Some People: A Novel

by Parini Shroff

English 300 pages 1 edition

Malti Patel is absolutely fine. Concussed and bruised, maybe, but fine. Certainly fine enough not to need her daughter’s soon-to-be-ex-husband, Nathan Whitlock, playing nurse in her home while she recuperates from a would-be assault. And yet that’s exactly the quandary in which she finds herself. Her doctor insists on in-home supervision for seven days, and with Malti’s daughter, Kavya, abroad at grad school in India, Nathan proves too much of a do-gooder to let her rehabilitate alone. Seven days of Nathan, the man divorcing her daughter for all manner of reasons: cultural misunderstanding, emotional walls, simmering hostility . . . most of them having to do with Kavya’s baggage from her childhood. Malti and Nathan want nothing to do with each other. But over the course of the week, as Malti grapples with the shadows of her past and Nathan ponders the wreckage of his marriage, they learn that they are the two people who know Kavya best-and the ones who have hurt her so deeply that she has left them both. Rich with emotional depth and sparkling with humor, Some People paints a nuanced portrait of love, forgiveness, and our timeless quest for understanding and acceptance.