RaveAltaGita and Shirley don’t receive much time on the already- crowded stage, and when they do, I wished for the stronger decision to stay in the POVs of the male characters, since both of the women came off as similarly and flatly dissatisfied housewives. And Diego’s mother Veronica’s subplot of being a successful scholar who has allowed people to believe she’s Latina when she’s not could have been its own novel ... It was difficult to find a rationale for some of Pandya’s choices, but admirably, he doesn’t let any of his characters off the hook. He demonstrates the turmoil of middle age and how it intersects with the impossible job of shepherding children through the crucial years of late high school, when every decision could alter their future ... A clarion call to all of us as writers and readers to pay more attention to both the elusive South Asian American male and to the power of complex novels bursting at the seams with vivid characters, literary homage, and beautiful writing.
