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Three Sisters from Calcutta #2
The Tree Bride
National Book Critics Circle Award-winner Bharati Mukherjee has long been known not only for her elegant, evocative prose but also for her characters--influenced by ancient customs and traditions but also very much rooted in modern times. In The Tree Bride , the narrator, Tara Chatterjee (whom readers will remember from Desirable Daughters ), picks up the story of an East Bengali ancestor. According to legend, at the age of five Tara Lata married a tree and eventually emerged as a nationalist freedom fighter. In piecing together her ancestor's transformation from a docile Bengali Brahmin girl-child into an impassioned organizer of resistance against the British Raj, the contemporary narrator discovers and lays claim to unacknowledged elements in her 'American' identity. Although the story of the Tree Bride is central, the drama surrounding the narrator, a divorced woman trying to get back with her husband, moves the novel back and forth through time and across continents.
293 pages, Hardcover
First published August 4, 2004
17 people are currently reading
497 people want to read
About the author
Bharati Mukherjee
49 books227 followersBharati Mukherjee was an Indian-born award winning American writer who explored the internal culture clashes of her immigrant characters in the award-winning collection The Middleman and Other Stories and in novels like Jasmine and Desirable Daughters.
Ms. Mukherjee, a native of Calcutta, attended schools in England, Switzerland and India, earned advanced degrees in creative writing in the United States and lived for more than a decade in Canada, affording her a wealth of experience in the modern realities of multiculturalism.
She earned a bachelor’s degree in English from the University of Calcutta in 1959 and a master’s degree from the University of Baroda, in Gujarat, in 1961. After sending six handwritten stories to the University of Iowa, she was accepted into the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where she studied with Philip Roth and Vance Bourjaily in her first year. She earned an M.F.A. in 1963 and a doctorate in comparative literature in 1969 at Iowa.
After years of short-term academic appointments, Ms. Mukherjee was hired in 1989 to teach postcolonial and world literature at the University of California, Berkeley.
Bharati Mukherjee died on Saturday, January 28, 2017 in Manhattan. She was 76.
Ms. Mukherjee, a native of Calcutta, attended schools in England, Switzerland and India, earned advanced degrees in creative writing in the United States and lived for more than a decade in Canada, affording her a wealth of experience in the modern realities of multiculturalism.
She earned a bachelor’s degree in English from the University of Calcutta in 1959 and a master’s degree from the University of Baroda, in Gujarat, in 1961. After sending six handwritten stories to the University of Iowa, she was accepted into the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where she studied with Philip Roth and Vance Bourjaily in her first year. She earned an M.F.A. in 1963 and a doctorate in comparative literature in 1969 at Iowa.
After years of short-term academic appointments, Ms. Mukherjee was hired in 1989 to teach postcolonial and world literature at the University of California, Berkeley.
Bharati Mukherjee died on Saturday, January 28, 2017 in Manhattan. She was 76.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 67 reviews
August 1, 2013
Bharati Mukherjee's language and prose is definitely beautiful and poetic, but that's not always a good thing. Overall, I felt like this book was extremely hard to follow. Often events would occur that I would not understand because the author's description was unclear, or that occurred suddenly, with little foreshadowing or apparent motive on the part of the acting character. This may be due in part to the fact that we never know what any of the characters are thinking or feeling, not even the narrator/ heroine of the story, who, for example, now must take care of her seriously injured ex-husband after a terrible accident. We are never told how she feels about this, if it's a good thing or a bad thing. We're never even given an inkling of her thoughts on the matter.
This book reads more like a lineage than a novel, and one of its many drawbacks is that we are never with any one character long enough to become really attached to them. In fact, the one character I felt any sort of liking for at all was (suddenly and unexpectedly) killed off towards the end of the book. There are also many storylines separated by both centuries and great distances (this book certainly gets around; from San Francisco to India to England and Africa and back), none of which complement eachother in any discernable way.
