Eden Gardens

St Just Monday Morning Reading Group 18th August 2025.

Eden Gardens. Louise Brown.

Everyone thought this was an interesting book, hardly a pleasant story, nor particularly uplifting to read, but very thought-provoking and in parts, quite moving. We thought the main theme was that in Kolkata in the 1940s, women who had lost their husbands and had no other source of income were obliged to sell their bodies, in one way or another, in order to live.

This was an extremely structured society, we perceived, and the choices for women were very limited. A class-ridden environment, the English caste system meeting the Indian one, and the likes of Maisie and her mother had little chance of advancing themselves or even surviving, unless they snared a man who would provide for them. And despite their hopes, going ‘home’ to England turned out no better for them either.

We thought the author was very knowledgeable, evoking the sights, sounds and smells of Kolkata with great effect from the very first chapter. We were interested in the descriptions of food, particularly the street-food, and Pushpa’s cooking.

Though this is quite a harrowing book for a number of reasons, one reader commented that the violence of the period largely happens ‘off-stage’; another thought that the pace of the book was quite fast, so that it was easy to miss an important event.

Of the three main female characters the ayah, Pushpa, seemed the most successful despite the disadvantages of being abandoned by her husband’s family, forced onto the streets, and later, left behind in Kolkata by Maisie and her mother. She became a senior figure, or auntie, at the brothel, handing round food and doing hair and makeup, and was looked after in return.

Sunil, terrorist or freedom-fighter, was the link to the historical element of the plot, but was possibly an under-developed character, we thought. Would he and Maisie have made a happy relationship if circumstances had been different? We thought this unlikely as they would have been a mixed race couple and faced serious difficulties. What happened to Sunil at the end of the book? We weren’t quite sure, but thought that probably he died and Maisie was projecting his continued existence.

The incident of Maisie’s mother falling overboard on the ship on the way home to England, and being rescued several days later, was seen as extremely unlikely, and we could not see what purpose was served by this part of the story.

More than one person mentioned a slight mismatch between the narrative and the title (and cover) – these suggesting a romance or light read, while the book was much more a complex examination of the lives of women of different races and standings in a problematic historical setting.

We ended by agreeing that we would not have liked to live in the world of Eden Gardens, with its political unrest and violence, prevalent disease, poverty and overcrowding; and by discussing visits to modern India.