The House of Hidden Mothers

by Meera Syal

Shyama, a forty-eight-year-old London divorc�e, already has an unruly teenage daughter, but that doesn't stop her and her younger lover, Toby, from wanting a child together. Their relationship may look like a clich�, but despite the news from her doctor that she no longer has any viable eggs, Shyama's not ready to give up on their dream of having a baby. So they decide to find an Indian surrogate to carry their child, which is how they meet Mala, a young woman trapped in an oppressive marriage in a small Indian town from which she's desperate to escape. But as the pregnancy progresses, they discover that their simple arrangement may be far more complicated than it seems.

Genres: Fiction, India, Contemporary, Feminism, Romance, Literary Fiction, Adult Fiction

432 pages, Paperback

Published June 4, 2015

About the author

Meera Syal MBE (born Feroza Syal 27 June 1961 in Essington, near Wolverhampton) is a British Indian comedienne, writer, playwright, singer, journalist and actress. Her Punjabi-born parents came to Britain from New Delhi, and she has risen to prominence as one of the most UK's best-known Indian personalities. She was awarded the MBE in the New Year's Honours List of 1997.

Reviews

[Elaine · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a read that at times is quite magnificent. It is a story that attempts to blow the doors off the myth that is “traditional Indian life”, a story of Indian life, love and surrogacy.

There are two women at the heart of this story. Shyama is in her mid 40s, a divorced single parent, a business woman with bright red streaks in her hair and a new lover, Toby who is white and 10 years younger than her. As you can imagine, there have been times when she has not been afraid to go against the traditional view of how an Indian woman should behave. Yet at heart she still feels the ties to India and her family, with her parents living at the end of the garden.

Mala is a young village girl, living in poverty. At the start of the read she considers herself lucky to have an indoor tap in her home. However, when her husband comes to her with a plan to earn some money, she soon realises that the means to transform her life forever are within her grasp.

I really liked the way the author told this story about surrogacy in India. I didn’t realise before I read this book that India is the surrogacy capital of the world and I imagine that not many people realise that, unless they have a specific need to know it. As with other issues in the story, the author weaves all the background information into the story in a very natural way. I felt I was learning, without being info dumped upon.

It is a story that really hammers home a message about the way in which women can be treated in India, with the brutality, violence and rapes, including the murder of unwanted female babies. There are some quite shocking moments here. In addition there are the two subplots to do with Shayama’s parents and their long running legal battle to claim back possession of their flat in Delhi, as well as that to do with Tara, Shyama’s daughter. There were the odd moments when I felt that these subplots took away from the main thrust of the book just a little bit but taken globally, they do add to the whole feel of the story and it would be less of a read without them.

The characters are really well created. With the story moving quite slowly at first, with the introductions, I really felt that I was getting to know them. They felt very real and believable. I was thinking about them when I wasn’t reading about them. In all, it really is a wonderful read which at times will make you smile, will shock you but will certainly keep you reading to find out what happens. Many thanks to the publisher for the review copy.

[Satinder · Rating 2 out of 5]

The title of this book should have been Bad Things Happen. Because they do, one after another.

Shyama is a forty something divorcee trying for a baby with her younger and whiter boyfriend, Toby. With biology no longer on her side, they travel to India to find a surrogate. What happens when they meet this woman, Mala, makes up all the drama and tension that follows. Simultaneously Shyama is trying to deal with her angry 19 year old daughter plus the stress her aging parents are under thanks to the legal dispute they're embroiled in Back Home.

Not only did the premise sound great but I'd decided the moment I heard Meera Syal had a new book out that I was going to love it. As a matter of principle, I'll be a fan of anyone in the mainstream media who looks like me. I'd certainly finish their book.

The author writes with passion, intelligence and wit. She beautifully conveys the tiny unspoken dynamics that go on in in every family or relationship. The way Prem and Sita constantly push and pull to accommodate each other as life partners. The description of Mala's village where real-life soap operas are being played out behind every front door. Whether the POV is Toby's or Tara's or Mala's or even Ravi the bribe-greedy lawyer, every sentence pours with emotion. But in the end that one extra star was disappointingly withheld because the story went off in directions I just didn't like, including the ending.

An alternative title might have been The Book of Issues. Rape, traditional patriarchal systems, aging, cross-cultural relationships, female infanticide, surrogacy, yoof activism, the labyrinthine Indian legal system. There is no light and shade. No moment where you can step back and absorb the bad, sad and ugly things.

The last thing I want to do is undermine the very real and sensitive topics this book raises. And Meera Syal, it is more than obvious, cares about them a great deal. But perhaps non-fiction would have made for a more suitable vehicle for this discussion.

[Kookie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very decent writing marred by a ridiculous twist and a reference to a historical event that couldn't have been more out of place and jarring.

