Fiction review: East of the Sun

FICTION
Sometimes, a sprawling historical novel is a perfect ticket to a pleasant escape. A gripping story, engaging characters and descriptions of other times and other places can entertain and educate.

And that's just what Julia Gregson serves up in "East of the Sun." As the story begins in London in 1928, 20-something Viva Holloway, a penniless orphan and an aspiring writer, has been hired to chaperone three younger people on their voyage to India. Viva has received word from a woman in Simla that a trunk belonging to Viva's late parents has been found, and that's all Viva needs to flee her humdrum life in England, a place she has never felt at home. Both her parents and her sister died in India, and the subcontinent calls to her.

Viva's charges are:

• Sweet, beautiful and innocent Rose Wetherby, who at 19 is sailing to India to marry Jack Chandler, a cavalry officer she barely knows.

• Victoria "Tor" Sowerby, Rose's childhood friend and now her bridesmaid. Tor is determined to find a man on board the ship or once she arrives in Bombay, and she's less than subtle about her goals.

• Brooding and disturbed Guy Glover, who at 16 has been in an English boarding school for 10 years and is just now returning to India to live with his emotionally distant parents.

That's a heady stew, and the four cross paths repeatedly once they arrive in India, as hope and happiness mix with despair and danger amid the waning days of the British Raj. And though she does not place undue emphasis on Indian politics, neither does Gregson ignore it; references to the nonviolent Mohandas Gandhi and violent protests pepper the plot as India moves toward casting off colonialism and achieving autonomy.

Nor is Gregson content with a predictable story line. "East of the Sun" is laden with surprises -- some large, some as small as the presence of a pet Chihuahua in cold and snowy Simla, which sits at the edge of the Himalayas.

Throughout, Gregson -- a former journalist who lives in Wales -- tells her story without letting high-flown prose obstruct it. The writing is serviceable and suitable; this is a novel that turns on plot and people.

"East of the Sun" is neither Paul Scott's "Raj Quartet" nor E.M. Forster's "A Passage to India" -- and it does not aspire to those heights. But what Gregson has done is construct a winning story, a novel grounded in time and place but one that transcends both to become a sensitive and moving testament to friendship.

Contact Jay Strafford at (804) 649-6698 or .