Sneha, fresh out of college, moves to Milwaukee for a
job. She is all alone, now that her
parents have moved back to India, after her father was deported due to a work
scandal in which he was not involved.
Her family does not know that she is gay. This secret is just one example of her
inability to stand up for herself. Her
neighbor/property manager continually berates her for the noise, even if there
is none, and she eventually discovers that her boss has not paid her in
months. Sexually abused by an uncle in
India, Sneha feels that she does everything wrong and eventually puts her quest
for romantic love on hold in favor of finding friendship. That quest is quite successful, as she meets
Tig, who has a vision for a commune-like existence in a big house but no plan
for how to pay for such a house. Sneha
then falls in love with Marina but is unable to express her true feelings, and
this reticence, among other issues, renders their relationship unstable. This is just way too much twenty-something
angst for me, although I get that part of Sneha’s lack of assertiveness stems
from her tenuous immigrant status. She
accumulates a coterie of genuinely good friends who become her caring family,
in the absence of actual family members who are “two oceans away.” For me, Sneha is a very frustrating
protagonist, who allows Marina to misinterpret a statement that Sneha makes.
This misunderstanding mushrooms into a big fat lie, robbing me of any respect I
had for Sneha.
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