[Stephen · Rating 2 out of 5]

had high hopes for this novel but didn't quite do it for me like the idea of the plot but felt that the novel itself could of been shorter and got bogged down

[Girl with her Head in a Book · Rating 4 out of 5]

For my full review see here: http://girlwithherheadinabook.co.uk/2...

Having read and loved Anita and Me earlier this year, I was intrigued to see her third novel was being released and then doubly excited to receive a review copy from Netgalley. Meera Syal is one of those all-round amazing people who seem to excel at everything they set their hands to which would be irritating if she was not so generally awesome with it. Novelist, stand-up, actress, playwright, social commentator – she is a woman of many, many talents. The House of Hidden Mothers is a novel written with passion and intelligence and centres on some very timely subject matter – commercial surrogacy and the situation of women in twenty-first century India. It lacks the focus that made Anita and Me such a classic but still feels like an important novel raising issues that need to be discussed.

The main character is Shyama; mid-40s, divorced, Anglo-Indian with an emphasis on the Anglo. She has a nineteen year-old daughter Tara, a thirty year-old partner Toby and she runs a thriving salon. From the very beginning, it was almost distractingly clear that it in the inevitable adaptation, Shyama will be played by Syal. The novel opens with her visiting an expensive clinic to be told once and for all that she will never conceive or carry the longed-for child she so craves. After some discussion, she and Toby decide to resort to surrogacy, with their destination being India – recent surrogacy capital of the world (until January 2013 when new laws were put in place). In effect, Shyama is making the return journey pilgrimage that her parents made decades previously – they went to Britain to find a new life, Shyama returns to find a baby.

She shares the narrative with Mala, a newly-married young woman whose husband has been looking at her strangely. A woman in the village had left while heavily pregnant and returned with no baby but with a host of electrical goods – the rewards for commercial surrogacy. As Mala finds herself press-ganged by her husband into doing the same thing, the two storylines meet and converge. The House of Hidden Mothers is ambitious in its range and scope, attempting to offer a commentary on the state of India as a nation as well as the position of women within the world as a whole.

Surrogacy is a very emotive issue and has the power to grab headlines whenever things go wrong. Like Ian McEwan’s The Children Act, real-life cases are referenced – incidents of babies abandoned by parents who changed their minds; the fertility doctor notes that couples often think that having the child will fix everything and when the goal is reached, the blemishes in the relationship are laid bare. Dr Passi recalls with distaste being approached by several couples who viewed surrogacy as a labour-saving device; high-flying executives who preferred to out-source their gestation. Toby and Shyama meet several couples who rave about how Dr Passi is the very best and that nothing goes wrong on her watch – which indicates to the reader that of course, events are not about to run smoothly.

That being said, there are no villains here. Dr Passi is no unscrupulous charlatan, she has business concerns but is also determined to put her children through medical school and is running to a deadline when regulations will tighten around commercial surrogacy in India. She is no ruthless opportunist and Syal leaves her motivations intriguingly fuzzy. The scene where she comforts a tearful surrogate mother who has gotten cold feet over giving up the baby she is carrying really stuck in my mind, as Dr Passi used no threats but simply explained gently how very difficult it would be for the woman to walk out of the clinic with the child. Huge fees would need to be repaid, contracts broken and at the end of the day, the woman would need to explain a changeling child in a remote rural village. I was reminded of Family Secrets, how unmarried mothers were pressured into giving up their babies even though there was no legal requirement for them to do so simply by the force of persuasion and official-looking forms. It sat uncomfortably with me that the clinic deliberately used women from rural villages, no doubt because those were the only ones willing to put their bodies through that but also because they were likely to be uneducated and so have no methods of redress. The world has moved on since those days but The House of Hidden Mothers makes one wonder if perhaps we are moving a little too close to the world of The Handmaid’s Tale for comfort.

Syal contrasts the way in which Shyama the beauty therapist holds off the exterior signs of aging but is unable to stave off what is going on internally, ‘In an age where you could redefine ageing and cougar your way around town with a wrinkle-free smile, inside you were not as old as you felt, but as old as you actually were‘. Her bleary cynicism is the source for a good deal of the humour but she still has the face the judgment of friends who wonder if she wants another child in order to make up for the mistakes she made with her daughter Tara. Generational tensions abound with Shyama’s parents raising their eyebrows gently at their daughter’s decision and Tara huffing heavily at the other end of the age spectrum. I was a teenager when my own mother remarried and I feel that Syal captured something of the disorientation which comes with the situation. At the same time though, observing Tara’s more hormonal behaviour, I felt like referring her to Anne Fine’s Step By Wicked Step, that wonderful manual of How To Behave In A Stepfamily, specifically the chapter Green Pyjamas (a.k.a. Stepfamilies 101 – Mind Your Manners).

