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Rating: 
Summary: Delicious on every level
Review: ...and I'm not even a huge fan of Indian food!
But this memoir interlaced with exotic vegetarian recipes calling for ingredients I know I'd have trouble finding even in San Francisco's ethnic neighborhoods (it would help if I knew what they looked like), is a delicious international journey of discovery, both internal and gastronomic.
Breaking through many stereotypes we Americans hold concerning Indian food, culture, religion, and famelial traditions (including arranged marriage), Monsoon Diary, full of surprisingly eccentric characters, will surely stand the test of time, nestling on cookbook shelves as well among sociological texts.
Rating: 
Summary: Wonderful story
Review: How wonderful it was to read a biography during this unsettling time that didn't have the ...and then something terrible happend that made me the way I am.
Shoba Narayan tells her interesitng life story about family and life in India with humor and grace. All those people, all those celebrations, and all that joy!. The cranky American diners certainly gave an interesting, and somewhat embarrassing balance to her experiences. I for one will be watching for further stories and books from this author.
Rating:
Summary: Answers to questions I never thought to ask
Review: In all cultures, traditional foods shared with family become so integral to our inner lives that certain occasions are associated with certain foods forevermore. From her childhood though her arranged marriage twenty-five years later, author Narayan shares her own memories, recalling the foods which made them rich and vivid.Filled with sense impressions, her earliest years are characterized by memories of Raju, the milkman who milked Tiger, his cow, on demand; Chinnapan, who set up his iron and ironing board under one of their trees and kept the iron hot by loading it with coals he picked up in his bare hands; and Jaya, his wife, whose face was bright yellow from the turmeric paste she habitually applied. In school Narayan and her friends would barter their lunches, trading back and forth in the currency of their mothers' specialties. Holidays and vacations were filled with memories of pungent family feasts. During her college years in India, she applied surreptitiously to Mount Holyoke College for a fellowship and won it, only to run into significant opposition from her family. Her uncle suggested that if she, who had never cooked a full meal, could cook a vegetarian feast like those her mother cooked for the extended family, and have them like it, she might go. She did, and she went. Two years later, she won a scholarship to graduate school at Memphis State, this time cooking up a feast for potential donors in the U.S. in order to raise some of the extra money she needed. Later she would learn to cook traditional foods for her husband in the traditional ways. Narayan's memoir is charming and sensitive, both to the cultural differences between South Asia and the United States, and to the realities of family life in both places. Through food she bridges the differences between our cultures and makes day-to-day life in each place understandable and accessible to people of other backgrounds. Mothers, with their desire to provide familiar foods for their families at year-round celebrations, are similar the world over, and Narayan uses them as the common denominator in our lives. As she shows us, everyone understands the universal maternal command, "Eat, eat." Mary Whipple
Rating:
Summary: Wonderful story
Review: Part memoir and cookbook, this book skillfully mixes life experiences with recipes. I enjoyed reading about the author's experiences growing up in South India, and her eventual settlement in the US. The funny stories, family chararacters, and associated foods made the recipes all the more interesting and tasty to me. Who knew that there was so much peril and hidden meaning in a banana leaf? This book is a perfect length and a delightful and easy read.
Rating:
Summary: Perfumed Fingers
Review: Shoba Narayan has a gift for making you feel you are actually in her family's house in Madras and in Kerala. You can smell the cooking, almost touch the food. Her grandmother being courted, after marriage, by the young husband who sneaked under her veil in the kitchen to get to know her as they chopped spices together; Shoba the student cooking for hippy counselors at a children's camp in New Mexico; Shoba the bride learning, by trial and many errors, to please her husband with multi-cultural creativity in the kitchen .
But this is not only a book about food! She writes lyrically about her family, and about American college life. Her experiences as a budding artist at graduate school are chlling. And then, the inevitable arranged marriage, so mysterioiusly inexplicable to the American, so commonplace even now in India.
Fascinated, I await her next book. On babies? On combining a career with marriage? On her travels? Whatever she writes, it will be light and funny. And serious.
Rating:
Summary: Perfumed Fingers
Review: Shoba Narayan has a gift for making you feel you are actually in her family's house in Madras and in Kerala. You can smell the cooking, almost touch the food. Her grandmother being courted, after marriage, by the young husband who sneaked under her veil in the kitchen to get to know her as they chopped spices together; Shoba the student cooking for hippy counselors at a children's camp in New Mexico; Shoba the bride learning, by trial and many errors, to please her husband with multi-cultural creativity in the kitchen .
But this is not only a book about food! She writes lyrically about her family, and about American college life. Her experiences as a budding artist at graduate school are chlling. And then, the inevitable arranged marriage, so mysterioiusly inexplicable to the American, so commonplace even now in India.
Fascinated, I await her next book. On babies? On combining a career with marriage? On her travels? Whatever she writes, it will be light and funny. And serious.
Rating:
Summary: Does for Madras what Calvin Trillin does for New York City
Review: Shoba Narayan's "Monsoon Diary" is about her memories of growing up in Madras, South India, before immigrating to this country, and, about South Indian food: "A Memoir with Recipes". She delivers on both counts. (You know the author is going to stick to her roots, a true writer from Madras, when she starts by thanking her neighbors: "Prabha-mami, Nagarajan-Mama, Sumathi-ka, Babu-anna, Vijaya-aunty, and Nithya-uncle").
