Climbing the Stairs by Padma Venkatraman

Rating: 6 out of 10
Summary: During World War II and the last days of British occupation in India, fifteen-year-old Vidya dreams of attending college. But when her forward-thinking father is beaten senseless by the British police, she is forced to live with her grandfather’s large traditional family, where the women live apart from the men and are meant to be married off as soon as possible.

Vidya’s only refuge becomes her grandfather’s upstairs library, which is forbidden to women. There she meets Raman, a young man also living in the house who relishes her intellectual curiosity. But when Vidya’s brother makes a choice the family cannot condone, and when Raman seems to want more than friendship, Vidkya must question all she has believed in.

Commentary: If you couldn’t tell from the summary, this novel ends up being a very gung-ho feminist power, education yay book. Not that there’s anything implicitly wrong with that… But it seemed a little too blunt and obvious for my tastes. The message gets a little preachy and overshadows, at times, the characters and the plot.

The protagonist, Vidya, is a likeable enough character. Her relatives are nicely villainous, and her family’s situation is sympathetically pitiable. An ethnic Cinderella–she even finds a lovely prince.

I wish there’d been a little more depth–but perhaps good for the younger reader.