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Flame Tree Road
Flame Tree Road
Flame Tree Road
Audiobook10 hours

Flame Tree Road

Written by Shona Patel

Narrated by Neil Shah

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

4/5

()

About this audiobook

From the acclaimed author of Teatime for the Firefly comes the story of a man with dreams of changing the world, who finds himself changed by love 

1870s India. In a tiny village where society is ruled by a caste system and women are defined solely by marriage, young Biren Roy dreams of forging a new destiny. When his mother suffers the fate of widowhoodshunned by her loved ones and forced to live in solitary penanceBiren devotes his life to effecting change. 

Biren's passionate spirit blossoms as wildly as the blazing flame trees of his homeland. With a law degree, he goes to work for the government to pioneer academic equality for girls. But in a place governed by age-old conventions, progress comes at a price, and soon Biren becomes a stranger among his own countrymen. 

Just when his vision for the future begins to look hopeless, he meets Maya, the independent-minded daughter of a local educator, and his soul is reignited. It is in her love that Biren finally finds his home, and in her heart that he finds the hope for a new world.
LanguageEnglish
Release dateJun 30, 2015
ISBN9781488200021
Author

Shona Patel

Shona Patel, the daughter of an Assam tea planter, drew upon her personal observations and experiences to create the vivid characters and setting for Teatime for the Firefly. An honors graduate in English literature from Calcutta University, Ms. Patel has won several awards for creative writing and is a trained graphic and architectural designer. Teatime for the Firefly is her debut novel.

