The novel throughout shifts between the perspectives of different characters, mainly Valmiki and Viveka, but also Devika, Valmiki's wife and Viveka's mother, and their family friend Nayan and his new wife Anick. You are a visitor to San Fernando, Trinidad and Mootoo inundates you with vivid sensory details of the polyphonic, bustling city, the lush environment, and mouth-watering food: 'a cacophony of sound, and a cacophony, yes, of smell.' Once the setting has been so acutely marked on your senses, Mootoo moves into the narrative of her main characters: a father, Valmiki, and his daughter, Viveka. Shani Mootoo Valmiki’s Daughter is a painfully vivid and powerful story about closeted homosexuality. The novel, indeed, forcefully pulls the reader in immediately, somewhat disconcertingly addressing 'you' directly in the first section and, using an imperative tense, telling you where you are, what you see, smell, hear, and touch-and where to go next. I pretty much devoured it in one day-it was the first thing I read when I decided not to continue my PhD, in fact. So when I finally picked up her most recent novel Valmiki's Daughter (2008), after being too swamped for too long with school work to fit time in to read it, the anticipation was killing me. In Valmiki's Daughter, Giller Prize finalist and bestselling novelist Shani Mootoo returns to some of the themes she first explored in her breakout book, Cereus Blooms at Night, to offer a hugely entertaining and hypnotically beautiful family saga.The story centers on a wealthy Trinidadian family - in particular, Valmiki, a renowned doctor and. Set in an old French cacao estate in Trinidad.

I think she's one of the most talented writers or artists period whose work I am familiar with-she happens to be one of those disgustingly talented people who is not only an imaginative and brilliant writer but also a gifted visual artist and filmmaker. Shani Mootoo Valmikis Daughter is a painfully vivid and powerful story about closeted homosexuality. Any discussion at all of Shani Mootoo I must precede with an acknowledgement that I love, love, LOVE, her writing.

Valmiki's Daughter by Shani Mootoo