Book review: The Mistress of Bhatia House By Sujatha Massey
The woman of substance returns
The Mistress of Bhatia House by Sujatha Massey, the newest book in the Perveen Mistry series, is set in pre-Independence India, has a clutch of interesting female characters, and draws the reader into a world that is enjoyably brush-stroked as well as focussed at the same time.
This book follows The Widows of Malabar Hill, The Satarpur Moonstone and The Bombay Prince. Massey is the author of fourteen novels, two novellas and many short stories, and has won many literary awards including the Agatha Award (named for that most famous of mystery writers), Lefty and Macavity Awards, and the Mary Higgins Clark Prize.
The Mistress of Bhatia House starts with the Who’s Who of 1920s Bombay society at a tea party. A ripe setting for a murder in a whodunit, you’d think. What you get instead, is a wonderfully detailed look at complex relationships within families and across class hierarchies, the goings-on in society, and the politics attending the cultural milieu of the time. The murder, when it does happen, almost doesn’t matter because by then, we are quite involved in this microcosm of a buzzing world.
A young woman working as a maid gets arrested on seemingly flimsy charges, and our heroine (Bombay’s only female solicitor) Perveen Mistry comes to the rescue. Perveen`s got a lot on her plate as it is, navigating a changed relationship with her sister-in-law, a judge who does not appreciate interchanges in court with women, a forbidden romantic relationship, as well as a challenging case with a lot of potential suspects. However, she emerges (again) as a delightfully engaging protagonist.
Despite exploring difficult themes of class, caste, gender, abortion, and even post-partum depression, Sujatha Massey does so with a light hand. There is no shying away from the realities of life but also, there is no wallowing in the problems that already exist. Perveen takes everything on, finds the going difficult at times, but gets down to resolving the problems she can, as all smart, enterprising heroines must do. All in all, I’d say, go on, put this book on your TBR list.
The Mistress of Bhatia House by Sujatha Massey. Penguin Random House India. Rs 499. 414 pages.
This appeared in The Hindu`s Literary Review page on 17 December 2023.
Sheila Kumar • December 17, 2023