The biggest disappointment I found in this book is that the it's namesake is barely mentioned at all, and never dealt with directly. In fact, this book focuses almost entirely on the officers of the British Raj, which admittedly could be interesting, but comes off as dull in the hands of Mukherjee. I just don't understand why she chose to make that the focus of the story rather than the much more compelling 'tree bride', a young girl married to a tree when her groom died on the way to the ceremony in order to save her from a life of widowhood and debasement (proxy-husbands not being unheard of during this period). She also later became a revolutionary and martyr during the time of India's liberation? No, let's write about spoiled old retirees from the British military instead!
I was so disappointed in this book.
This book reads more like a lineage than a novel, and one of its many drawbacks is that we are never with any one character long enough to become really attached to them. In fact, the one character I felt any sort of liking for at all was (suddenly and unexpectedly) killed off towards the end of the book. There are also many storylines separated by both centuries and great distances (this book certainly gets around; from San Francisco to India to England and Africa and back), none of which complement eachother in any discernable way.
The biggest disappointment I found in this book is that the it's namesake is barely mentioned at all, and never dealt with directly. In fact, this book focuses almost entirely on the officers of the British Raj, which admittedly could be interesting, but comes off as dull in the hands of Mukherjee. I just don't understand why she chose to make that the focus of the story rather than the much more compelling 'tree bride', a young girl married to a tree when her groom died on the way to the ceremony in order to save her from a life of widowhood and debasement (proxy-husbands not being unheard of during this period). She also later became a revolutionary and martyr during the time of India's liberation? No, let's write about spoiled old retirees from the British military instead!
I was so disappointed in this book.
July 17, 2008
I particularly enjoyed the way the novel discusses British-Indian relations during India's period of colonization. After reading The Tree Bride, I felt like I had better understanding of the varying mindsets in their highly nuanced society of that period. As for the story, I liked how the main character's quest to find her roots in India leads her to uncover old mysteries that have caught up with her present life in the US.
However, I felt that the novel had many story lines that weren't cohesively integrated. The novel starts with the Tara, a young Indian woman who's married to the guy who invented the Internet and now lives in the US. She struggles to pick up the pieces of her life after a divorce and an assassination attempt on her family. In the process, she ends up delving deeper into her past and finds out that the perpetrator (Hai) was a descendant of a Muslim family her Hindu family had wronged decades ago. The problem is that there wasn't a convincing reason why Hai wanted to kill her. On one of her visits to India, she met Hai's father who was very kind to her, suggesting that past wrongs had been forgotten. So when I finished the book, I was left hanging wondering how all the pieces fit together.
However, I felt that the novel had many story lines that weren't cohesively integrated. The novel starts with the Tara, a young Indian woman who's married to the guy who invented the Internet and now lives in the US. She struggles to pick up the pieces of her life after a divorce and an assassination attempt on her family. In the process, she ends up delving deeper into her past and finds out that the perpetrator (Hai) was a descendant of a Muslim family her Hindu family had wronged decades ago. The problem is that there wasn't a convincing reason why Hai wanted to kill her. On one of her visits to India, she met Hai's father who was very kind to her, suggesting that past wrongs had been forgotten. So when I finished the book, I was left hanging wondering how all the pieces fit together.
July 23, 2008
If I were the kind of person who could stop reading in the middle of a book, I wouldn't have finished this one. I was really looking forward to reading this novel about Indian culture by a woman writer, and the premise seemed totally interesting, but it was a let-down. I had a lot of trouble following the relationships between characters, like you actually need to sit and write it out to keep it straight. Once you do, there's no real payoff. There are supposed to be these "ta-da" moments when these connections are revealed, but I didn't care enough about the characters for the connections to mean anything. The book moves from past to present, sometimes in what appears to be the consciousness of a long-dead white male, and I found this confusing (and I like Faulkner--I don't mind shifting POV if it's done well or for a purpose). I also thought the book would provide insights into Indian culture/women's lives, but not so much. The author spends a lot of time talking about how some tree or city has two or three different names, and I had little patience with it. Perhaps if I were Indian or had been there this would have meant something. All in all, a big disappointment. I'll actually be getting rid of this novel, and I'm typically a hoarder when it comes to books.
