2.12 My Nine Lives: Chapters of a Possible Past by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala

I discovered this when I browsing through the library's shelves a few weeks ago. I hadn't heard of the author or the work before but it looked interesting so I picked it up.

Divided up into 9 short stories, each chapter focuses on a woman who has ties in both the States or England and India. Most of the stories made me sad. A lot of them were about women who never reached their full potential and they knew it. They entered into relationships with men that weren't healthy for them, they clung to their partners and then realized, all of a sudden, that they were older and their lives weren't really what they wanted. Then, most of the men that they held up their lives for just disappeared.

The prose is beautiful. The author weaves her words so that you feel like you're the proverbial fly on the wall. I liked being able to see into the characters' motivations but not have the stories be in the first person. A good surprise from the stacks.