Tara was the character who developed the most over the course of the novel but she was problematic for me. We saw her go from sulky and sullen sitting on the sofa to courageous crusader and while there were obvious points which prompted this, she ended up feeling like too much of a proxy for Syal to be convincing. Far more effective were the quiet sadnesses of Prem and Sita, Shyama’s parents, who find themselves locked in a Jarndyce and Jarndyce-style court battle to regain control of their Delhi-based flat which has been illegally occupied by their nephew’s family for nearly a decade and a half. Prem is broken-hearted to be so betrayed by the son of his favourite brother, still more so since said brother refuses to intervene but Prem stubbornly believes that right will win out eventually – by contrast Sita is seethes silently, disgusted by the corruption within her birth country and determined to regain their property by fair means or foul.

The final chapters weave in the horrific Delhi bus rape of December 2012, which still makes me want to cry nearly three years on. Indian law prevents the publication of the names of rape victims, so Syal uses the name widely used by the press at the time – Nirbhaya, which means ‘fearless’. Tara and Shyama find themselves in Delhi at the time of the crime and are swept up in the protests. I found myself wondering if Meera Syal had written The House of Hidden Mothers to voice her opinion on the case since her fury is obvious – although eloquently written. The horrific details of Nirbhaya’s injuries, the almost incredibly ignorant and offensive opinions voiced by men on how the attack was actually her own fault – Syal is appalled by her mother country. This is the first of her novels to take place in India and we feel her affection for it behind all of the disappointment but she knows it well enough to see to the truth. Interestingly, when one of the characters visits a women’s rape crisis centre, they are warned off trying to solve rape as a westerner, a telling aside from Syal as author – she can fix nothing in this book, she can only observe and grieve for Nirbhaya and all like her.

On the surface, this could have been just a standard middle-aged-woman-finds-happiness story but The House of Hidden Mothers has far more to say for itself. With so many competing voices – Toby the kindly farm labourer – Mala the village girl with dreams – Shyama the would-be second-time Mum – Tara the lost girl – Prem the honourable man – Sita the tiger mother – it is not surprising that it did not have the same impact as Anita and Me but yet it was still highly effective and spoke for women who have no way of speaking for themselves.

[Renita D'Silva · Rating 4 out of 5]

I LOVED this book. The writing is beautiful and the story emotional, funny, engaging and heart-rending. Especially loved Prem and Sita.

[Bruce Gargoyle · Rating 4 out of 5]

I received a digital copy of this title from the publisher via Netgalley.

Ten Second Synopsis:
Shyama and Toby want to have a baby. Will international surrogacy turn out to be as complicated as it sounds?

First off, it was certainly a relief to find out that Syal is as talented at writing as she is at dramatic stuff. This is a well-written book, that deftly entwines two – well, more than two actually, but we’ll get to that in a moment – seemingly unconnected stories and shows enough respect to the characters to ensure that none of them ends up stereotyped or two-dimensional.

There is a lot going on in the book, because both the main female characters – Shyama and Mala – have fully fleshed out tales that carry the main plot. Alongside these two ladies however, is Tara, Shyama’s young adult daughter to whom much of a secondary plotline is devoted, as well as Prem and Sita, Shyama’s parents, who also embody a fully developed plotline involving distant family members who have unlawfully taken up residence in their retirement apartment in India. So all in all, this is a hefty read that doesn’t skim over the trials of its characters.

Underlining the struggles of the characters are the social issues that Syal brings to light – the relative merits and pitfalls of international surrogacy; violence against women in both the UK and India; the struggles of those living in poverty and the ways in which businesses might support or exploit them. There is certainly a lot to consider here and I was impressed with the way that the author has managed to span such a range of characters and situations while keeping the writing tight and relevant..

I suppose I expected this book to be lighter in tone than it ended up being. This is not necessarily a negative point, as I did get a lot out of the reading experience, but I did expect this to have a lot more “wit” – as in humour – than was actually present. Essentially, if you’re looking for a light bit of fun, fluffy reading, you won’t be satisfied by this book.

This could have so easily been a book that focused in on the contemporary couple wanting a baby and being faced with fertility issues. That would have produced plenty of material for a standard women’s fiction novel. Because Syal has included both the perspective of a younger generation (in Tara) and an older generation (in Prem and Sita), the book really does give an overall view of the whole infertility experience and the fact that it doesn’t happen in a contextual vacuum. I suppose what I’m saying here is that while this is a “contemporary couple wanting a baby and being faced with fertility issues” kind of book, it’s also a lot more than that – which is something you don’t often get with your general women’s fiction novel.

This turned out to be a much more thought-provoking read than I expected and has duly increased my level of admiration for Meera Syal. I don’t think it will be for everybody, particularly if you are expecting a fun, funny, relaxing-by-the-pool sort of a read, but if you are in the market for a well-developed, multi-plotted tale that mixes contemporary with traditional then I’d definitely recommend adding this one to your list.

