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[Copy provided by publisher]

READ IF YOU LIKE...
� Searching for the past
� The link between violence and art
� Short fiction

I THOUGHT IT WAS...
A short novel that packs a punch, but is perhaps a little too aloof. Bonita is visiting Mexico from India on a language immersion trip when a mysterious woman crosses her path and tells her that she knew Bonita's mother as an artist many years ago. Skeptical, Bonita finds herself giving into this stranger and drawn into a search for a side of her mother she never knew existed.

Desai's prose is spectacular -- so fluid and descriptive, gracefully moving the story forward. I also loved the character of the Stranger, a woman so dramatic and expressive, convincing one day but suspect the next. Even Bonita's mother -- the titular Rosarita -- is beautifully sketched out despite the one chapter she gets in the novel.

History trails its chilling fingers over the core of this novel, over Rosarita. There's tragedy and violence lurking in the shadows as Bonita follows her mother's footsteps in Mexico. Desai draws a link between India's Partition and the Mexican Revolution and this comes out in the subtlest of ways. I think the novel would have been stronger if this history's presence was a little heavier, but I also recognize that there is intention behind the subtly.