Synopsis

Set around the time of Partition and written with absorbing intelligence and sympathy, Difficult Daughters is the story of a woman torn between family duty, the desire for education, and illicit love. Virmati, a young woman born in Amritsar into an austere and high-minded household, falls in love with a neighbour, the Professor—a man who is already married. That the Professor eventually marries Virmati, installs her in his home (alongside his furious first wife) and helps her towards further studies in Lahore, is small consolation to her scandalized family. Or even to Virmati, who finds that the battle for her own independence has created irrevocable lines of partition and pain around her.

What the Critics Say

"This is a skilful, enticing first novel by an Indian writer who prefers reality to magic realism. Manju Kapur's sensuous pages re-create an intimate world where family groups sleep in the open air on the roof and wash themselves in the yard in the dewy cool of morning, where love-making is furtive and urgent because another wife may be listening, and women's lives move to a complex choreography of cooking, washing, weaving and mending, growing, picking, chopping and blending...This book offers a completely imagined, aromatic, complex world, a rare thing in first novels." --Maggie Gee, Sunday Times
"Kapur's book is steeped in exquisite melancholy." --Guardian

"Kapur writes with quiet intelligence and wry, deadpan humour. Set against the bloody backdrop of Partition, this is a powerful portrait of a society where shame is more important than grief, pragmatism goes hand-in-hand with superstition, and a pregnant wife has to share a bed with her mother-in-law." --Observer

"An urgent and important story about family and partitions and love." --Vikram Chandra

INDIAreads Review
An intelligent, witty and sentimental story, Difficult Daughters follows the journey of a rebellious woman who chases her dreams at the cost of her family name against the backdrop of partition, a time when both India and Virmati (the protagonist) are in a state of turmoil. She falls in love with her neighbour, the Professor, and sacrifices everything to marry him and to study further . In return, she earns the wrath of her family.
This story is beautifully written and shows the options that women have in Indian society. For a woman to step in or out of the traditional roles, there is often a very steep price to pay. Virmati's story is a sad one - there is no happily ever after here - yet it is a honest and compelling tale. It makes you ask yourself whether sacrificing all you have to attain something else is really worth it?