[Maya Panika · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a tale of two very different women living in two very different societies. In East London, successful businesswoman Shyama has fallen for a younger man. They want a child but she is now too old. In India, surrogacy is a booming business with life-changing payments for village women with few, if any other prospect of bettering themselves.
It's a very engaging fiction about the lives of women and the essential vileness of men - at least that's the central message I came away with. Very few males (it's mainly the fathers) possess much honesty, decency or kindness. Almost all the younger specimens, even the best of them, are cheats and liars. The worst are rapists, even murderers. Few seem to have much genuine respect for women.
It's not entirely one-sided, plenty of the women are hard to like too. I grew to loathe the surrogate Mala with her calculated, self-conscious 'simple village ways' and ingratiating grace. She is a remarkably cleverly-constructed character. All of her motives and actions are so well hidden. I was sorry for her at first, as I was meant to be. Such an intelligent, ambitious girl marooned by birth in a prison of arranged marriage and traditional values and expectations, trapped in a rural village with no hope of escape from a future of hard work, exploitation and childbearing. But almost from the start - from the moment Shyama takes her to the Mall - she proves herself an adept little schemer. I am certain she had everything planned from the moment she set her husband up as a wife-beater. Calculating, manipulative and utterly Machiavellian, I disliked her intensely. By contrast, she made the protagonist Shyama (the obvious cipher for the author) even more likeable than she was clearly intended to be.
The House of Hidden Mothers is too long; terribly over written in parts, with long, unnecessary digressions into Indian politics and the immigrant experience. It is also predictable - it was very apparent to me what would transpire in almost every storyline, especially the last and the biggest. But - despite all that - it was always very readable, always entertaining; I always wanted to know what was about to occur, even though I had already guessed. All the characters - even the least of them - are memorable and very well drawn. I particularly enjoyed Shyama's beauty-salon colleagues and patrons, and scheming, devious Uncle Yogi and snobbish Auntie Neelum. Tara's a bit of a pill, but teenagers usually are and she was perfectly portrayed.
So much of the story is told by conjecture; little is laid out in black and white. Syal tends to skirt over points of plot and leave much to the imagination. It's an original way to tell a tale and one I enjoyed, having to read between the lines and think about it it. And - perhaps surprisingly, considering the author is best known for her comedy - this is not a light or easy read. Dark themes abound, there are some very nasty characters and the end is no comfort. It left me more than a little bit angry and with an aching sadness that there are no truly happy endings or tidy conclusions.

[Baljit · Rating 4 out of 5]

What an amazing story. I indulged in it thinking it would be a light hearted tale written by well known British Asian actress and comedian, but I got more than what I bargained for.

The story covers so many issues that are pertinent to women and given from the angle of British Asian women. Shyama is the only child of Indian immigrants. She is a middle aged divorcee with a daughter attending college. Despite being a successful business woman she has deep seated insecurities. Shyama is unconventional by Asian standards; she has a younger boyfriend and they have tried to have a child. The opportunity comes to have a child through a surrogate mother in India. We are introduced to Mala, an simple lady from an Indian village who was deprived of opportunities due to the demise of her father. She sees surrogacy has an opportunity to venture away from her small world and earn money. Shyama and Mala, and Toby form an unlikely friendship.

The other characters in the story carry equal weight. Prem and Sita are Shyama’s elderly parents. They are living the immigrants’ dream of returning to India for a quiet retirement in the warmth of family and friends - common pipe dream. Where is home? How have the relationships with family in India shifted? Prem and Sita try to cling on despite family politics and deeply dividing rifts.

Tara is Shyama’s daughter. She initially appears as an indulgent teenager but her character is developed into a young lady seeking her identity, as a woman with choices, and her cultural identity. She has a deep bond with both her grandparents but a roller coaster relationship with her mother.

Toby is Shyama’s boyfriend, both are of v different backgrounds and personalities. He is of a farming background, a salt of the earth man. His first trip to India is seen through fresh eyes. It’s interesting that he tries toreason with Shyama that families everywhere have conflicts about properties, but she sees it as only an Asian problem. Toby has a deep respect for Prem and Sita, despite age and cultural diversity.

The settings here are the Vibrant ethnic east end of London which is peppered by Asian groceries, Asian boutiques, jewelry shops and beauty salons. And the bustling city of Delhi. The writer describes vividly through Shyama the new India- with gleaming malls, glass towers, a whole new middle class people which contrasts sharply with the slums, colonial houses and modest flats of her childhood, and how these two scenes intersect ever so often.

This story also tackles issues of violence against women in India, which had not come to light until recent years and the forces behind a new movement.

[Katy Kelly · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 stars

"It had begin with companies moving their call centres towards the rising sun, so what was wrong with outsourcing babies there too...?"

Shyama is fast approaching middle age, but is defying her London Asia community with her happy and successful relationship with a slightly-younger Toby. Already mother to a college student from her former husband, the broody couple have been trying for a baby, but are told that is simply isn't going to happen. The idea of a surrogate, from Shyama's native country is mooted, and then moves quickly towards becoming a reality.