As memoir, it is for me, an immigrant from Madras, what "Midnight's Children" is for immigrants from Bombay: stories of growing up there, scenes of life in the city, and intimate portraits of family and friends. She transported me to familiar events and landmarks in Madras: Mardi Gras at IIT, Pondy Bazaar, Alsa Mall, WCC, Music Academy, Grand Sweets, Adyar Woodlands, Ambika Appalam Depot, Hotel Saravana Bhavan and yes, even Naidu Hall ("famous for its bras and "nighties," airy nightgowns made from the softest cotton").
Narayan, a recipient of the M.F.K. Fisher award for distinguished writing, writes well about idli-sambar and rasam, but when she writes about the art of eating off a banana leaf at South Indian weddings, and riffs on the real soul of South Indian food (largely still unfamiliar to most foodies), she does for Madras what Calvin Trillin does for New York City -you want to go there right now and eat it all: puli-kaachal, vatral kuzhambu, agathi keerai, murunga kai keerai, sojji-bajji, bonda-burfi, thaiyru saadam, narthangai uruga, upma, venn-pongal, murukkus, and cheedai. But don't be intimidated by this list; according to the author's mother-in-law, only "Three things are dear to a South Indian's heart: Hot Coffee, good yogurt, and pickles."
Narayan gives an engaging account of her new life in the USA, which takes her to college at Mount Holyoke, Massachusetts; then Delton, Michigan; Boston; Taos, New Mexico; Memphis, Tennessee; Connecticut; and New York City.
Her book includes 21 recipes including some of the items mentioned above. Portions of this book first appeared, in part, as pieces published in "Gourmet," "House Beautiful," "Saveur," "The New York Times," and in "Beliefnet" on the web.
"Monsoon Diary" will fit in well on my shelf right next to my favorite memoir about Madras and writing: "My Days," by R.K. Narayan (no kin to the author).
Rating:
Summary: Does for Madras what Calvin Trillin does for New York City
Review: Shoba Narayan's "Monsoon Diary" is about her memories of growing up in Madras, South India, before immigrating to this country, and, about South Indian food: "A Memoir with Recipes". She delivers on both counts. (You know the author is going to stick to her roots, a true writer from Madras, when she starts by thanking her neighbors: "Prabha-mami, Nagarajan-Mama, Sumathi-ka, Babu-anna, Vijaya-aunty, and Nithya-uncle").
As memoir, it is for me, an immigrant from Madras, what "Midnight's Children" is for immigrants from Bombay: stories of growing up there, scenes of life in the city, and intimate portraits of family and friends. She transported me to familiar events and landmarks in Madras: Mardi Gras at IIT, Pondy Bazaar, Alsa Mall, WCC, Music Academy, Grand Sweets, Adyar Woodlands, Ambika Appalam Depot, Hotel Saravana Bhavan and yes, even Naidu Hall ("famous for its bras and "nighties," airy nightgowns made from the softest cotton").
Narayan, a recipient of the M.F.K. Fisher award for distinguished writing, writes well about idli-sambar and rasam, but when she writes about the art of eating off a banana leaf at South Indian weddings, and riffs on the real soul of South Indian food (largely still unfamiliar to most foodies), she does for Madras what Calvin Trillin does for New York City -you want to go there right now and eat it all: puli-kaachal, vatral kuzhambu, agathi keerai, murunga kai keerai, sojji-bajji, bonda-burfi, thaiyru saadam, narthangai uruga, upma, venn-pongal, murukkus, and cheedai. But don't be intimidated by this list; according to the author's mother-in-law, only "Three things are dear to a South Indian's heart: Hot Coffee, good yogurt, and pickles."
Narayan gives an engaging account of her new life in the USA, which takes her to college at Mount Holyoke, Massachusetts; then Delton, Michigan; Boston; Taos, New Mexico; Memphis, Tennessee; Connecticut; and New York City.
Her book includes 21 recipes including some of the items mentioned above. Portions of this book first appeared, in part, as pieces published in "Gourmet," "House Beautiful," "Saveur," "The New York Times," and in "Beliefnet" on the web.
"Monsoon Diary" will fit in well on my shelf right next to my favorite memoir about Madras and writing: "My Days," by R.K. Narayan (no kin to the author).
Rating: 
Summary: A reasonable "recipe"
Review: The idea of interspersing food recipes in a novel is not new and indeed, for books depciting life in India, such treatment is aplenty. "The Monsoon Diary" tells of the author's childhood years growing up in Madras. I especially like the narration of how the author's arranged marriage took place, how she met her future hubby and how he proposed- that is quite interesting. I could not recall reading such narration from the first-person perspective. The rest of the book is quite mundane. Nonetheless, a credible debut.
Rating:
Summary: It's Delicious!
Review: This is a perfect book to relax with on a lazy weekend--preferably if you're in the mood to try a new dish! The recipes, spiked with the vibrant herbs and spices of India, are simply superb. Add to that a wonderful, warm story-telling style, and you have a winner. Buy it--you'll enjoy it.
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