June 12, 2011
I read this one on my holidays this week, and it was all right. But it dotted about a bit much for me, confussing all the plots and characters in my head a little bit. And the tree bride of the title didn't feature that much really, which was disappointing. Perhaps the most interesting part, I found anyway, was the story of John Mist, the young English lad who gets himself on a ship bound for Calcutta, and ends up getting mixed up with the British India Trading Company. But again, there wasn't enough of that.The idea of the book is that it's about a woman living in the States who is originally from Bangladesh. By strange coincidence, the doctor looking after her pregnancy is a descendant of one of the characters of the woman's own ancestry (ie. the tree bride) and the doctor gives her some family papers to help her with her research. There's also this bit about a man trying to blow her up, but I don't know if I'm dumb, but I never really got why that was going on, and it never seemed to be resolved.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
October 7, 2014
If this were a library book I wouldn't have finished it, but since I bought it I felt like I should read the whole thing. It was so disappointing. First of all, there is not very much mentioned of the title character. Instead it's a history of a town in present-day Bangladesh. Even the parts that dealt with a young English foundling traveling to what was then India in the 1700s was not all that interesting. The English man who had been an overseer in the town was now a bitter and hateful old man. The present-day American woman of Indian heritage was being stalked by an assassin, but it wasn't exactly very clear why. The book jumped around a lot from present to past and back again and I found this confusing at times. I have some favorite Indian authors, but Ms. Mukherjee is not one of them. I will not be reading anything else by this author.
October 29, 2011
I most enjoyed the elaborate descriptive layers of the characters' hate/love relationships with the cultures, countries and life in which they found themselves. This is why I think the book deserves "three stars". I thought the end could have been better, it was a bit of a disappointment when it boiled down to a phantom deed.
March 24, 2015
It looked very promising, but was very dry. It focused on numerous stories, and mostly not the ones I enjoyed. Mukherjee is definitely a talented writer, but the plot did not draw me in.
I wanted to know more about the tree bride, and the narrator and it mostly focused on a British men in India.
I wanted to know more about the tree bride, and the narrator and it mostly focused on a British men in India.
January 19, 2019
I just couldn't finish it. Confusing, rambling. Started off well with an interesting story and then just completely lost me. One of the very few books that I will not finish. I kept hoping and just decided enough.
January 17, 2016
While beautifully written (the images conveyed are gorgeous), I felt that the book didn't really end. I felt that certain story lines just stopped with no conclusion so I was left wanting more.
July 5, 2018
I agree with many of the reviews for The Tree Bride - beautifully written but difficult to follow. So many times I didn’t know which “he” was being referred to. So many times I didn’t know what happened to the characters who had just been the focus, but suddenly something else was happening. Towards the end I wanted to, but didn’t, create a family tree, as I was having a hard time re who was who, great great aunt vs great uncles, sons, daughters, brothers, mothers, etc. But, the thing I felt was excellent was a) the clear picture of the conflicted role of the British in India and b) the change in society once the Industrial Revolution took hold, and continues to do so today. This quotation grabbed me:
“What had worked in previous centuries, however, was now under assault. No sooner had Bonapartism been routed than new challenges arose. Hell had climbed from the bowels of the earth and taken up residence in every port and city. This brutal new thing would soon go by the name of Industrialism. Devils of industry were running free where trout and salmon had once filled creels, in tidal basins where the poor had raked for shellfish, and on village greens where flocks had fed for centuries.” (Part 2, Section 1)
I'm also going to read more of George Orwell as a result of one part of the book, but on the whole, I wish I could recommend this book, but can’t.
“What had worked in previous centuries, however, was now under assault. No sooner had Bonapartism been routed than new challenges arose. Hell had climbed from the bowels of the earth and taken up residence in every port and city. This brutal new thing would soon go by the name of Industrialism. Devils of industry were running free where trout and salmon had once filled creels, in tidal basins where the poor had raked for shellfish, and on village greens where flocks had fed for centuries.” (Part 2, Section 1)
I'm also going to read more of George Orwell as a result of one part of the book, but on the whole, I wish I could recommend this book, but can’t.
