Two debut novels from fresh, vibrant voices portray heroines straddling two cultures. They offer readers cause for celebration.
Heidi W. Durrow's "The Girl Who Fell From the Sky," published in February, comes with impressive credentials: Its manuscript won the 2008 Barbara Kingsolver Bellwether Prize for Literature of Social Change and was published by Chapel Hill's prestigious Algonquin Press. "Secret Daughter," out last month, is UNC graduate Shilpi Somaya Gowda's less-heralded but not less praiseworthy effort.
Both novels concern young protagonists struggling to define themselves in an America that does not make allowances for the in-between. Rachel, Durrow's heroine, is the daughter of a Danish mother and African-American father, who meet while the father is in the Air Force. Gowda presents Asha, an orphan from India adopted by a white mother and Asian-Indian father.
Durrow skillfully parses the challenges of growing up mixed-race in America, where a "light-skinned-ed" black girl with blue eyes has trouble finding her place as well as her race. Rachel's Danish heritage adds further nuance. Her mother ("Mor") is mysteriously absent, but the Danish language she learned from Mor she remembers against her will ("...I find sounds within me I have not used in years: 'Taler du norsk?'")
The story is not just Rachel's. It is also that of her parents (in flashback) and the shadowy Brick, who is an eyewitness to the tragic fire that defines Rachel's life and breaks up her family. All of these stories are told in tighter-than-tight third person point of view, which prompts the master stylist Kingsolver to blurb Durrow's style as "pitch-perfect."
For me, the pitch-perfection sometimes feels mannered, as if the author is privileging voice over plot. Too, Rachel's victories and spiritual growth, though moving, are qualified and incremental.
Gowda's "Secret Daughter" is just the opposite. She plows straight ahead with a page-turning dual narrative, contrasting the privileged life of Asha, as the adopted daughter of physicians living in Northern California, with the struggles of Asha's biological mother Kavita and family in the modern metropolis of Mumbai, India.
Gowda's style is straightforward, her characters more numerous and two-dimensional than Durrow's. Even Asha, who finds her way inevitably back to India in a search for her roots, seems cut from a mold at times. Kavita, on the other hand, feels authentic, as a wife dealing with the triple whammy of loss, guilt, and chronic financial insecurity.
Gowda's style suits Kavita's point of view - the solid English-as-second-language of India combines with Hindi language terms to lend the narrative a brightness of voice: "'Kavita ben, you should not have gone to so much trouble!' Bhaya says when she opens the door and sees her holding the large bowl of gulab jammu [an Indian dessert]. But, of course, we will be happy to enjoy the fruits of your hard work."
Contrast this with Rachel's poignant little-girl thought poetry: "That night when I close my eyes to sleep, Grandma's angels are the only thing on my mind. The angels and me - we all line up for a song. We sing 'Glade Jul.' Again and again. We let ourselves sing off key. We dance around the Christmas tree. The angels flap their wings, and then I see Mor - yes, it's her. Right there in the second row."
Ultimately, there is less at stake in "Secret Daughter," where despite the desperation and grief that Kavita feels, and the cultural confusion of Asha, nothing is too terribly amiss that cannot be gracefully put right. "The Girl Who Fell From the Sky" communicates a more fundamental brokenness. Though the novels are similar in premise and polish, they offer readers two very different kinds of pleasure.
