another and the bride, now in her teens, settles
into a happy life. But the predictions of Hanumarathnam's horoscope
are never far from her new husband's mind. When their first child
is born, as a strategy for accurately determining his child's
astrological charts, Hanumarathnam insists the midwife toss a lemon
from the window of the birthing room the moment his child appears.
All is well with their first child, a daughter, Thangam, whose
birth has a positive influence on her father's astrological future.
But this influence is fleeting: when a son, Vairum, is born, his
horoscope confirms that his father will die within three
years.
Resigned to his fate, Hanumarathnam sets himself to the unpleasant
task of readying his household for his imminent death. Knowing the
hardships and social restrictions Sivakami will face as a Brahmin
widow, he hires and trains a servant boy called Muchami to help
Sivakami manage the household and properties until Vairum is of
age.
When Sivakami is eighteen, Hanumarathnam dies as predicted.
Relentless in her adherence to the traditions that define her
Brahmin caste, she shaves her head and dons the white sari of the
widow. With some reluctance, she moves to her family home to raise
her children under the protection of her brothers, but then
realizes that they are not acting in the best interests of her
children. With her daughter already married to an unreliable
husband of her brothers' choosing, and Vairum's future also at
risk, Sivakami leaves her brothers and returns to her marital home
to raise her family.
With the freedom to make decisions for her son's future, Sivakami
defies tradition and chooses to give him a secular education. While
her choice ensures that Vairum fulfills his promise, it also sets
Sivakami on a collision course with him. Vairum, fatherless in
childhood, childless as an adult, rejects the caste identity that
is his mother's mainstay, twisting their fates in fascinating and
unbearable ways.
From the Jacket
"Her narrative, refreshingly, is free of anachronism, and she has a
pleasing way of engaging the reader's senses….Of a piece with the
recent works of Vikram Seth, and reminiscent at times of García
Márquez-altogether a pleasure."
-Kirkus (starred review)
"What Viswanathan does remarkably well is give the reader a closeup
of India's history, culture, politics and landscape through the
domestic lens of one family. This is a rich, sensual book that uses
life itself as its plot....Reading it is an experience of
immersion. You feel as though you are right there in all the
teeming detail of life as Sivakami and her family know it. There is
a whole world here between two covers."
-National Post
"With its rich and complex background and often sharp insights,
The Toss of a Lemon is a valuable and evocative
work."
-Elaine Kalman Nave, author of Robert Weaver: Godfather of
Canadian Literature (Ottawa Citizen)
"Astonishing. Brilliant. Beautiful….Like the very best novels, at
its core, The Toss of A Lemon teaches us
about ourselves."
-January Magazine
"Lovers of Rohinton Mistry and Vikram Seth will want to get a hold
of this Brahmin family saga involving early marriage, early
widowhood and clashing values."
-The Vancouver Sun
"The Toss of a Lemon is a captivating novel that
in relating the story of one Indian woman and her family tells the
story of a changing society. Precisely and deftly written,
constantly interesting, morally serious yet sympathetic-I challenge
any reader to start reading this book and give up on it.
The Toss of a Lemon joins the company of great
novels on India."
-Yann Martel
"The Toss of a Lemon is a glorious feat, as
boisterously written as it is wholly
engrossing. It's about love - and cruelty - and how each
reverberate across the generations in one family. And
it is that rare thing, a novel that manages to be
both epic and intimate at the same time."
-Peter Orner, author of The Second Coming of Mavala
Shikongo
"In this, her debut novel, Padma Viswanathan performs a wondrous
balancing act of words. She sustains a vivid sense of the moment
while spanning decades, brings unforgettable individual characters
to life while recounting a saga of generations, and lays bare the
inner worlds of those characters while evoking an entire nation in
turmoil. Rich with sensual detail, The Toss of a
Lemon is the story of a community centred on tradition
during an era of upheaval and change. Above all, it is a moving and
deftly drawn portrait of a family."
-Alissa York, Giller-nominated author of Effigy
"The Toss of a Lemon gives readers the rare
opportunity to enter the life of a Brahmin widow, to live her norms
and routines and rituals as they have been lived by countless women
over thousands of years. Padma Viswanathan's remarkable achievement
is to capture the slow, stately pace of an 8,000-year-old culture
and yet keep her story moving briskly. I closed the book indebted
for this immersion in a world I could not have otherwise entered."
-Shyam Selvadurai, author of Funny Boy
About the Author
Padma Viswanathan is a fiction writer, playwright and journalist
from Edmonton, Alberta. Her writing awards include residencies at
the MacDowell Colony and the Banff Playwrights' Colony, and first
place in the 2006 Boston Review Short Story Contest. She
received her Creative Writing MA from Johns Hopkins and her MFA
from the University of Arizona, and lives with her family in
Fayetteville, Arkansas.