Manisha Jolie Amin - Dancing to the Flute

I have recently returned from 3 weeks in southern India and what a book to take with me to accompany me on my journey. This book is superb, lyrical, evocative, magical and spiritual. Manisha beautifully captures rural India, at it's best and worst. She does not balk at describing the poverty and inequality but has the rare quality of not sinking to the maudlin. She effortlessly creates pace in the background to send us on wishing to genuinely know what will happen. Her characters are full and well drawn, by the end of the book I felt I knew them well and was invested in their futures and lives.
Then throughout the book is the music, the flute, the Ragas, the hint of Krishna himself. It is this that makes the book soar. That and the feeling of hope, friendship and love.

This will make a superb reading group selection I have already ordered our copies for Bournemouth Libraries.