The Mistress of Spices: A Novel

The story is a fable-like tale of a Mistress of Spices, a woman trained in the art of using the everyday spices of Indian cooking and Ayurvedic medicine to solve the spiritual crises of daily life; family troubles, heartbreak, loss. But the Mistress herself must conform to a rigid code of behavior that is in constant conflict with the passions that surround her. Tilo, the Mistress who plies her craft in a dusty, typically Indian grocery store in Oakland, CA, is empathetic with the passions she heals with her spices. Maybe too empathic--and the price she might have to pay is very high.

The outcome of the novel is touching and the entire books is a wonderful movement from the mythic to the real. If you liked the novel Like Water for Chocolate, you will love this book.


Beguiling, mysterious and romantic.......   April 23, 2005
Marcy Gomez (Kansas City, USA)
15 out of 15 found this review helpful

I picked up this book after hearing that it would soon be adapted into a film starring Aishwarya Rai (as Tilo) and Dylan McDermott (as Doug aka Raven).

Having recently 'discovered' India and Ms. Rai in the delicious film "Bride and Prejudice" and having just returned from a trip to San Francisco, I became intrigued by the plot of this book: an immortal Indian woman, Tilo, has the power to manipulate spices in order to help others. She keeps a shop in Oakland, CA, and administers the spices to those who ask for help. She is faced with a dilemma, however, when she meets the mysterious American, Raven...should she stay true to her purpose and remain immortal or give up everything for the man she loves?

More than just a story of choices, sacrifice and love, several wonderful characters also populate this novel:
- Haroun, the taxi driver who dreams of 'making it' big in America;
- Geeta, the young woman who faces opposition and estrangement from her family when she falls in love with wrong man;
- Geeta's grandfather, who at first opposes Geeta but later relents and tries to rebuild the relationships within his family;
- Lalita who is trapped in a loveless marriage with her brute of a husband;
- Jagjit, a promising young man who makes friends with the 'wrong crowd;'
- Hameeda, a single mother who secretly yearns for love;

..and, of course, there is Tilo - a young woman trapped in the body of an elderly woman who has the power to help those around her. Her fate becomes entwined with Raven, a young man with a secret past and who is the only person who sees Tilo for what she really is.

I breezed through this book and could hardly put it down. By the end I wished it would go on and on. Though the story does have a conclusion (and doesn't leave you hanging like other books), I just wanted Tilo's story to continue. Finishing it was like saying goodbye to an old friend. I applaud Ms. Divakaruni for creating such memorable and endearing characters and for effortlessly weaving fantasy and reality in one entertaining story.

I highly recommend this book to romantics everywhere and I'm looking forward to seeing the finished film. I am optimistic that the talented Aishwarya Rai and Dylan McDermott will do justice to Ms. Divakaruni's fabulous prose.


More than expected   June 26, 2000
14 out of 14 found this review helpful

This book was a very satisfying read. Using lyrical prose, the author tells her protagonist's story in past and present. I've noticed other reviewers have commented on how artificial the book's narrative seemed, but I thought it was beautiful. It felt like the story was being told directly to you, making the story more immediate (for me at least). Although the story is told through the protagonist's association with Indian spices, its not only about Indian and Indian-American perspectives and issues. The author does a wonderful job using this setting for her story but it can be told in any cultural context I think. But in using this context, she effectively shows that (what white Americans consider) "ethnic subcultures" experience the same trials of life everyone else on the world does. Generational misunderstanding and racial intolerance are a few of the problems her characters encounter, but not in an especially overblown or melodramatic way. The story is told emotionally, but that's because it is in first person narrative. In this sense I agree with other reviewers that women may enjoy it more than men. My husband also agrees, but thought the story was compelling nonetheless.

Altogether I felt this was a gorgeous and modern usage of fantasy, emotion and cultural representation. I doubt it will change your life forever, but its consciousness and beauty has really touched me.

(PS: if you want to learn more about Indian spices buy a cookbook, this is fiction)


Suspended between two worlds...   May 20, 2002
Luan Gaines (Dana Point, CA USA)
12 out of 12 found this review helpful

Divakaruni's first novel reads like a fable, as she blends Old World India with New World America. An aged woman, Tilo, an Indian immigrant, serves as the "mistress" of spices. She unravels her mythic past to set the stage for the present. Highly fantastical, it is necessary to suspend belief in the reasonable as Tilo describes her early life, training for this unusual vocation. Using traditional Indian spices, some with particularly healing properties and required rituals, to attend to the various physical and emotional ills of her customers, Tilo carries on a constant dialog with the spices, and each chapter introduces another spice and its uses. The language is often poetic, her descriptions full of visual impressions: "my cloak dragging in salt dust like a torn wing".

Divakaruni cleverly uses her story line as a vehicle for exposing the social stigma of immigration, as well as the ills of modern cities riddled with poverty and crime. Where it could be strident, instead the writer introduces her character's problems and complexities in the context of understanding. In the course of her conscientious ministrations, Tilo unwittingly falls in love with a man she calls the "American". She cannot fathom his motives in their mutual attraction, as she is "disguised" as an old woman and he is a man in his prime. Soon the present pulls as strongly as the past, and desire clashes with duty. Her serenity shattered, Tilo is forced to make life-altering decisions, agonizing over her choices; in the end, the direction is clear, without doubt.

With the aura of a fable, I often felt too aware of the transition from the believable to the unbelievable; the author's device should not have been so obvious. In her following work, however, particularly Sister of My Heart, Divakaruni is able to overcome such flaws without losing her power or her poetry.


The Mistress of Spices   January 5, 2000
Susan James (USA)
9 out of 10 found this review helpful

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni's book, The Mistress of Spices, is a luminous and heart rending excursion into the human spirit.

A magical tale, twisting with threads spun from the purist colors of love and emotion, it delves deep into the place where true healing lives, and unfolds the most human of hearts.

It is rare that a novel even approachs this end.