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: Rich in Experience and Flavor
Review: A number of years ago, I read a wonderful article in the New York Times by Shoba Narayan about her arranged marriage. She gave remarkable insight into a world I knew little about. I was so pleased to hear about this memoir coming out, I reserved a copy before it was published.
Shoba Narayan's memoir is a rich and tasty experience. Possessing a delightful and witty writing style, one truly gets a sense of Narayans free spirited nature struggling with centuries of tradition. It leaves one with a yearning to dine in Shoba's kitchen, listen to her stories and feel apart of her family and culture which she embraces with warmth and humor. Although I have not yet tried to make the recipes it seems almost as satisfying just reading them.
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: Not bad...
Review: I certainly wouldn't call this book terribly well-written, but it does provide some interesting details about a childhood spent in India. Descriptions of visits to her grandparents house in South India, the milkman who brings along his cow every morning, and delicious-sounding foods that were prepared during certain seasons all make this book worth reading. It goes quickly downhill, however, after the author moves to America and describes her formation as an artist and eventual arranged marriage (not as interesting as you might imagine). The author should have focused more on her childhood memories in India rather than turning the book into a vague biography that becomes downright boring by the end, with random descriptions of various family visits in America.
Rating:
Summary: Laugh-out-loud good
Review: I read Monsoon Diary from start to finish, interrupted only by the necessity of going to work (late on one day because of the book, I might add!) It's really one of those rare books where the realities of your life pale and fall to the backdrop while the book itself becomes the most important thing in your life! I SO-O immensely enjoyed it. I laughed out loud so many times and read bits out loud to my husband, to the point where he has now asked me to stop because he's dying to get into it himself. Shoba Narayan is really onto something good. Wish the book came with food samples though...!!
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: "Ghee...the vegetarian¿s caviar, slightly sinful, excessive"
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: Read, Eat, Read, Eat...
Review: Reading Monsoon Diary is like having its author, Shoba Narayan, show up at your door with an Indian meal. I dare any reader to finish the book without trying at least one recipe.
The stories surrounding the recipes are a delight. The writing so clear, so real, an orgy for the senses. And you will want a
'maami' of your very own.
Memoir writing at its best!
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.
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