Mala's story intertwines with theirs as her own unhappy and childless marriage in a poor Indian village changes as her husband decides he wants her to offer her womb for surrogacy in exchange for a life-changing reward. Quite happy to change her life, Mala meets Shyama and Toby at a surrogacy clinic.

Meanwhile, Shyama's daughter back home in England is going through life-changing times of her own, and Shyama's parents are struggling through a long-winded legal battle to retrieve possession of their retirement property in India.

While I found the legal story quite interesting (how money greases the wheels, as always), and teenage Tara's own coming-of-age story familiar enough from experience to read, it was Mala and Shyama I wanted. Mala took over my sympathy more and more as her defiant but intelligent position shows the British couple what it means to be courageous. I felt for Shyama as an older woman desperate for a few family, while trying not to jeopardise her relationship with Tara. Toby gets a few key scenes but the story is definitely a story about women, about fertility and motherhood, aging and beauty.

I saw the ending coming and had actually hoped for it for most of the book, and liked how every storyline was tied up, some plots less happily than others.

A lovely journey into a quite emotive story. I felt myself unable to determine how I felt about some issues - paying poor women to bear children, paying money to officials for justice to occur. It was at times quite deep and with dark moments, but with an ending that leaves hope and love for the future.

Review of a Netgalley advance copy.

[Sally Flint · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was interested in reading largely because the author is such a strong character, fighting for what is right, that I thought the book would have to be good. I wasn't disappointed. Even though, the plot ending was predictable (even without my bad habit of reading the ending early in the novel), it didn't actually matter, as it was the characterisation that made the book so interesting. We follow the lives of mother and daughter, Shyama and Tara and trace what happens when Shyama decides to have another child by surrogate Mala, from a poor Indian villiage, with Shyama's much younger toy boy partner. Along the way we learn loads about how surrogacy works and get great insights into Indian family politics and the tensions of living in one country, but arguably, belonging to another. The images and writing style were really lovely. There was just one section in the middle that I felt a bit too drawn out, but overall a wonderful read.

[Read In Colour · Rating 3 out of 5]

Reading this so soon after Amulya Malladi's A House for Happy Mothers, it's hard not to compare the two. While I loved the mother in Malladi's book, the mother in this book was insufferable - not the surrogates but the mothers paying the surrogates.

[Lynne · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this on one rainy day in the middle of a heatwave and I loved it. Other reviewers here don't seem to have liked it quite as much as Meera Syal's other novels but it's my favourite. Some small parts of the plot are maybe unrealistic but it's a real page turner and just about all the characters are sympathetically portrayed. The ending surprised but satisfied me

[Staci · Rating 4 out of 5]

I would love to give this book a much lower rating simply because it made me SO angry, particularly the ending. But the writing was lovely, the characters felt real and the story, while difficult, was worth reading.

[Corene · Rating 4 out of 5]

A long, involved soap opera of a story that I quite enjoyed, even as it seemed to take me days to finish.

Shyama is British-Indian, 48 years old with a much younger boyfriend and a grown daughter. Determined to have a baby, Shyama and the boyfriend decide on surrogacy through a clinic in India. The plot involves the couple's relationship with the surrogate, and Shyama's pull between the forthcoming baby, her aging parents and her troubled daughter.

It's all a bit messy, and the scenes at the clinic with all the percolating mothers is a bit icky. But the whole story and the cultural setting was compelling to me, with vivid scenes on the streets of India, a ghastly family feud between Shyama's father and his brother, and references to the sexual violence that is too common in India.

Overall a book that deserves to be more widely read.

[Sharon Dhanjal · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great book would recommend it 😊

[Susan Hensley · Rating 4 out of 5]

Full of wisdom, wit and worries. Important and true!

[Zoha · Rating 3 out of 5]

Always a treat to read Syal. She is phenomenal with coming up with effortless and original turns of phrases, with evocative imagery that borders on poetic. Reading her books is like eating a rich dessert where every flavor is complex but doesn't weigh you down from the cholesterol.
I loved the nuance she brought to surrogacy, how it's a terrible exploitative structure but sometimes, also the only way out, the larger link to violence against women. The insta-love angle between Toby and Mala was hard to buy, especially when the description for Mala verged on exoticizing her. Mala wasn't a regular character with her own shortcomings; she was the overplayed underdog trope, worthy of redemption in every way (smart, fertile, beautiful). I mean, you can give a village-woman a way out waisay bhi. I don't understand the need to make them earn it by emphasizing all the lost potential, like people only exist to serve the needs of society, structures, others wanting to consume their services, etc. It's okay to let her have shortcomings so she's a whole person, instead of a perfect chef, producer, waghaira waghaira. She was this bright sharp bird and I got tired of the lack of depth very quickly.


