"The Distance" is a surprisingly refreshing and engaging novel in the diasporic genre. The writing style, though reminiscent of stalwarts like Bharati Mukherjee, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni and Jhumpa Lahiri, has a distinctive quality that takes hold of the reader gradually (like an acquired taste) and compellingly. The linear narrative weaves a subtle spell with its understated theme that nevertheless contains the archetypal ‘beginning, middle and end’. The climax and the dénoument are very well-handled, bearing a sophisticated panache. For a first-novel, this is an impressive beginning indeed."
"Sreejata Guha" ---freelance editor with Penguin India
“The Distance" takes place in both an India of social revolution and a North America of immigrant assimilation. It is about human contradictions and dilemmas, and about characters torn apart by the fast-changing social landscape of two worlds. The narrator, a young Indian woman named Mini, must constantly choose between success and morality, between what she once wanted to be and what she has become. It is Mini’s intelligence, awareness and strength of character--even more than the decision she must make between two worlds and two men--that set this story apart. Mini is neither the typical housewife nor the poor uneducated woman that has been the traditional lens in most Indian fiction written in English. She is educated and socially conscious, and her political involvements in India make her a keen observer of North American society, even if they cannot really help her with matters of the human heart.
