Synopses & Reviews
THE YOUNGEST OF SIX daughters raised by a widowed mother, Meena is a young woman struggling to find her place in the world. Originally from India, her family still holds on to many old-world customs and traditions that seem stifling to a young North American woman. She knows that the freedom experienced by others is beyond her reach. But unlike her older sisters, Meena refuses to accept a life dictated by tradition. Against her mother’s wishes, she falls for a young man named Liam who asks her to run away with him. Meena must then make a painful choice—one that will lead to stunning and irrevocable consequences.
Heartbreaking and beautiful, Everything Was Good-bye is an unforgettable story about family, love, and loss, and the struggle to live in two different cultural worlds.
Review
“ [This] complex drama of knowing someone by heart is universal...Fans of Jhumpa Lahiri will want to read this first novel."
— Booklist
"A sad story, ending in a misery born from that clash of cultures, but the writing is vivid, full of crackling dialogue, and the plot is completely absorbing...Basran's book reminds me of the work of the Pulitzer-prize winning novelist, Bengali American writer Jhumpa Lahiri, who also draws the outsider into the world of Indian immigrants to North America, vividly expressing their difficult adaptation... She is clearly on the same path as Lahiri, a writer on the first step to greatness."
--Toronto Star
"Thought-provoking and compelling... Timely and engaging."
--Winnipeg Free Press
"Exceptional."
--The Vancouver Sun
"A tender novel about identity and the search for belonging that is both humorous and heartbreaking. In Meena, Basran has created a feisty, complicated and irrepressible heroine."
--Thrity Umrigar, author of the bestselling The Space Between Us and The World We Found
"A fascinating story, skilfully written, of a rebellious young woman's remarkable courage."
--Jack Hodgins, author of The Master of Happy Endings and Broken Ground
"Basran's writing is by turns elegant and poetic."
--Quill and Quire
About the Author
Gurjinder Basran's debut novel, Everything Was Good-bye, was awarded the 2011 Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize. As a manuscript, Everything Was Good-bye was a semi finalist for Amazon.com's 2008 Breakthrough Novel Award Contest. Gurjinder studied creative writing at Simon Fraser University and the Banff Center for the Arts and currently lives in Delta, British Columbia, with her husband and two sons.