Karma

January 31, 2011
This epic novel, written in free verse poems in a diary format, straddles two countries and the clash of Indian cultures in the tale of 15-year-old Maya. Raised in Canada, Maya is the product of a marriage between her Hindu mother and Sikh father, a union that upset both families. Her 1984 trip to India with her father, after her mother's suicide, thrusts her life into further chaos when her father disappears during riots that follow Indira
Gandhi's assassination. In her first YA novel, Ostlere (Lost: A Memoir) makes Maya's subsequent muteness believable in the wake of the many traumas she endures. Burdened with guilt over her parents' fate, as well as that of a Sikh man burned alive in front of her, she asks, "Is my silence unfounded too?/ No. I do not deserve to be found./ Or loved." A family in a desert town takes Maya in, and 17-year-old Sandeep (who contributes kinetic, lovestruck journal entries) takes special interest in her. In contrast to the hatred, mistrust, and violence, the friendship—and then love—between Maya and Sandeep offers hope, rebirth, and renewal. Ages 12–up.

February 15, 2011

Canadian author Ostlere's first novel in verse sweeps across North American and the Indian subcontinent with a force so violent and life altering one might mistake the teen protagonists caught in the vortex of large-scale religious strife and local isolation as slightly sanitized transplants from The Thorn Birds. During the course of about six weeks in late 1984, 15-year-old Maya returns from school in her remote town near Winnipeg to find that her Hindu mother, overwrought by unbearable loneliness, has hanged herself. Maya's father, a Sikh, then decides to travel with Maya and his wife's ashes back to India, from which they had emigrated shortly before Maya's birth because their families would not accept the union of Hindu and Sikh. While in India, Indira Gandhi's assassination at the hands of her Sikh bodyguards sparks a gruesome religious massacre that separates Maya from her father and threatens to orphan her. The narrative, which, to that point, had consisted of Maya's verse diary entries, switches to that of the kind boy, Sandeep, who—in a mere month, mind you—helps Maya emerge from her post-traumatic muteness, assisting her in finding her voice, her father and, surprise: true love. Brimming with mature themes, graphic violence and page-ripping twists of plot, this over-caffeinated loosely based historical saga is for sophisticated teens at best. (Fiction/poetry. 15 & up)

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Starred review from March 1, 2011

Gr 8 Up-This epic tale unfolds through the pages of alternating diaries from October 28th through December 16th, 1984. Yet countless layers peel off with the turn of each page, leading readers deeper into the rich and sometimes tortured history beneath the tale's present. Fifteen-year-old Maya, half Hindu/half Sikh, has lived her entire life in rural Canada. Her family's religion and ethnicity set them apart from their community, but also from one another. Maya's name itself signifies the tension between her parents, lovers who forsook their families for each other, but who have lived in different states of mourning and regret since. Her given name is Jiva or "life," yet her mother blasphemously calls her Maya or "illusion," an insult to her Sikh father. Thus, when life and loss lead Maya and Bapu back to India at the time of Indira Gandhi's assassination, they are plunged deep into a nation in bloody turmoil. Maya's sense of otherness escalates dramatically as she is forced to consider it on a personal and near-universal scale. The middle diary belongs to that of Sandeep, with whom Maya experiences love, tragedy, ancestry, and loyalty at an intimate (yet physically innocent) level. The novel's pace and tension will compel readers to read at a gallop, but then stop again and again to turn a finely crafted phrase, whether to appreciate the richness of the language and imagery or to reconsider the layers beneath a thought. This is a book in which readers will consider the roots and realities of destiny and chance. Karma is a spectacular, sophisticated tale that will stick with readers long after they're done considering its last lines.-Jill Heritage Maza, Greenwich High School, CT

Copyright 2011 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from February 15, 2011
Grades 9-12 *Starred Review* After her Hindu mothers suicide, 15-year-old Maya and her Sikh father travel from Canada to India for a traditional burial. The year is 1984, and on the night of their arrival in New Delhi, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi is assassinated by her Sikh guards. When the city erupts in chaos, both Maya and her father find themselves in great danger. Through a sequence of horrifying events, father and daughter are separated, and Maya is left alone in a violent foreign country where she must rely on the help of strangers to reach safety. In her YA debut, acclaimed adult author Ostlere offers a riveting, historically accurate coming-of-age tale of gutsy survival, self-sacrifice, and love. Set during a six-week period, the novel in verse makes the most of its lyrical form with lines of dialogue that bounce back and forth in columns across the page and singularly beautiful metaphors and similes that convey potent detail and emotion. With artful compassion, Ostlere reveals the infinitely complex clash of cultures within both India and Mayas family, and although the allusions to karma could have seemed awkward in less talented hands, here they lead into well-framed larger questions that will stay with readers. A fascinating, epic page-turner.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)

July 1, 2011
In 1984, fifteen-year-old Jiva, also called Maya, the Hindu word for "illusion," starts a diary while on a plane from her home in Manitoba to her parents' homeland of India, where her father plans to scatter her mother's ashes. Through graceful free verse, Maya wends back through her mother's past to convey the extreme loneliness that led to her suicide. Soon political turmoil becomes personal when, on Maya and her father's first day in New Delhi, Sikh extremists assassinate prime minister Indira Gandhi, and Maya's father, a Sikh, must hide from vengeful mobs. Ostlere's haunting verse novel probes deeply into what it means to be an outsider. The product of a Sikh-Hindu marriage, a girl with brown skin in an otherwise all-white rural Canadian small town, Maya fits in neither country. She becomes a literal outcast in India after her father disappears and she witnesses a horrific murder, thereafter refusing to speak and tell the family that shelters her who she is or where she comes from. A teenage boy in that family, Sandeep, himself an outsider, narrates half the novel, and his more playful voice provides some welcome relief from the unrelenting intensity. And the love and respect that grows between the two characters offers hope that they will both find a place to belong after all. christine m. heppermann

(Copyright 2011 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)

July 1, 2011
On Maya and her father's first day in New Delhi, Sikh extremists assassinate Indira Gandhi. Maya's Sikh father, hiding from vengeful mobs, disappears, and Maya witnesses a horrific murder. She meets teenage boy Sandeep, and the love and respect that grows between them offers hope for Maya. Ostlere's haunting, graceful verse novel probes deeply into what it means to be an outsider.

(Copyright 2011 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)