The Charterhouse of Padma

The Charterhouse of Padma is a novel told in two parts: in each half, a South Asian woman, "P," living in Fayetteville, Arkansas, is writing an essay about her favorite color: chartreuse. The first P is a translator and professor, married to Mac, a professional feminist too slick for his own good. As lockdown commences, she discovers a secret about him, one that upends her understanding of their relationship and their marriage. In the gulf of their widening estrangement, P imagines a double, someone very like herself but less lonely, more independent, more angry, more maternal, more fun... . Now we meet another "P": a novelist, married to a successful poet and translator called Mat. It's her second marriage-the first was upended when she discovered a bad secret about her then-husband. This P is abraded, exhausted and enraged: by racial microaggressions, by structural obstacles, by the ways her husband's reaction to her own overdue career success is challenging their marriage. Granted stillness by the pandemic, though, P rediscovers joy and hope in her relationship. Eventually, each woman is led by her essay to the Chartreuse Mountains, the region made famous by the monks and their secret elixir, as the two "P"s trajectories converge"--