Mala was constantly sold as this Gully-Boy story of overcoming adversity by sheer brilliance and wits alone, which feels like an over-compensation. 'Hey, don't you dare pity this character! You can't! See how smart she is? See how beautiful? She's very emphatically NOT. A. VICTIM. Look, the subaltern speak and every word from her mouth is wisdom because she's just that genius.' Being a victim doesn't make a character weaker or less impressive. Them breaking down is not a source of shame. For this reason, Shyama came out on top. She had massive flaws (in denial, stubborn, alienating her daughter by refusing to listen, trying to run away from her mistakes instead of confronting them) but she grew from them, instead of having no flaws and no growth.


Another thing that made me uncomfortable was the weird patriotism in the second half of the novel, with the idea that the UK is some haven of equality that will allow Mala unprecedented freedom. I'm sorry, what? Tara's little speech about mixing and creativity was laughable because you only need to read testimonies from Dalit Indians to find out that Indian communities segregate them and avoid them just as much as they do back home. The power dynamics may be easier to avoid by dispersing but they don't go away. Young 'liberal' Indians are only new versions of their parents, reproducing a new form of casteism.


I appreciate the nuance Syal brought to the table about the nature of diasporas and their complicated relationship with the country of origin. It's true that they're not a monolith that enjoys massive class privilege over every single person still living back home, true that the local bourgeoisie can (and does) exploit the working class in the diaspora, but that doesn't absolve the UK of its crimes in turning up the casteism, in robbing the subcontinent and forcing migrants to flee to the core for opportunities. The diaspora thrives IN SPITE of the host country, not because of its laws.


Still at a loss about the purpose Toby served in the story. He was some white weirdo who was obsessed with the sexualized science of reproduction and Indian women and felt deeply insecure about a woman out-earning him. Did I miss the story challenging that fragile masculinity? Because I don't remember catching that. It also devalues Mala, because if Toby has a problem with strong women and he's attracted to Mala, what does that say about Mala? Speaking of which, I know this is probably an age thing and I won't understand until I'm older but the description of wanting a child was so strangely obsessive and outdated. The gender roles being described in the process were so backward; this wasn't just a couple wanting a child together but a third-person narrator sighing fondly about how our anatomy apparently makes us all animals. I know it makes us hormonal but there's a big difference between insinuating that and glorifying men acting like apes about reproduction. That doesn't put women on a pedestal and give them some weird power (like the book so desperately wants us to believe as a form of empowerment). It's just a thing they do, at great damage to themselves. Women are not valuable for what they do but for who they are.


Useful for the nuance it brings to what are otherwise statistics, about the relationship of the diaspora to the home but fell short of developing that nuance as though it was afraid about asking the really daring questions. It often fell into tired tropes with many characters but less with Shyama (and Priya, another interesting character who deserved more attention). Some stories try too hard to raise their underdog characters and that just yields a new stereotype, who is limited (but in new ways).

[Clare Russell · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved this, although the story arc was a bit predictable
the stories of love and the power of women supporting women were beautiful. Lovely lyrical writing too

[Nirupama Kondayya · Rating 3 out of 5]

The story was okay overall. The ending seemed liked it just had to be finished.

[Barbara · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked Meera Syal's 'Anita and Me' and 'Life isn't all Ha ha he he' but I was probably 20 years younger when I read those than when I read her latest, 'The House of Hidden Mothers'. I suspect her writing hasn't changed but perhaps my standards (and the immense number of novels set in India that I've read) have and I was - perhaps not surprisingly - rather disappointed.

If I had known nothing about the issue of the Indian surrogate baby 'industry', I might have found it slightly more interesting. However, having read Kishwar Desai's book 'Origins of Love', it was pretty inevitable that I'd be disappointed by Syal's book. It starts out quite promising but soon becomes utterly unbelievable. That an allegedly reputable clinic would use an unauthorised egg donation, that the clinic would 'allow' the surrogate to be whisked away to London or that the couple hiring her would have found a way to get her into the country at a moment's notice, or that the poor village-woman surrogate should turn out to speak pretty good English AND be a whiz at throwing together natural beauty remedies, well, it's all just TOO MUCH.

I thought the relationship between Shyama and her parents was handled beautifully. Prem and Sita were two of my favourite characters. Shyama's relationship with her daughter was also quite believable though her dealings with her poor not-quite-husband and her friends were less developed. I found the tales of Indian families abusing the trust and finances of their NRI relatives fascinating, and the plot with the squatting nephew and his family was very interesting.

On the whole though, I didn't really find anything new in 'The House of Hidden Mothers' but that doesn't mean that others won't. However, if you're looking for a compelling novel on Indian surrogacy, please try Origins of Love instead.

