Pride, Prejudice and Other Flavors by Sonali Dev

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Pride, Prejudice and Other Flavors by Sonali Dev
Published by William Morrow Paperbacks ISBN 9780062839053
Trade paperback, $15.99, 496 pages

Sonali Dev's wonderful novel, Pride, Prejudice and Other Flavors opens when Trisha Raje was thirteen years old, and her father took her to visit an orphanage in his native Sripore in India, his home country. She was so affected by the sight of blind children, when she returned home to California, she organized a mission of opthalmic surgeons from the San Fransciso area to work with doctors from the orphanage.

Now Trisha is a well-respected, hard-working (and youngest) neurosurgeon at Stanford University. Trisha has to tell her newest patient, Emma Caine, that she believes that she can save Emma's life by removing a brain tumor that every other doctor has said will kill her. But the operation will leave Emma blind, something that Emma, a visual artist, will not accept.

It's up to Emma's brother, Darcy James, better known as DJ, to convince her to have the operation. Trisha had an unfortunate first meeting with DJ at a dinner at her parents' palatial estate. DJ was catering the evening, and Trisha nearly knocked over a pot of caramel off the stove, causing DJ to burn his hands.

DJ is hoping to get a job catering a fundraiser for Trisha's brother Yash, who is running for governor of California. Getting that job means that DJ will have money to help pay for his sister's medical bills. He left a great job working for a famous chef in Paris to come to California to be there for his sister, as they only have each other.

Trisha and DJ are thrown together again and again, over Emma's illness and then when Trisha's sister asks her to work with DJ on the fundraiser. Even as both of them are working for a common cause the sparks and words fly, and of course it takes a long time for them to realize that they are attracted to each other.

I really enjoyed Pride, Prejudice and Other Flavors because it's more than a charming love story. Trisha's large family has a lot going on, from her sister Nisha hiding a secret from her husband, to her brother's political aspirations, to the reason behind Trisha's years long estrangement from her imperial father (it's a doozy and Dev teases out that storyline for a long time).

Foodies will love it too, as there are so many fabulous descriptions of DJ's food. DJ's mother was Rwandan and his father was Anglo-Indian, but he learned to cook from the Indian woman who lived upstairs from his mom, sister and him growing up in London.

Your mouth will water at DJ's steamed momos, dim sum biryani, California blue crab with bitter coconut cream, and his special dessert, Arabica bean gelato with dark caramel. It will have you running to the nearest Indian restaurant or your local bookstore to find an Indian cookbook to try your own hand at creating culinary masterpieces.

Like Curtis Sittenfeld's novel, Eligible, Sonali Dev's Pride, Prejudice and Other Flavors is a modern retelling of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, and it brings a fresh take on a familiar classic of literature with its multicultural cast of characters. I loved getting to know them all and I highly recommend it.