Queen of Dreams: Summary and book reviews of Queen of Dreams by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, plus links to an excerpt from Queen of Dreams and a biography of Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni.

In her most spellbinding novel yet, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni spins a fresh, enchanting story of transformation that is as lyrical as it is dramatic. Rakhi, a young artist and divorced mother living in Berkeley, California, is struggling to keep her footing with her family and with a world in alarming transition. Her mother is a dream teller, born with the ability to share and interpret the dreams of others, to foresee and guide them through their fates. This gift of vision fascinates Rakhi but also isolates her from her mother's past in India and the dream world she inhabits, and she longs for something to bring them closer. Caught beneath the burden of her own painful secret, Rakhi's solace comes in the discovery, after her mother's death, of her dream journals, which begin to open the long-closed door to her past. As Rakhi attempts to divine her identity, knowing little of India but drawn inexorably into a sometimes painful history she is only just discovering, her life is shaken by new horrors. In the wake of September 11, she and her friends must deal with dark new complexities about their acculturation. Haunted by nightmares beyond her imagination, she nevertheless finds unexpected blessings: the possibility of new love and understanding for her family. "A dream is a telegram from the hidden world," Rakhi's mother writes in her journals. In lush and elegant prose, Divakaruni has crafted a vivid and enduring dream, one that reveals hidden truths about the world we live in, and from which readers will be reluctant to wake.

BookBrowse

Divakaruni often focuses on the balance between two worlds - most often the world of Indian immigrants struggling to assimilate themselves into American life. While not moving away from this entirely, in Queen of Dreams she takes a somewhat different tack in order to explore the gulf between a mother able to interpret dreams and a daughter attempting to understand her.  (Reviewed by BookBrowse Review Team).

Full Review (362 words).

Media Reviews

The Washington Post - Leslie Pietrzyk Divakaruni's use of a plot that relies on coincidence and happenstance creates a similar problem. Mrs. Gupta says, A dream is a telegram from the hidden world. Here dreams are filled with portent and daily lives are laden with hidden meaning. And what's a coincidence? Rakhi notes; And what is an accident? asks her mother. Perhaps each detail of existence is taut with significance. One could almost be persuaded by the book's final, transcendent moments, when Rakhi finds the perfect web of connection that interpreters of dreams seek. Yet for all that beauty and hope, the ultimate frustration of Queen of Dreams is that its connections have come too conveniently packages, unexplained strangers, journals with answers, as if life were but a dream.   Deirdre Donahue - USA Today Queen of Dreams, Divakaruni's 11th book, includes elements of magic, intuition and folklore drawn from India. But the story of the conflicted, discontented single mother is a darker, contemporary tale that will resonate with anyone who has struggled with modern love, mores and parenthood.   Publishers Weekly Divakaruni does a good job working current issues into the novel and avoids synthetic characterization, creating a free-flowing story that will captivate readers.   Library Journal Protagonist Rakhi is no queen (actually, she's a divorced artist mom). But she is struggling to understand her deceased mother's dream journals. Meanwhile, her own dreams are floundering as she and her Indian friends are attacked as terrorists after 9/11.   Kirkus Reviews Richly textured and artfully told through the varied perspectives of believable characters.   Booklist - Donna Seaman Writing, as always, with wit and lyricism, Divakaruni masterfully illuminates the tangible and the numinous, the abruptly changing present and the deep past in a page-turner lush with emotional, cultural, and spiritual insights.

Recent Reader Reviews

Rated of 5 by in-love-with-literature
As with all her books, Divakaruni has written this book in a style that's worth reading. The imagery and subtle symbolisms are striking. The topic is not a very realistic one, but the book is strewn with truths to which every human can relate....   Read More

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