Synopses & Reviews
In Ronica Dhar's powerful debut, her title character, Bijou Roy, is blissfully experiencing the enchantments of first love, her father passes away, leaving her closed off and shaky. Her career and relationship in limbo, she travels to India to scatter his remains--a ritual traditionally performed by a son--in the river that runs through his native city. However, she doesn't find the peace she hoped to find in laying her father to rest. Instead, she meets Naveen, the son of her fathers closest comrade and discovers the intimate details of his political past. Bijou is suddenly swept away in the mysteries of love, grief, and family histories, finding herself caught between two suitors and two countries. Struggling to understand her place in the world, she finds the only way to move forward, is to replace sorrow with hope.
Review
“A jewel of a story…Dhar reveals the richness and complexity of love, of family, and of nationhood.”--Abraham Verghese,
New York Times bestselling author of
Cutting for Stone“Ronica Dhar captures the struggles of family and cultural identity with such tenderness and depth of feeling that she makes these subjects completely her own. Bijou Roy is a thoughtful, elegant novel.”—Ann Patchett
“A beautifully constructed novel… Touching, lyrical, and sly, Bijou Roy continually takes us by surprise—and leaves us with the sense of something precious on every page.”—Charles Baxter
"Propelled by skillful, luminous prose."--Publishers Weekly"Heres to Ronica Dhar and Bijou Roy, two flashing new stars in the literary heavens. A wonderfully smart and soulful novel, beyond all first-novel qualifications. Plain good.”--Beverly Lowry“With harrowing honesty and exquisite grace, Ronica Dhars debut fully inhabits the immigrant experience of two generations of a family and then, by the most unexpected leaps of imagination, leaves it behind to explore the empty spaces of genuine tragedy. Important by any measure, Bijou Roy is a story that is at once timely and timeless, with evidence on every page that you're in the hands of a fine new voice in American fiction.”--Saher Alam
“I love Ronica Dhars rich, complex, and wonderfully written novel Bijou Roy. The urgency of Bijous story as she leaves America for India after the death of her father, her search with Naveen for their fathers complicated past, the subtle, pressing revelations of secrets captured this reader with its dark mystery and deep affection for Bijou.”---Susan Richards Shreve
"The world seems both enormous and intimate in this gem of a novel by Ronica Dhar. She has created an unforgettable heroine who is poised between countries, stages of life, and ways of understanding her places and possibilities. Dhar resists sentiment but succumbs to beauty over and over again in both her authorial stance and her fine, lucid prose. This is a wondrous first novel, a true debut.”---Elizabeth Alexander
About the Author
Ronica Dhar was a 2006 New York Foundation for the Arts Fellow in Fiction and holds an MFA from the University of Michigan. She lives in New York City.