Rasana Atreya’s Tell a Thousand Lies is, at least to this Westernized reader, a riff on the
Cinderella story. This very promising debut novel is an enjoyable read. Atreya’s
dialogue is believable, and the settings, all in India , are well presented.
The heroine, an unlovely (in her own opinion) Indian girl
from a poor family living in a small village, suddenly finds herself promoted
to regional goddess, thanks to an unscrupulous politician. The prince, who
happens to be the grandson of the same politician, whisks her away from the
village in hopes of creating a “happily ever after” for the two of them. What
follows is a soap-opera-like plot with twists and turns galore – perhaps a few
too many for the writer to keep up with. For instance, a character is clearly
called out as “barren” a third of the way through the novel, yet her
childlessness is later blamed on the men she married (one replaces her with
another woman whom he still cannot impregnate and the other refuses to sleep
with her). Despite this, I found the overall effect of the novel to be
charming.
Though I spotted a few typos, they weren’t numerous. As an
Indian writer, Atreya uses British spelling, which can throw some readers who
aren’t used to novels written by non-Americans.
I look forward with great interest to this novelist’s next
effort.