April 28, 2020
Just finished this book and would like to know what it was about!
Through the entire read, I found myself needing to reread paragraphs and pages repeated and still feeling like I'd walked into a conversation in the middle and was trying to piece everything together. Maybe it's what I get for taking on a tough read during a pandemic--concentration is hard! Or maybe India's independence is a topic I need to be more familiar with.
Either way, I never felt I knew the main character, and I never figured out why the terrorist activity took place in the first pages.
Through the entire read, I found myself needing to reread paragraphs and pages repeated and still feeling like I'd walked into a conversation in the middle and was trying to piece everything together. Maybe it's what I get for taking on a tough read during a pandemic--concentration is hard! Or maybe India's independence is a topic I need to be more familiar with.
Either way, I never felt I knew the main character, and I never figured out why the terrorist activity took place in the first pages.
October 30, 2025
The story starts in San Francisco, when the narrator Tara's house is bombed by a person who wants to kill her. She then narrates the story of her great-great aunt Tara Lata, for whom she is named. Tara Lata was married to a tree at age five, because her betrothed died. She then goes on to become a freedom fighter against the British in India.
You will like this book if you like reading about British India, the freedom movement, family stories.
You will like this book if you like reading about British India, the freedom movement, family stories.
December 24, 2024
Picked this book up on a whim and finished it in less than a week. Mukherjee creates a story unlike any other i've read, where our main narrators voice changes into that of the person she is researching. this creates the effect she must feel while she reads in us, as we can begin to see life through the eyes of the long dead. truly brilliant and i will be looking into her other works
July 12, 2018
nice story
April 11, 2019
Some gripping and lyrical moments, but so much jumping around in time and place, combined with so many characters and plot lines, made it a bit hard to follow.
June 27, 2019
Interesting insight into India
February 7, 2020
Five stars for descriptive writing.
One star for cohesive plot.
One star for cohesive plot.
February 27, 2021
Some passages were fascinating, others were difficult to get through. Overall I was glad I read the book. I felt it gave me a glimmer of understanding into how colonialism messed up India.
February 28, 2021
Very dissatisfying ending - still no real idea why guy is trying to kill her, even if we finally learn the connection between them, and no idea whether he gets caught.
February 25, 2026
If you have a friend who's into genealogy, this would be a great gift. Interesting, lots of stuff I didn't really ever think about before about the British Raj, etc. I eventually got confused about characters whose names changed over time.
April 9, 2016
An expressive mix of past and present, Bharati Mukherjee's The Tree Bride is a sequel to the novel, The Desirable Daughters, where Tara Chatterjee tries to identify what is right and what is wrong in Indian culture for a daughter. A woman who has broken ties with her country and traditions, but still remains tied to it.
Book Review: The Desirable Daughters
http://shabdstudio.com/book-review-de...
The Tree Bride opens with Tara Chatterjee, who is now reconciled with her previously divorced husband Bish. A bombing at Tara's house has left Bish handicapped, who is now trying to collect pieces of his life and working on his next big thing. Tara, who is pregnant is now immersed in writing a novel based on her ancestor, Tara Lata.
Tara Lata, also known as the Tree Bride was married to a tree when her husband died on the day of her wedding. To shut up the people who accused Tara Lata of being ominous, Tara Lata's father marries her off to a tree. Tara grew up to be one of the famous freedom fighters from Kolkata, who gave up her life savings for Gandhi's Dandi March and her life for the freedom India.
Tara Chatterjee has a pretty good amount of data on Tara Lata, thanks to her 2-3 visits at the Mistigunj. But there's something which seems disconnect to her. She is rescued by her gynecologist, Victoria Khanna, whose roots run deep into Mistigunj. Victoria's grandfather was Vertie Treadwell, a district commissioner in the Indian Civil Service who served in East Bengal until India gained independence from Britain. Victoria, who has kept her grandfather's papers and letters, gives them to Tara, which turns out to be a gold mine for her book. They form the backbone of this amazing story, which shows the effects of colonialism and it's aftermath.
