East of the Sun

Viva Holloway lived in India as a girl, before she was orphaned by a terrible car accident - or so she tells anyone who dares to ask about her circumstances. Now 28 and independent, she longs to return to the land of her youth, taking on the job of chaperoning three young people on the Kaisar-I-Hind to cover her passage.

Nineteen-year-old Rose is bound for India and a new husband, leaving behind her home and her parents, who are too ill to travel. Her best friend, Tor, is weighing anchor with her, hoping that she too might next see England as a married woman. And 16-year-old Guy has just been expelled from his English boarding school and most return to his unhappy parents, whom he hasn't seen in several years. Viva's job is to shepherd them through the crossing; her path continues to cross theirs in India in circumstances that are perhaps best described as bizarre.

I am of two minds about Julia Gregson's East of the Sun. On the one hand, it's beautifully written and I loved the setting (pre-independence India, which, of course, means present day India and Pakistan). I've neither read anything set there, nor traveled there myself, and the book's rich imagery is a wonderful way to dive into the country. On the other hand, I hated most of the characters (and frankly, a good bit of the plot) with an energy I don't typically feel when reading. More than that, I was bothered by the fact that I couldn't figure out if Gregson wanted me to dislike her characters. Unlike The Hurricane Sisters, for example, in which I felt that I understood why the author made her characters so irritating, here, I never could figure out if the irritation I felt was intentional or if it was just me.

So: to continue reading about the fascinating time and place? Or to heck with the whole lot of them?

I did finish, but it's all credit to the place and not the people.