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Reviews for Flame Tree Road

Rating: 3.75 out of 5 stars
4/5

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  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I really enjoyed the middle of this book best - it started out slow, but got better, and then towards the end, it felt like the author was more setting up the characters for another chapter than leading towards a conclusion. And yes, when I checked the author's page, it turns out this book was written as a prequel to another book. Still, I found the story of nineteenth-century India and Bengal interesting and the characters stood out. I was frustrated by a couple of the storylines, especially Estelle, who appears primarily in the middle of the book then disappears until the very end. Overall, an interesting book with valuable insight into colonial India.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Flame Tree Road was recommended to me by my husband’s grandmother, and I immediately put it on my wishlist because I was interested in reading Indian historical fiction. I was pretty excited to receive it recently as part of LibraryThing’s secret Santa book exchange.The protagonist of Flame Tree Road is Biren, a boy from a small Indian village in the 1870s who grows up to be a Cambridge educated lawyer crusading for women’s rights in India. There isn’t really much of a plot, the book is just a series of vignettes from his life and the lives of people he knows, told from an omniscient perspective. We follow him from childhood to his eighties, although the bulk of the book takes place when he is a young man.I enjoyed how atmospheric this book was, it really drew you into the sights, sounds, and smells of its setting. You feel like you’re actually there with the characters. However, the book took the same poetic tone towards descriptions of people, though, and I didn’t like that as much, it was a little bit too romantic for me.Biren was a good character, but he didn’t seem to have any flaws. There are even multiple scenes from the viewpoint of people that meet him whose entire point is how impressed they are by Biren. Secondary characters are not very fleshed out – they’re only described in how they relate to Biren, and don’t seem like real people. Not every book needs to have strong characters, but since this one didn’t have much of a plot, I was hoping for some character growth or change. This especially frustrated me in regards to the events at the end of the book – given how perfect Biren seemed to be, I didn’t really buy some of the events that happened to him, they seem like they could have been preventable. And if they weren’t, there needed to be some flaw in Biren’s character to explain why he wasn’t able or willing to take action.Overall, it was pretty light reading, and it was different from the kind of book I usually read, so I enjoyed it.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I received an ARC of this book through Goodreads in exchange for an honest review.This book is a prequel to Teatime for the Firefly, but can also be read on its own.This is a beautiful novel that has well-rounded characters, an interesting storyline, and outstanding writing. I absolutely love it.I have not read Patel's first book, Teatime for the Firefly, but after reading this one, I am definitely going to. Patel has an amazing writing style and writes with such pure emotion. Her characters feel so real and you can't help but love them.I also really enjoyed the plot lines relating to women's rights in multiple cultures and how the characters view women. These issues were seamlessly woven into the story, creating interesting discussions about gender and equality between the characters. Simply amazing. I cannot wait to read more by Patel.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Shona Patel’s second novel offers a view of late 19th to early 20th century British Colonial India through the eyes of a brilliant young man of humble birth who makes good due to the vision of his educated father and the patronage of British officials. Biren Roy grows up in a river village in Bengal, where his father works in a jute mill for a British company and tutors his sons in his spare time. Tragedy and good fortune propel Biren to success as a student at Cambridge and then a lawyer in India. Along the way, he never loses his goal of improving the condition of women in India, a goal shaped in part by his father’s enlightened attitudes and his own sympathy for his mother, his wife, and an outcast widow who lives by a temple. While his motives are noble, at times his attitudes seem too modern for his era. Like a duck who sheds water, Biren seems surprisingly free from the biases of the 19th century, whether those of India or of England. The novel also offers a relatively uncomplicated view of British Colonialism: as if British laws, education, and justice have come to rescue India from the murk of superstition. As Biren states, “But remember the mighty power of the British rule can be used for our good, as well” (370). The British characters are portrayed as avuncular patrons, albeit class-conscious, profit-driven, and unpredictable.As its title might suggest, Flame Tree Road is studded with love stories: between his mother and father, Biren and his wife, as well as with an upper class English woman. This personal story takes the lead, while Biren’s reforms and advocacy for Indian women remain in the background. India itself is described in rich detail for its interesting foods, colorful clothing, exotic rituals, and crafts such as pottery-making and weaving. Patel is at her best when the story veers into tragedy--it is then that the characters’ emotions and the complexity of Indian society come to life. There are also some nice scenes of friendship and intimacy, such as when Biren’s mother Shibani has her hair oiled and washed by her neighbor. Or when Biren finds in his wife’s trunk half of a lost Russian nesting doll he had given his daughter, a discovery that triggers both hope and grief. Symbols like this one-- prophecies, flame trees, cobras and even a broken umbrella--help heighten suspense and unify the story in a book that covers almost a century. Despite the successes in his life, which come in part from British education and patronage, Biren eventually pays a price for his difference from his own society. Near the end of the book, a holy man’s prophecy comes fatefully true, leaving the reader to wonder which is more powerful: reason or superstition.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    In her debut, Tea Time for the Firefly, Shona Patel touched on the plight of widows in India of the last century. In the second, Flame Tree Road, she takes that topic a step further and makes their welfare the spur that motivates her protagonist, Biren Roy, to get a top-notch British education, and become a lawyer. Early on, Biren sees first-hand what befalls those unfortunate women who become widowed and are cast aside, particularly in the character of Charulata, widowed at just thirteen: how she loses her place and voice and is shunted to the outskirts of Indian society, becoming almost a ghost. His own mother, when widowed, can no longer visit her best friend, can no longer eat with the family, no longer cook for her sons, or enjoy the same foods, and is forced to live in a shed, with little contact with her small sons.The initial setting for Flame Tree Road is rural; villages, teashops and waterways make up the locale where the first part of the story unfolds. The flavor and pace are an immersion in 19th century rural India’s color and atmosphere. We meet the men who ply the rivers and streams, making their scant livings moving supplies and people—earthy locals, Dadu, Chickpea and Kanai, who gather at teashops to smoke bidis and bemoan their lack of sons, and the burden and expense of useless daughters.“I have three daughters!” grumbled Dadu. “I had to sell my cow to get the last one married off. Marrying off daughters will pick you clean, like a crow to a fishbone.”Patel lulls the reader with charming scenery and characters who are filled with good intent toward each other, and which belie the violence and betrayals of the story’s end.Educated first, at Saint John’s Mission, a Catholic school for boys, Biren receives the broad education that separates him from the superstitions, outdated beliefs, and narrow expectations of his childhood country environment.“There were twelve new students in Biren’s class, aged eight to ten. None of them had ever lived away from home and they all had the same look of terrified kittens abandoned under a bridge.”“Back in the village, he would never have had the opportunity to learn leatherwork, carpentry, or metallurgy, as they were the occupations of the lower castes.”“Performing simple physical tasks gave him a powerful sense of joy that was no different, really, from singing a powerful hymn in church. It would only be many years later, after studying the Bhagawad Gita, that Biren would learn that he had accidentally stumbled upon the spiritual principal of Karma yoga.”Biren travels next to England, to attend Cambridge, where he hopes to “study law, and effect change from the inside”. There he meets Estelle, a young woman pressing the barriers of female equality by wearing pants, riding a bicycle, and secretly attending lectures dressed as a man. One of several great love stories embedded in the novel, the depiction of the relationship that develops between these two characters is subtle and skillfully written on an emotionally honest level.Back in India, Biren searches for and finds a job with the British government, where he quickly learns he will be expected to be the middle-man between the British, and those he grew up knowing. All this puts him at odds with the locals, and leads to considerable stress and disillusionment. The British are depicted as both benefactors, and at times, totally clueless (as no doubt they often were, in this ancient society, with its invisible (to them) layers and incomprehensible customs). This is done well, with an even-handed, God’s eye view, enabling the reader to see and sympathize with all sides.Patel administers an eye-watering and subversive poke-in-the-eye at blind adherence to religious form and traditional observance in the somewhat rushed ending. It would have been interesting to see this developed further. I suspect the publisher (Mira, a division of Harlequin) of maybe being not much interested in seeing its authors take the time (or word count) to write about such issues, a result of this current environment, no doubt, where commerce drives art. Patel’s work displays both the insight, and the skill, to handle deep topics. It’s a pity that authors of novels which are to be read by women are perhaps not encouraged to delve too deeply into important subjects, and ironic, as well, given that the main theme of this one is women’s suffrage. One has to ask: why is an author like Khaled Hosseini, who writes about his native Afghanistan and whose themes center on family, given reviews by the likes of the Washington Post, and The Guardian, and granted years (five, to be specific) to write his novels? His work is no more (or less) important than Patel’s. Could it be because he is a man? Do we take the writing of men more seriously?The end of Flame Tree Road, though rushed feeling, was nevertheless interesting – there is some ambiguity about an important character’s demise, one that left me wondering if a murder hadn’t been committed. I would have liked to know more about all these characters. The end left me with questions.But, that kind of echoes real life, where tragedy and loss so often occur unexpectedly, and like Biren Roy, we are left with few explanations, and nothing but the determination to pick ourselves up and continue on.Steeped in history, and told in a mix of narrative, diary entries, and correspondence, Flame Tree Road covers the decades between 1871 and 1950, though most of the action takes place in the 19th century. 393 pages.I highly recommend it to lovers of history, India, and good yarns.