Moving on

Shashi Deshpande's novel is about the secret lives of men and women who love, hate, plot and debate with an intensity that will absorb every reader. It is a story that begins, conventionally enough, with a woman's discovery of her father's diary. As Manjari unlocks the past through its pages, rescuing old memories and recasting events and responses, the present makes its own demands: a rebellious daughter, devious property sharks and a lover who threatens to throw her life out of gear again.

The ensuing struggle to reconcile nostalgia with reality and the fire of the body with the desire for companionship races to an unexpected resolution, twisting and turning through complex emotional landscapes.

In Moving on Shashi Deshpande explodes the stereotypes of familial bonds with an uncanny insight into the nature of human relationships and an equally unerring eye for detail.