Secrets, spectral visitors, and fabulous women

A book keen to muddle facile understandings of time and space, Alice Sees Ghosts by Daisy Rockwell questions the assumption that the family unit is a safe space

- Chintan Girish Modi

The International Booker Prize winning translator Daisy Rockwell makes her debut as a novelist with Alice Sees Ghosts, a book laced with grief and bursting with a desire to muddle linear, facile understandings of time and space.

Alice, a white heiress from Boston, who is restrained in her affection towards her Bengali psychiatrist-turned-fiancé Ronit, sets off on a trip to India on the insistence of her grandfather's ghost. Trained as a man of science, Ronit is wary of Alice's newfound belief in her ability to receive messages from a spectral visitor with ties to India and long-buried family secrets.

With a PhD in South Asian literature, decades of translating books written in Hindu and Urdu, and multiple trips to the subcontinent, it is hardly a surprise that Rockwell's first novel is set partly here. Alice travels to Kolkata, Muzaffarnagar and Mussoorie, with Ronit for company.

Rockwell does not lose the opportunity to poke fun at legions of White American tourists headed to India on a quest. It turns out that, in her 20s, at a yoga retreat in Rishikesh, Alice "contracted amoebic dysentery from Ganga water she had accidentally ingested during a puja ceremony" and picked up head lice from the Scandinavian "seekers" she shared a room with.

Alice's response to Ronit's proposal, before they leave for India, is hilarious and pathetic. Almost as if she is doing him a favour, she says, "This is very unexpected but I suppose we could get married if you wish." Desperate to hold on, Ronit plays along, but Alice's staunchest ally is Ronit's mother Debashree, who, unfortunately, makes too brief an appearance. Thrilled that her son has finally secured a match, Debashree cannot contain her jubilation.