Book Review: East of the Sun

This was a 2013 Summer birthday gift from my daughter.  I like the fact that she often gives new and recycled gifts. I suspect it is a book I left at my daughter's house some years ago and now it has been returned to me! It's a good read - perhaps a little lightweight - yet intriguing.  I enjoyed it whilst my brain was disconnected from my foot after the bunion op last October. It was just right for curling up on the settee,  spying the flames of the woodburner as I peeped out from the duvet!
Julia Gregson in 2008 published East of the Sun which is set in Autumn 1928.
The author researched real events and characters from Indian history. She learned about Indian Calvary regiments having heard about The Fishing Fleet.  Young women travelled to India from UK for 'the Season' to become married or to search for a husband.  Gregson recounts 'the party life' of  bored British women East of the Sun.  The main character acts as an inexperienced chaperone in order to reduce her own ticket to India. She escorts two giddy young women, one to be wed, the other to be a bridesmaid, and an obnoxional, young boy with OCD, expelled from a boarding school.  Viva is naive with her romance and childhood memories, still in personal denial now that her parents are deceased. Whilst exorcising her memories, she discovers that her parents were not necessarily the ogres she thought they were... Ah, this rings a resonance with me and it should with my offspring, one of whom, knows not what it is like to be a parent.  Hope and secrets, truths and lies, good and bad conduct interact to eventually produce a form of freedom for each character.