The Tree Bride is not just the story of Tara Lata, it's a story that helps connect Tara Chatterjee to her old life when she was married to Bish. In piecing together her ancestor's transformation from a docile Bengali Brahmin girl-child into a passionate and patriotic organizer of resistance against the British Raj, Tara Chatterjee discovers and lays claim to unacknowledged elements in her 'American' identity. The story of the Tree Bride is central, but the drama surrounding Tara, a divorced woman trying to get back with her husband, moves the novel back and forth through time and across continents.
The Tree Bride is a book that will keep you hooked till the time you reach the part where the author is trying to figure out Vertie Treadwell's connection to her. That's the area where the novel is a little slow with too many details, and you may want to take a break. But apart from that, the story is pretty engaging one! I didn't feel like keeping the book down and love it more than the prequel, The Desirable Daughters where I only got to see a hint of the Tree Bride. The story is smooth and author's narration is detailed, leaving the reader's queries satisfied.
Being a detailed chronicle, the Tree Bride demands to be read slowly. But it is a book which you should definitely devour into!
Book Review: The Desirable Daughters
http://shabdstudio.com/book-review-de...
The Tree Bride opens with Tara Chatterjee, who is now reconciled with her previously divorced husband Bish. A bombing at Tara's house has left Bish handicapped, who is now trying to collect pieces of his life and working on his next big thing. Tara, who is pregnant is now immersed in writing a novel based on her ancestor, Tara Lata.
Tara Lata, also known as the Tree Bride was married to a tree when her husband died on the day of her wedding. To shut up the people who accused Tara Lata of being ominous, Tara Lata's father marries her off to a tree. Tara grew up to be one of the famous freedom fighters from Kolkata, who gave up her life savings for Gandhi's Dandi March and her life for the freedom India.
Tara Chatterjee has a pretty good amount of data on Tara Lata, thanks to her 2-3 visits at the Mistigunj. But there's something which seems disconnect to her. She is rescued by her gynecologist, Victoria Khanna, whose roots run deep into Mistigunj. Victoria's grandfather was Vertie Treadwell, a district commissioner in the Indian Civil Service who served in East Bengal until India gained independence from Britain. Victoria, who has kept her grandfather's papers and letters, gives them to Tara, which turns out to be a gold mine for her book. They form the backbone of this amazing story, which shows the effects of colonialism and it's aftermath.
The Tree Bride is not just the story of Tara Lata, it's a story that helps connect Tara Chatterjee to her old life when she was married to Bish. In piecing together her ancestor's transformation from a docile Bengali Brahmin girl-child into a passionate and patriotic organizer of resistance against the British Raj, Tara Chatterjee discovers and lays claim to unacknowledged elements in her 'American' identity. The story of the Tree Bride is central, but the drama surrounding Tara, a divorced woman trying to get back with her husband, moves the novel back and forth through time and across continents.
The Tree Bride is a book that will keep you hooked till the time you reach the part where the author is trying to figure out Vertie Treadwell's connection to her. That's the area where the novel is a little slow with too many details, and you may want to take a break. But apart from that, the story is pretty engaging one! I didn't feel like keeping the book down and love it more than the prequel, The Desirable Daughters where I only got to see a hint of the Tree Bride. The story is smooth and author's narration is detailed, leaving the reader's queries satisfied.
Being a detailed chronicle, the Tree Bride demands to be read slowly. But it is a book which you should definitely devour into!
October 24, 2023
I like going back and forth but the American side of the family history somehow drags down the otherwise powerfully mythic quality of the narrative. Mukherjee is especially deft when describing the topography, the force of nature.
Narrator appears unwilling to make clear her stakes and at the same time she seems unable to shake off either privileged tradition. You somehow suspect she wrote it with half of her heart worrying what the UN would say.
