Evening is the whole day

By Preeta Samarasan

Subjects: Malaysia, fiction, Fiction, family life, general, East Indians, Immigrants, Fiction, general, Upper class families, New York Times reviewed, Fiction

Description: When Chellam, the family's rubber-plantation-bred servant girl, is dismissed for unnamed crimes, her banishment is the latest in a series of recent, precipitous losses that have shaken six-year-old Aasha's life. A few short weeks before, Aasha's grandmother Paati passed away under mysterious circumstances and her older sister, Uma, departed for Columbia University--leaving Aasha alone to cope with her mostly absent father, her bitter mother, and her imperturbable older brother.