She is an actor, screenwriter and mother, and is one of the most recognised Asian faces on the map of creative Britain, and now she returns to fiction after a long hiatus…. The couple travel to India to see if they can fulfil their keen desire for a child and there, meet Mala, a poor woman from a rural village who dreams of escape from an oppressive marriage and both the women come to share a powerful dream. There are believed to be some 3, clinics in India, providing in vitro fertilisation, with the country being responsible for some to surrogate pregnancies every year.
Discussing the novel at the HQ of publisher Penguin, Syal told www. Syal said the idea of her latest novel came about after watching a BBC documentary on surrogacy in India.
So I think it was the collision of those two thoughts that made me want to write the book. I understand why people turn to it out desperation; I understand why the women take the money to do it but I also understand why people would find it problematic and say it is like ordering a baby from a catalogue and uses women as a microwave.
So the least you can do is make it safe and protect the women as much as you can. However, Syal did find it challenging to maintain this balance within the novel, as well as within her own mind, while she became aware of a number of stories through her research. Through the use of such strong female characters, the novel explores a range of themes that face Asian women today such as generational feminism, female infanticide, ageing, pregnancy and many more. So how does Syal grapple with the two identities, both British and Indian and how does this change through the generations?
There is no substitute for that. Knowing your history, knowing what brought you here and knowing some of your language is useful. And how could it not? With such an important topic consisting of strong characters, love, family, female friendship and with Syal describing it as being almost like a thriller, the novel is sure to keep the reader gripped from start to finish with a very shocking twist at the end.