Narrator appears unwilling to make clear her stakes and at the same time she seems unable to shake off either privileged tradition. You somehow suspect she wrote it with half of her heart worrying what the UN would say.
February 21, 2011
I'd like to think I would have liked this book better if I'd read
Desirable Daughters
. Then again, maybe not. I dove into this wanting a book about a woman married to a tree. But the Tree Bride hardly makes an appearance until the last 50 pages of the book, and even at that her story has the feel of being told at a great remove, without any of the immediacy of the other parts. This not only disappoints on a personal level, it also makes the book's resolution someone hard to swallow as a logical conclusion to anything that's gone on. Some lovely writing, I suppose, but a big letdown plot-wise.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
August 28, 2010
This was a beautifully written book - and I enjoyed the history about India/Burma during and following the British occupation. We get both British and Indian perspectives.
There were times when it felt so realistic, I wondered if it was a true story. There were other times when I didn't completely follow the story line. So while I enjoyed it, I didn't love it. I had difficulty remembering the relationships between the characters, and never really got the big wrap-up for some of the MAIN plot points.
The end was a little disappointing - and there were good moments, but I felt like the book could've been so much more.
There were times when it felt so realistic, I wondered if it was a true story. There were other times when I didn't completely follow the story line. So while I enjoyed it, I didn't love it. I had difficulty remembering the relationships between the characters, and never really got the big wrap-up for some of the MAIN plot points.
The end was a little disappointing - and there were good moments, but I felt like the book could've been so much more.
August 12, 2015
I expected more from this book. And I don't want to discourage anyone from reading it as they might see it differently. I like the concept that drives the plot as an Indian American woman becomes interested in her family who came from Bengali. A Great-Aunt was married to a tree when she was 5 and her 12 year old groom died as he was being brought to the ceremony. This act freed her from life with a husband altho she never left her homeplace. The story line goes back and forth from the future and past. The details of the time in the 1800s were interesting.
May 1, 2008
This is the sequel to Desirable Daughters. Like that novel, this one is pretty strange. However, while that worked for Desirable Daughters, this time it fell flat in a lot of places. All the delving into speculation of what happened in the past didn't work as well as what was happening in the present. There were also too many unanswered questions. So, while I liked this book and it is worth a read, it was definitely not as good a read as Desirable Daughters.
March 12, 2008
The second in a planned trilogy, coming after Desirable Daughters. Mukherjee's metaphors are like fine wine in this novel, and her characters are full, with robust, engaging backstories. I did have some trouble remembering the plot at the beginning, as it connects to DD, but I'd also be offended by a review of any sort, so I'm not sure of the solution. I can't wait for the third and final in the trilogy--where is it?
February 8, 2010
This book is a bit different than what I usually read. It was a bit of a struggle sometimes, there are stories within stories and the writing style didn't flow so smoothly. But it was worth it, I have a better understanding of India and her history.
PS - If India interests you look for these three movies directed by Deepa Mehta: Fire (1996), Earth (1998), and Water(2005).
I watched Water first, it was BREATH TAKING!!!
PS - If India interests you look for these three movies directed by Deepa Mehta: Fire (1996), Earth (1998), and Water(2005).
I watched Water first, it was BREATH TAKING!!!
April 1, 2012
An interesting story about ancestry and colonial India...
I found that the main character's search for truth in her past and the intimation that her present life is affected by this to be enchanting!!
However, I felt that there was a lack of depth in her recounting of the past. Perhaps I was searching for an account of power and poetics, while she was simply retelling a version of her family story...
I found that the main character's search for truth in her past and the intimation that her present life is affected by this to be enchanting!!
However, I felt that there was a lack of depth in her recounting of the past. Perhaps I was searching for an account of power and poetics, while she was simply retelling a version of her family story...
July 26, 2012
Nicely written book--poetic and literate. Though it was a novel, it contained much British/Indian history that I knew nothing about. The story was difficult to follow at times. There were four parts. I was totally involved in the second one and almost bored in the third one. Initially, I felt confused by the plot line and characters in various time periods. Eventually, everything all came together.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 67 reviews