Such a harrowing and difficult read but so beautifully written I felt like I was there and experiencing the food and sounds of India. A story everyone should know more about made slightly easier alongside a totally believable love story and interesting combination of contemporary and almost contemporary time periods. That all of this was happening in the 1990s and beyond makes it all the harder to take in.

Quite a long book with lots of new words, this proved to be a distraction for me and the two time lines were not easy.
Books main character is Janani, after a happy childhood she is married to Darsham and lives with him and her Mother. Vandhana is the Mother-in-law, she treats Janani very badly and often strikes her. Because of the poverty in India people want sons so they are not burdened with having to pay a dowry for daughters. Janani gives birth to Lavaniki and is allowed to keep her, this is followed by the birth of two more daughters who are taken from her and disposed of.
Janani falls pregnant again and hopes for a son but Vandhana senses that it is a girl and tries varies ways to get rid of the baby. Janani works for a very kind family, their son Sanjay is her childhood friend and they are still close. Lavaniki is a very happy child and everyone loves her, she gets run over and dies one day while out with her Mother. Janani can not forgive herself, she talks to Sanjay who is sympathetic, her friend Shuba helps her with a plan to keep her baby but that does not go as expected.
The second time line takes place in Australia, Nila is unhappy and knows her Mother has something to hide, she is very protective of her and her Brother Rohan. The family decide to go to India to attend her Grandfathers funeral, he was always a distant man, but they go and meet their family. Whilst together long held secrets are shared.

This story is told by a dual timeline and perspectives.
It is heart wrenching in places. The writing style was a little disappointing

Unfortunately, despite the many ace reviews this book has had, I was unable to connect to the story so sadly had to mark as dnf.

A devastating insight into the callous and cruel treatment of many women in India. Giving birth to girls brings not only shame and contempt, but the babies are then forcibly removed and murdered.
With the backdrop of this harrowing culture we learn of one woman’s extraordinary strength and courage to keep her baby safe.
A very powerful and educational novel - thankfully most of us have no experience of this sort of life and it is shocking in its existence in the 21st century. A book that will stay with me for a long time after closing the last page. A must read.

This book features strong female characters and emotional storylines. However, I found the pacing of the story a bit clunky and also struggled to follow all of the characters and their names.

The story didn't stick with me personally but it's certainly a harrowing read on an important topic.

Thanks: Received from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

3.5/5

I haven't been this moved by a book for a long time. The underlying theme was a sad and shocking reality which was told beautifully from the perspective of Janani the protagonist. She has negotiated a difficult life in a man's world and her struggles shape her character throughout.

Though the time lapse is told in the first person, from the POV of Nila, I found her character underdeveloped and a bit of a distraction. The juxtaposition of Janani against an "entitled" Nila was powerful.

The writer makes excellent use of imagery throughout which was really immersive. The references to food left me craving dosa and idly in almost every reading session.

I would, and have recommended this book to others. A harrowing and excellent novel despite bringing me to tears.

Absolutely loved this book about women in rural India, not something I am overly familiar with. Women are considered a financial burden and a woman who keeps having daughters not sons are seen as a failure. A difficult read at times but thoroughly enjoyable. This is a debut book but I'll be looking out for more.

"The Daughters of Madurai" captivates with its rich plot, blending family dynamics and cultural intricacies. The author crafts a compelling narrative, immersing readers in the vibrant tapestry of Madurai's heritage while exploring the complex lives of the daughters. A must-read that seamlessly weaves tradition and modernity, showcasing the author's skillful storytelling.

Janani has always kept details of her family and life in India a secret, such that Nila desperately wants to find out the truth. When they hear that her grandfather is seriously ill, a trip to India is planned. But when the facts about Janani are laid bare, Nila discovers why life has been so secretive and realises the reasons why her mother is as she is.

I started reading the Daughters of Madurai unsure of what I was going to find, but was quickly hooked. At times it is quite a hard read, with unbelievable events taking place, I even had to resort to checking the internet to satisfy myself that this could genuinely be happening in the late 1990s! The pain and suffering that women like Janani would have endured is monstrous and hard to understand. Rajasree Variyar has skilfully woven together a fascinating and enthralling tale, switching between events in the then and now in a way that works well. The story flows and comes alive on every page.

A fantastic, if occasionally harrowing, read.

Moving, heartbreaking and beautiful. I loved this courageous woman's story and the lives of women in rural India where female are not seen as gift but a financial burden.
It's not lighthearted or easy read at times but so powerful. A must read.

A heart breaking story of the poor mother seen as a failure as she keeps producing daughters instead of a son. When Nila's grandfather falls ill a long kept secret is about to change their lives forever. A totally relevant topic but written a bit too simplistically for my taste.

This is an incredibly powerful story and I was astonished this was a debut. Our main character is Janani, a woman from a poor background living with her husband, mother in law and young daughter. We’re in the early 1990s, in a society that only values boys when Janani only gives birth to girls. I was emotionally devastated when every girl she gives birth too is snatched away from her and murdered. She’s told that she was allowed to keep her eldest daughter, but they definitely see her inability to produce a son as an affront to them. It weakens her husband’s status in their society and she has no worth at all. It was amazing to see this woman somehow keep her sense of self and the strength to keep pushing for her daughter to have a future. Then we move forward to 2019 and a girl called Nila. She has a family, but she is keeping secrets and so are her family. It is only when they take a trip to Madurai that these secrets come to the surface. Nila’s life is going to change for ever.

