Flowers In The Blood by Gay Courter 3 Stars

This is an example of “chick lit”. I will probably be lambasted for labeling this book “chick lit” and in particular by Jewish women.  Let me begin by saying that I am a Jewish woman who loves reading about the Jewish experience including the Holocaust. Yet this book just did not do it for me.  It is very long (630 pages). My test to characterize a book as “chick lit” is would a straight man read this book unless asked to do so by his female significant other?  My answer is a resounding “No!”

We meet little 5 year old Dinah Sassoon, daughter of an affluent opium trader and a pillar of the close knit Calcutta Jewish community at the turn of the century.  Her father is on one of his lengthy sojourns during which he buys the poppies, has them processed and sells them in Shanghai to the Chinese.  Dinah’s mother is young, lonely, and very beautiful.  She is addicted to the opium her husband sells and takes on two lovers.  Her life style was not one that was accepted in the Calcutta Jewish community.  However, so long as it was kept behind closed doors, no one paid it any mind.  However, one night one of Dinah’s mother’s jealous lovers murders her as she lay on her chaise longue in her bedroom.  Poor little Dinah walks in on the scene of her mother covered in blood.  She is heartsick.  The hired help and the relatives do their best to cover things up and protect Dinah from the horrors of her mother’s sudden death.  However, Dinah is bereft and lonely and she cries bitterly for her mother.  She has a two year old brother as well.  Her father’s parents refuse to allow her mother to be buried in the family cemetery plot.  The entire community is aware of the notorious death. Additionally, because Dinah’s mother has this history and because of all the suspicion about such things, Dinah is marked as unmarriageable in spite of her father’s great wealth. However, her father remarries a much younger and somewhat dimwitted teenage bride with whom he has a child and who dies shortly after she gives birth.  He marries a third time to a Bene Israel.  The Jewish community believe Bene Israel are Jews who have mixed with the native Indian people, are not 100% Jewish blood, and who are therefore, not well accepted by the Calcutta Jewish community.  Yet Dinah becomes extremely fond of the third wife and her father’s children with her.

Meanwhile, Dinah’s father though recognizing that Dinah may be his brightest child begins to prepare his three sons to learn and takeover the business.  Dinah begs him to teach her and he begrudgingly teaches her bits and pieces, but he will not teach her the most critical business areas.  She begins to learn on the sly.  Her father plans to see her married and is sure her husband will provide for her.

However, when Dinah is old enough to have her marriage arranged, no appropriate suitor can be found.  Year after year she is still single and without a match. Even a much older gentlemen who Dinah did not want to accept backed out after giving the proposal a second thought.  Poor Dinah may be forever a spinster because of the tragic circumstances of her mother’s death and the superstitions that were prevalent in the era.  Finally, Dinah manages to acquire a husband named Edwin.  He is from the distant Djaarling Jewish community and is in the tea business.  Most people thought that he was willing to marry Dinah, because his family was not so completely aware of her background since they lived so far away.

However, Edwin’s family had a secret too.  Edwin was a flagrant homosexual.  The marriage is never consummated and though Dinah and Edwin remain lifelong friends, the marriage is annulled.  Dinah marries again to a sufficiently ardent suitor but one who has no fortune or head for business.  He becomes involved with a wily and dissolute maharajah and loses whatever business interests he has including the shipping investment he made with Dinah’s dowry.

In the end Dinah rescues herself and becomes head of the family business.  She runs the entire opium trade and moves the family into more respectable and legitimate businesses.  The rest of her family is happy to let her do so.  Throughout the book we see evidence of the social strata in India.  The British Christians were at the top.  The Indian Jews came next and then the Indians.  The Indians were not welcome in the British clubs.  The Jews while not offered membership were often welcome guests at their celebrations and parties.  There were few non-Indian Europeans there so the British were willing to forge relationships, alliances, and friendships with Jews when they might not have had they been living in The British Isles, the U.S, Canada, or Australia. It was interesting to observe the different strata.

These story lines could have made for heady reading, and I typically love epic stories about fictional Jewish experiences.  However, the characters are mere cardboard cutouts.  Dinah is shuffled from one incident to another.  I had a hard time finishing this book and often thought of putting it down.  It was tedious and mediocre.  I do not recommend it.