[Jo-anne Atkinson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Shyama is a successful businesswoman, owner of a popular beauty salon and a divorced mother of a student daughter. However Shyama wants another child with her partner Toby, a younger man, and she is told that she will not be able to have one naturally. Mala is an intelligent but impoverished Indian woman, her family died leaving little dowry and Mala's husband thinks that getting Mala to act as a surrogate for a wealthy couple will allow them live a little more comfortably. Inevitably the lives of Shyama and Mala meet as Mala becomes the surrogate for Shyama and Toby's child but as Shyama's aged parents fight to regain their investments in India and Tara, her daughter, suffers in London, Shyama is torn between her family, her culture and her ambition.

Syal is a well-known actress and her previous novels have veered towards the comedic element, this one is different. On the surface this is a story about two women, one with money and one without, but the subplots explore so much more. Tara suffers an assault in the the UK and then travels to India to support women's rights, so changing. Mala travels to the UK and flourishes, Syama's parents have to take legal action against their own family to possess what is theirs by right. The constant theme is one which compares the life and freedoms of women in the UK with those of women in India, either through caste, fertility or sexual rights, and this makes the book far more thoughtful that it initially seems.

[Mandy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Meera Syal’s third novel is ambitious and wide-ranging in the topics she engages with. Motherhood, feminism and the role of women in both Britain and India, ageing, surrogacy, life in modern India, rape and corruption. In a story that spans two continents, two cultures and three generations, she has been perhaps a bit too ambitious and I felt that if the novel had been a bit narrower in scope it would have had more impact. Nevertheless it’s an intelligent and thought-provoking book that cries out to be read by book groups – so much to discuss here. The main narrative follows Shyama, in her forties, and her younger partner Toby. They want a baby to cement their relationship but biology is against Shyama. On the other side of the world in a poor rural village in India Mala sees surrogacy as an escape from her downtrodden life. And so begins a complex and multi-layered exploration of the pitfalls of surrogacy and the effect that such a quest has on all concerned. With sub-plots involving campaigning for women’s rights, property fraud, Indian corruption, and national identity, it all becomes a bit busy. However, I did enjoy it on the whole, it’s well written, the characters and dialogue reasonably convincing, and the issues tackled certainly relevant and important. Perhaps some editing wouldn’t have come amiss, though. A cautious recommendation.

[Mike Jones · Rating 2 out of 5]

Disappointing. It raises lots of issues about Indians and NRIs but only deals with them briefly. I don't think this book was properly edited - there seem lots of little (but vital) bits that were left out. For instance, Tara's rape. It wasn't fully described as such at the time, but the author mentions it later as a rape which I found surprising. She should have spelled it out more when it happened - I don't mean any gory details of what he specifically did, but as it's written, the passage is incomplete IMO.
I am afraid I didn't really care about any of the characters in the book. So many were 2 dimensional, Ran was one-dimensional if that's possible!
On the positive side, I learned a great deal about life in India and had no idea that India was the leading country for child surrogacy.

[Trish · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have mixed feelings about this book. Meera Syal's voice comes across strongly, which I enjoyed. There are some vibrant characters and you feel immersed in Indian culture. The character of Tara is particularly strong. The start feels fragmented with different story lines though and it wasn't until two thirds of the way through that I began to enjoy it. But the ending is rushed and unbelievable, what a shame.

[Dustin Saxton · Rating 2 out of 5]

I didn't like this book much. Its hard to tell what its about- Indian culture, women's issues in India, reproductive technology issues, older women dating younger men issues, mother/daughter issues. aging parents issues.... It ends up being a mess and the ending is REALLY bad.

[Vera · Rating 3 out of 5]

A very good read. Shyama, a 48-year old British-Indian woman who lives with her (loveable) parents, her much younger partner Toby, and her daughter Tara – she is a rare thing in Indian circles, a divorcée and successful businesswoman-, very deeply yearns for a baby, and so does Toby. After a few rounds of IVF, they finally go to a well reputed surrogacy clinic in Delhi, where they meet Mala, their surrogate mother. Mala is in a very unhappy marriage; her education was pretty good and her English is fine, and when her husband slaps her in front of the parents-to-be, they whisk her away to England. She is happy there, and Shyama encourages her to develop beauty products for Shyama’s salon. However, Toby slowly falls in love with Mala, and once he finds out that the surrogacy clinic impregnated her with his sperm alright, but using her own egg – it was meant to be that of a woman they had picked from a database, his feelings can’t be hidden anymore. Shyama is away in India for a protracted time: her parents’ side story of deeply disturbing (for me) family aggro over an apartment they’d bought for their retirement but which her father’s beloved younger brother appropriated – this is all very bitter and hurtful for this reader- plays out to an almost-happy ending, forcing Shyama to fly to India when, after the handover of the apartment, her father suffers a benign stroke and goes into a coma for a few weeks. Toby’s and Mala’s feelings have then full scope, he finds out the truth about their parenthood, Mala slips on the ice, gives birth to a boy, and when Shyama returns she knows she has lost them all. We see her at the end, paying a visit to their Norfolk home with a gift for the by now toddler, and feel for her. Besides her parents, Shyama’s two friends (one a woman with children in a marriage that appears stable, but isn’t, and the other a child-free psychologist with alcohol problems) and Tara are also really well drawn – I couldn’t make much of Tara at first, but when she is violated by a drunk fellow student and undergoes a radical change, then delving deep into her Hindi roots, I was sold. So, besides being a very good read, and having very likeable characters, the issue of surrogacy is an interesting one. Funnily, while reading it I was clearing up two bookcases and looked through my last remaining school ringbinder: back in the Leistungskurs, I wrote an exam essay about just that topic, genetic interventions and surrogacy: “what parent would not interfere to improve their foetus’s health, given the chance?” I wrote. Indeed. I still don’t know where I stand. The clinic depicted is a very good one, based on the founder woman’s wish to help poor women to a better quality of life, while helping western couples to a child. However, the biggest lesson Syal imparts is of the emotional bond between surrogate mother and baby... I loved reading it, but didn’t want to keep it.

