There Is Room for You Paperback - 2005

First line

My mother, Rose, was born in Calcutta and lived there until she was seventeen, when she came to England in the middle years of the Second World War.

From the rear cover

A richly endowed memory piece...Bacon is a seductive and gifted storyteller.--Maureen Howard, author of A Lover's Almanac

Anna Singer, a charmingly independent young New Yorker, feels derailed after losing her father to a car accident and her husband to a younger woman. She books a trip to India, hoping that there she will be able to put her grief into perspective. Though this is her first visit, India has always tantalized her: her English mother, Rose, was raised in Calcutta during the twilight of the British Raj, but seldom spoke of her childhood. Then, as Anna departs, Rose gives her a manuscript in which she has recorded her Indian memories, torn between two cultures and belonging completely to neither.

Readable and sophisticated...it makes us want to stay, indeed, unable to turn away from the ultimate fate of this vulnerable family unsure of just how and where they fit together, but about to discover the way. --Christine Thomas, San Francisco Chronicle Book Review

Intelligent, richly atmospheric...unconventional glimpses of India past and present sit vividly side by side with reflections on politics, perception and racial identity.--Publisher Weekly

Engaging...a subtle bildungsroman.--The Washington Post Book World

Bacon has woven an insightful mother-daughter saga into her depiction of the complexity that is India, creating a satisfying amalgam of past and present.--Booklist

Charlotte Bacon is the author of Lost Geography, and the PEN/Hemingway Award-winning story collection A Private State. She teaches at the University of New Hampshire in Durham.