What do readers think of The Toss of a Lemon by Padma Viswanathan? Write your own review.

On the back cover of my advanced copy, Yann Martel (Life of Pi author) challenges the reader to "start reading this book and give up on it". Well, I did, and I am...for now. This is the story of Sivakami, a woman (1896-1962) who, because of her Brahmin class, was forced to live a secluded life .. widowed at 18 with two children, she is so bound up in tradition and ritual that I finally had to break out of her daily life and come up for air. Extraordinarily well written, the book is redolent with the wonderful smells and tastes that Indian novels tend to portray, and the details of the daily events of village life are interesting, and I really want to know more about the siddhas, who are naked, ash covered, skinny, itinerant ascetics. For now, though, I have to leave this 600-page still life of ash, and gold, and lemons.

I found this book very tedious reading ... I had to push myself to finish. Great story and family but it took the author too long to tell it.