The Story Hour

A Novel

De: Thrity Umrigar

Narrado por: Sneha Mathan

“Thrity Umrigar has an uncanny ability to look deeply into the human heart and find the absolute truth of our lives. The Story Hour is stunning and beautiful. Lakshmi and Maggie will stay with readers for a very long time.”—Luis Alberto Urrea, author of The Hummingbird's Daughter

From the critically beloved, bestselling author of The World We Found and The Space Between Us, whom the New York Times Book Review calls a “perceptive and . . . piercing writer,” comes a profound, heartbreakingly honest novel about friendship, family, secrets, forgiveness, and second chances.

An experienced psychologist, Maggie carefully maintains emotional distance from her patients. But when she meets a young Indian woman who tried to kill herself, her professional detachment disintegrates. Cut off from her family in India, Lakshmi is desperately lonely and trapped in a loveless marriage to a domineering man who limits her world to their small restaurant and grocery store.

Moved by her plight, Maggie treats Lakshmi in her home office for free, quickly realizing that the despondent woman doesn’t need a shrink; she needs a friend. Determined to empower Lakshmi as a woman who feels valued in her own right, Maggie abandons protocol, and soon doctor and patient have become close friends.

But while their relationship is deeply affectionate, it is also warped by conflicting expectations. When Maggie and Lakshmi open up and share long-buried secrets, the revelations will jeopardize their close bond, shake their faith in each other, and force them to confront painful choices.

©2024 Thrity Umrigar (P)2024 HarperCollins Publishers

A story of “how you can love unconditionally”

Regardless of where you were born, where you were schooled, the menial jobs some hold or the highly professional ones, as humans we need unconditional love and support to become the best versions of ourselves. I loved every chapter of this book for the authenticity of the story and the characters.

Beautiful story with excellent narration

I loved the story and the strong clear characters. All characters are so different and sympathetic. The narration brought the characters to life in a beautiful way!
Didn’t want it to end !

Lovely and interesting interactions

A sweet story of humans trying their best to be their best selves, but failing of course. How to bridge vast differences in creed, color, faith and deepseeded cultural values and myths? Very enjoyable.

A Beautiful Story Through and Through

Thrity Umrigar is a master storyteller and the story of Lakshmi and Maggie is a beautiful example. I didn’t want the story to end. In every book I have read from this author, the characters have so much depth, the storylines are so beautiful and each book provokes so much introspection. That is exactly the case in The Story Hour with Lakshmi and Maggie. Their stories touch your heart and make you wonder what you would do in their situation. Bravo Thrity Umrigar!

The author’s internalized racism and anti-Black sentiment limited this novel.

Sadly, the author does not understand the lives of Black women therapists, particularly those raised by parents who educated them about the civil rights movement and the history of enslavement, well enough to write Maggie’s story. The idea that at no point Maggie would question her internalized racism or ask herself why she is romanticizing a white man like Peter whose patronizing attitude towards the people and the lands he “explores” or “discovers” is absurd. Maggie is depicted as an insightful therapist, but somehow she does not reflect on being attracted to this conquistador who wears an animal tooth on his neck? The author actually uses phrases like “ his beautiful white skin” demonstrating her own obsession with fair skin, which reflects the colorism that is not uncommon in India or anywhere in the global south. Colorism is rampant in Africa, Asia and Latin America and any therapist trained in the last 50 years has enough insight on colonization and enslavement to recognize its psychological imprint and processes.

Black women who challenge themselves enough to navigate the rigors of western education sufficiently to obtain degrees and become therapists would not romanticize Peter’s whiteness and even if they did, they’d have the insight to recognize it as internalized racism. African-Americans are not immigrants and the author repeatedly makes false comparisons between the immigrant experience and the African-American one. In some ways, this is an understandable mistake because she writes what she knows best - but that’s what research is for.

Dialogue with actual African-American therapists who could have given her candid feedback about her problematic depiction of Maggie would’ve helped the author remove her own anti-Black biases from the book and made the Story Hour a more engaging and meaningful novel.

This should have been better.

The first third of the book held promise but soon I was aggravated then intensely put off by the demeaning portrayal of Lakshmi. I’m not sure if it was the tone of the narrator or the writing that was so patronizing . Maggie thinks she’s crossed into a friendship with her but she never speaks to or thinks of Lakshmi as an equal. Neither did I find the story profound as others seemed to. As a person who’s worked with immigrants and refugees for over 20 years I found this portrayal of an immigrant somewhat insulting.