Such Big Dreams: A Novel

by Reema Patel

A savvy former street child working at a law office in Mumbai fights for redemption and a chance to live life on her own terms in this “smart, haunting, and compulsively readable” (Amy Jones, author of We’re All in This Together) debut novel about fortune and survival.
 
“A heartbreaking yet hopeful story about the resilience of the human spirit in the face of insurmountable odds.”—Etaf Rum, New York Times bestselling author of A Woman Is No Man

With a sharp wit and sharper tongue, twenty-three-year old Rakhi Kumar is nobody’s fool. Sure, she lives alone in a slum and works as a lowly office assistant for the renowned lawyer, Gauri Verma, who gave her a fresh start. But she’s come a long way from her childhood on the streets of Mumbai. Most important, she’s busy enough to distract herself from the nightmares of a grisly childhood incident that led to the disappearance of her best friend.
 
Fiercely intelligent, Rakhi could be doing so much more than making chai, but she allows herself to be underestimated by her colleagues at Justice For All, Gauri’s cash-strapped rights law office. These days, it’s becoming harder for Rakhi to keep her head down as Gauri desperately tries to save her organization by recruiting former Bollywood actress and infamous nineties “thong girl,” Rubina Mansoor, to be their celebrity ambassador. But not all money is good money. Convincing Gauri to make increasingly brash moves, Rubina demands an internship for a young family friend, Harvard-bound graduate student, Alex Lalwani-Diamond. An ambitious, naïve rich kid with a savior complex, Alex persuades Rakhi to show him “the real India.” In exchange, he’ll do something to further Rakhi’s dreams, in a transaction that seems harmless, at first.
 
As old guilt and new aspirations collide, everything Rakhi once knew to be true is set ablaze. And as the stakes mount, she will come face-to-face with the difficult choices and moral compromises one must make in pursuit of self-preservation, and ultimately, survival. Such Big Dreams is a moving, smart, and arrestingly clever look at the cost of reclaiming one’s story.

• ISBN10: 0593499506
• ISBN13: 9780593499504
• Publish Date: 10 May 2022
• Publish Status: Remaindered
• Out of Print: 2 May 2023
• Publish Country: US
• Publisher: Random House USA Inc
• Imprint: Ballantine Books Inc.
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 288
• Language: English
• URL: https://penguinrandomhouse.com/books/isbn/9780593499504

Reviews

[Jeff Sexton]

Big Lift That Mostly Hits. This is going to be a very different book for most American/ Western readers, as it is essentially an "Annie" tale from a century ago or so in the US, but in modern India. As an American currently charged with "leading" a pair of teams of Indian developers, this was particularly eye opening to me to see just what still can happen over there. (And admittedly, there are quite a few parallels re: Eminent Domain in the US right this second.)

Between Rakhi's struggles as an orphan essentially growing up on the streets before being abandoned in an orphanage to the slums she lives in to the (Indian) "White Knight" that "saves" her - yet expects slavish devotion because of it, Rakhi's tale has quite a bit in and of itself. Then the back third really gets into a discussion-without-saying-the-words of urban redevelopment and the havoc it can wreak on those "least" able to handle havoc. And of course "least" has to be in quotes in the prior sentence because the tale through this section actually does a great job of showing just how resilient those people are - and how fragile those that think themselves resilient can be.

Overall a strong book that could have used a touch better editing - the flashbacks to Rakhi's childhood and back to the current timeline were a bit jarring - but that certainly has more depth than is readily apparent to a casual reader. Very much recommended.