[Sreya Mukherjee · Rating 3 out of 5]

Meera Syal’s The House of Hidden Mothers is an engaging and thought-provoking exploration of motherhood, identity, and the intersection of tradition and modernity. The novel delves into the emotionally charged world of surrogacy, with Syal deftly weaving together the lives of two women—Shyama, a middle-aged British-Indian woman longing for a child, and Mala, a young Indian woman facing her own struggles in a patriarchal society.
What I enjoyed most about the book was its insightful look at the complexities of surrogacy, particularly across cultural and socioeconomic divides. Syal doesn’t shy away from the ethical dilemmas, societal pressures, and emotional turmoil involved, making the story both timely and relevant. The dual perspectives—of Shyama in the UK and Mala in rural India—offer a rich narrative contrast, shedding light on how different worlds collide and connect.
The novel also shines in its depiction of family dynamics. Shyama’s relationships with her rebellious teenage daughter, her younger partner Toby, and her traditional parents are written with warmth, humor, and authenticity. Similarly, Mala’s story is heartbreaking yet empowering, offering a poignant counterbalance to Shyama’s modern struggles.
However, despite its compelling premise, the book fell slightly short for me. The pacing felt uneven at times, with certain sections dragging while others rushed through significant developments. Additionally, some of the secondary characters lacked depth, and the ending, though emotional, felt somewhat predictable.
Overall, The House of Hidden Mothers is a solid read that raises important questions about choice, agency, and motherhood, even if it doesn’t fully deliver on all its narrative potential. Meera Syal’s signature wit and empathy are evident throughout, making it a book worth reading, especially for those interested in stories that bridge cultural and generational divides.
My Rating- 3.5 stars: A good read with moments of brilliance, though it didn’t quite reach the heights I hoped for.

[tinalouisereadsbooks · Rating 3 out of 5]

Shyama is divorced with a teenage daughter. Toby her new partner is a lot younger than her but they want a child together. Shyama is reaching fifty and its not easy getting pregnant so she and Toby resort to surrogacy. Mala lives in India where surrogacy is big business. Shyama, Toby and Malas lives are brought together all because of a baby.

I have read Anita and Me by Meera Syal and thought it was a very funny book and quite enjoyed it. This book drew me in straight away more than what I thought it would. It wasn't as funny as Anita and Me I think mainly because of the subject matter.

For me I think the book lost its way. I didnt see the point of the the sub plot of Shyamas parents battle over a property. I also found a couple of issues with Tara not necessary to the story. For me the book lodt its way especially towards the end. The ending was really flawed and I found quite unbelievable, but suppose it is possible.

I did finish the book so there had to be enough for me to do so. I didn't like any of the characters at all and felt they did come over very selfish at times.

Im not sure who I would recommend this book to but felt it was maybe a women's book. I can imagine the book creating a good discussion on the subject of surrogacy and its practices in India. An average read from a very funny writer. .

[RUMENA · Rating 3 out of 5]

I loved what MS tried to do with this book. She covers so many issues facing 3 generations of British Indians. (But perhaps too many in the one book is too much!) At times I found it really drawn out though, while towards the end I found it quite rushed. I love how it was so focused on the women and their ordeals through life, not just with partners, but with raising children and dealing with 'back home probems'.

I would have preferred it if she explored the relationship between Tara and Shyama further. The cross generation relationships are beautiful, but at times I felt it lacked detail.

Also, the way Shyama and Toby's relationship ends seems very rushed. Yes, it was an abrupt decision but very little afterthought is given from Shyamas point of view, especially after she had invested so much in the relationship. Surely after working so hard to get this baby to keep their relationship strong, breaking up with Toby would have had a greater impact on her. Yes, she's a strong woman, but wouldn't this have left her remotely broken? If so, this wasn't explained. And if not, her strength of character should have been further emphasised, with more explanation as to how she was dealing with it.

It wasn't a book that I couldn't put down, but overall an enjoyable read.