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"What a strange thing it is, to be questioning heaven, when I've known it. Heaven was the pink of your best dress, and your knuckles on my door. Heaven was butter melting into bread made by your hands and laughter from your mouth. I knew Heaven every day, every time you looked at me. Maybe we don't go there when we die, maybe we live there while we are alive." Themes: Religion; Sexuality; Family/family dynamics; Secrets; Appearance; Violence; Stillness; Motherhood; Denial; Di

“That child who sprang from my own flesh and blood is perhaps the creature I'm most distant from.” Themes: Mother-Daughter relationship; Age/Ageing; Family; Class; Politics; Food; Prejudice; Womanhood; Traditional values; Culture; Isolation; Feminism; Self-agency Discussion Questions: Why do you think the narrator only refers to Green as "my daughter" and never by her name? What do you think about the narrator's relationship to other women in this book, like the Professor's W

"'I know exactly who you are. There are other versions of you that I don't know. But this one...' Her fingers were against Malini's lips. 'This one is mine.'" Themes: Magic; Rebellion; Power; Family; Colonialism; Sexuality; Nature; Faith; Religion; Friendship; Race; Class Discussion Questions: How would you characterize the relationship between Priya and Ashok? Priya and Bhumika? How do faith and religion differ in this book? How are they exploited? By who? How did you feel a

"I'm borne along by beauty, poetry, the sublime order of nature, this is my religion: the wind in the trees, the colour of the leaves as they turn, waves foaming on the shore, the sun slipping away and rising on another continent, the stars, the rivers and springs, the earth moving, its fiery core that I sense beneath my bare feet, the flowers that taste of fruit when I chew them — I draw strength from all this, my elixir of eternal life." Themes: Nature; Sexuality; Mother-Da

“To reach the end of your life and wish you had time for a few other roads — what could be more human?” Themes: Sexuality; Neurodivergence; Mother-Daughter Relationship; Coming-of-age; Belonging; Grief; Loneliness; Identity; Friendship Discussion Questions: How did you find the pace of the book? Did it pass slowly or quickly for you? Did you easily envision Adina aging? Adina pays specific attention to the human senses—taste, sight, touch, smell and hearing. Did any moments i

“Mermaids were beautiful, and was I not also beautiful? Alluring? A creature of the water? Not of salt like the mermaids in the book, but...

“Words can wound—but they’re bridges, too. (Like the bridges that are all that Genghis left behind.) Though maybe a bridge can also be a...

" My homosexuality remained at that point purely theoretical, an untested hypothesis. But it was a hypothesise so thorough and so...

“The flower bloomed and faded. The sun rose and sank. The lover loved and went. And what the poets said in rhyme, the young translated...

“Those wrenching eyes, which could lift up the entire skeleton of my being. How I longed for myself to be subsumed into the ocean of her...

"She leanred forward in the chiar. She thought of a generation of girls who might grow up strong and unbothered and untouched, healthy,...

Themes: Uncertainty; Paranoia; Mundanity; Romance; Desire; Light/Dark; Memory; Religion; Eyes/Sight Discussion Questions: What do you...

"When all we have are these brief spans between our nonexistences, why not make the most of the life you're living now? The price is...

“I want someone who is fierce and will love me until death and knows that love is as strong as death, and be on my side forever and ever....

" She is fresh air, and warmth, and mornings in July. What is there to fix? There is evil in my yearning, I know, I just can't see where...

“I’ve learned to reframe telling people as inviting in, instead of coming out — inviting into a place of trust, a place for building —...

“I’ve built you a house out of my bones and still it’s as if you believe there are cracks in it.” Themes: Desire; Power; Competition;...

"The impulse to know all of her, the idea that I could, the accidental promise of her raised eyebrows." Themes: Gender; Romance;...

Themes: Coming-Of-Age; Desire; Sexuality; Friendship; Summer; Good Luck, Babe! Discussion Questions: How does Bensimon establish the...

“Perhaps that was the most perverse part of this: the inside-outness of everything, as if denial would make it go away, when it only made...