With different timelines and perspectives, we get a slow drip feed of information that intrigues you and kept me reading. I loved the focus on the roles of women, showing there are still issues in present day society trying to balance duty, family and individual dreams. The imagery is spellbinding and the settings are so vivid I felt I was there watching the story unfold. There are deeply harrowing parts and others that are more hopeful. The themes and different storylines are beautifully woven together, showing a lot of skill for a debut. I found it empowering, it took me into a different place where women’s lives were so much harder, yet women endured and created change. The book cover is exquisite.

When a book starts with the line “A girl is a burden. A girl is a curse” then you know that what will follow may not be easy reading. The Daughters of Madurai may not be the type of book I predominantly read but it will most likely be one I remember for quite some time. Going between Madurai in 1992 and Sydney in 2019 we follow the lives of Janani and Nila, lives that could not be more different from one another.
Janani has a hard life, working as a cleaner for a family even when pregnant, she is classed as worthless even by her mother-in-law as she fails to produce sons only daughters. Whist she is allowed to keep her first born, her other children are taken from her at birth and although we do not know exactly what happens to them we do know that they do not survive. They are girls and classed as worthless, just a financial burden. Despite this Janani still manages to find things to smile about and live for. Her childhood friend Sanjay becomes a rock for her to lean on despite the trouble it may cause for both of them and if it was not for him and his mother I really think that she would have not survived.
Nila has a good life, yet she is scared to tell her parents how she feels and also believes that they are hiding a lot about her past. When she goes with them to Madurai to visit her ailing grandfather, she pushes to know more about her family, but she is definitely not prepared for what she finds as her mother finally faces the ghosts of the people she had tried to put behind her.
This is a beautifully written book that does not shy away from showing the realities of life in India with their beliefs against a more modern way of living where girls have a more equal footing and not seen as worthless. You can feel on every page the heartbreak of both Janani and her friend as they are forced to give up their children with no say in what happens to them and understand the courage they have in standing up to those that bully them and keep them down. What you also see is that the smallest actions can have the greatest impact and that there is always hope and that from this an inner strength can be found to overcome even the harshest of tragedies. Despite some of the subject matter in this book there is something about it that carries you through right to the end and I would recommend anyone to pick it up and experience the emotional ride.

A heart-breaking story about a courageous woman who manages to rise above her horrific fate as young woman in rural India in the 1990s. Here, girls are a burden and a curse, and it’s common practice for newborn daughters to be killed. This gently-told yet tragic story moves between Janani’s life in Madurai in 1992, and the present, in which her child tries to piece together the past her mother never talks about. This beautifully written story is awash with sensory experiences of Madurai – the sounds, smells and colours – and encompasses abject cruelty, the caste system, forbidden love and acceptance. Despite its very difficult subject matter, it is a joy to read. I just wish the glossary had been at the beginning of the book (I only discovered it when I finished reading) it would have helped my understanding of all the Indian terms, which I had to figure out as I went.

A story of Janani, a story of loss and infanticide in India in the 1990s.
The story of Nila in 2019 travelling to India with her family and learning the truth of her start in life.
But mostly this is a story of Women’s strength and the love between a mother and her daughter.
I thought this book would be good and I wasn’t disappointed.
Thank you to #NetGalley for a copy of this amazing book

I really enjoyed this book. It gave an insight into the culture in India when girls are born and the struggles and burdens they have on their families.

The daughters of Madurai just beautiful. The love and strength between mother and daughter is a strong theme within this book. I really enjoyed being transported to the far off land of Indian in truly remarkable storytelling. Highly recommend.

Such a beautiful story which touches the heart! A bit of a fantasy but such a nice one to live in. Beautifully written too!

The Daughters of Madurai is, as the name suggests, fundamentally a story about mothers and daughters. Structurally, it alternates between the past and the present, introducing us to Nila, a 25 year old physiotherapist living in Sydney in 2019, and Janani, a 22 year old cleaner living in Madurai in 1993.

That there is a connection between these two women is obvious, but the precise nature of it is left mysterious for a little while. Both women have secrets, and it’s the revelations of Janini’s life that drive the plot forward, and keep you turning the pages. I haven’t counted or anything, but it feels like we spend an unequal amount of time in the present and the past, with more time being devoted to the past.

This makes us very involved in and sympathetic to Janini’s situation. It also has the side effect of making Nila just a little bit less sympathetic, in my opinion. Her insistence on her right to know all about what we know is an extremely traumatic history makes her seem insensitive. As well as this, she comes off as quite naive in some places, which also doesn’t endear her. It’s also possible that I found Nila’s sections less enthralling because her secret is revealed to the reader right at the start of the book, and the tension is simply “when will she reveal it?”

Still, overall this was a very impressive debut and I enjoyed it. Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for an arc in exchange for an honest review.