Short-listed for the 1999 Booker Prize

Uma, the plain, spinster daughter of an Indian family is trapped at home, smothered by her parents and their traditions.  Her younger sister, Aruna, makes a 'good' marriage and her brother Arun, the disappointing heir, studies in America.

In Massachusetts, life with the Patton family is bewildering for Arun in the alien culture of freedom, freezers and paradoxically self-denying self-indulgence.