Fiona Sturges in The Guardian:
In this novella from the three times Booker-shortlisted Anita Desai, a young Indian woman named Bonita is accosted by a chatty stranger who says she recognises her as the daughter of Rosarita, a dear friend she knew years ago at art school in Mexico. Bonita, a language student in San Miguel de Allende, is irritated by the woman and tells her she must be mistaken: “I don’t paint. Nor did my mother.” But then she remembers an old painting that hung in her childhood bedroom depicting a woman seated on a park bench rendered “in wishy-washy pastels”. In the picture there is a child playing in the sand at the woman’s feet. Although they are mother and child, it’s as if they have “no relation to each other, each absorbed in a separate world, and silent”.
More here.
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