“The Vibrant Years” by Sonali Dev, the bestselling Indian American novelist, was the first book chosen by actress Mindy Kaling when she started her publishing imprint, Mindy’s Book Studio with the goal of bringing diversity to readers.
“Sonali Dev’s ‘The Vibrant Years’ captures the spirit of Mindy’s Book Studio,” Kaling said in the press release announcement. “It’s a joyful and empowering read following a group of unconventional women trying to find themselves.”
Dev, who lives in the Chicago area, found inspiration when she first began writing from all the Jane Austen novels she read while growing up. Though centuries and a continent separated the two, Dev liked the way Austen dissected British society with wit and flair.
“You both have a snarky well, I don’t mean snarky but…” I say fumbling with words. I obviously hadn’t had enough coffee that morning.
“I like that description because there’s so much in the world to be snarky about,” says Dev, who is always polite. “If we don’t laugh at the world around us, we’re just going to constantly believe all the lies they tell us, right? So I think snark is very healthy.”
Okay, so we’ll call it snark. I like that.
In “The Vibrant Life,” Dev writes about three generations of women. There’s 65-year-old Bindu Desai who has come into a fortune left to her by a man from her past—a past that she doesn’t want anyone to know about including her daughter-in-law who recently was divorced from her son and her granddaughter, Cullie. The latter is a technology whiz who created an app for coping with anxiety and she now has plenty of it, partly because she’s been betrayed by her boyfriend over the app’s future.
“I think of it as everything I’ve ever wanted to say about being a woman and the essentially feminine journey has been a central theme of all my books,” says Dev whose other books include “Pride, Prejudice, and Other Flavors” and “Incense and Sensibility,” both of which were bestsellers. “This book about three generations of Indian American women is a culmination of that.”
Working together, the three help Cullie in her attempts to regain control of her anxiety app while working on their own issues. Aly, the daughter-in-law, is struggling for recognition and advancement at the local news station where she works and where opportunities for Indian American women are limited. Bindu has used her legacy in part to purchase a condo in a posh Florida retirement community. But the members of her HOA board don’t like her attractiveness and vivaciousness. It’s like a replay of high school.
Dev says she was inspired in part to switch from her more romance-oriented novels to what she describes as women’s humorous fiction because of all the grandmother jokes she saw in fiction.
“Many older women characters in books are like cardboard, stereotypes,” she says. “They are either vinegary and outspoken or benevolent, wise and a font of affection kind of grandmother. But none of the women I know in their 60s and 70s are like that. I wanted to write characters that are like the older women in my life and the woman who I want to be when I am that age.”
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