Queen of Dreams
By Chitra Divakaruni
Published Year : 2004
Page Count: 307 pages
Medium Used: Paperback
Genre : Contemporary Fiction, Magical Realism, Mystical, Fiction, Drama, 2024-read.
Rating : 4/5 👍👍👍👍
The main character, Rakhi, runs a confectionery store in California in 2001. She is also a vocational painter and sells her art at galleries. Since her childhood, she has tried to decipher her mother's enigmatic secrets and become more like her. Her mother has a talent of dream telling. She has the gift of dreaming on the behalf of others and helping them in the process. She tells them what steps to take and how to avoid mishaps in their way. Rakhi has coveted this gift but clearly she doesn't have it. Her father has always been a reclusive drinker who kept his distance and spent his time singing old hindi songs. Rakhi is divorced and has a very young daughter to care. Her friend, Belle, is sweet and very considerate of her needs. Belle is also her business partner and stake holder in the sweet shop.
The story comes to a jolt with the death of Rakhi's mother in an accident. She tries to find the man whom her mother was chasing in her car, the night of her accident. She grows closer to her father after he starts helping her with the shop. Then it is 9/11 in USA and they undergo some deep emotional crisis. Their shop is ransacked and glasses broken by American hoodlums. Through her mother's journals, Rakhi and her father uncover the mysteries her mother kept hidden within her bossom. Some of them are raw and scathing .. like how she wanted to get an abortion, how she wanted to run back to Calcutta, leaving her husband, so that she can have her gift of dream telling again.. they were as painful to me to read as they must have been to the family (even though fictional).
I didn't understand who this man in white was? What the significance of Dream Time for them was? Who is this person, Eliana, whom Rakhi's daughter keeps bringing up in her talks? I guess I would have liked this more as a book series ? I mean, the daughter clearly has the gift of dream telling - but to what end? More should have been added on that line to the plot !
I thoroughly enjoyed the book and wondered if this is really a gift and a talent some people might possess. I also liked the story of the king and sages .. how he is turned into a pauper until he reconciles himself with humility. I would very much like to experience such dream telling myself! No joke. No kidding. I want to see if my dreams also come true. Who doesn't? Right!
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