The Rummy Club

The Rummy Club follows lifelong friends and how their relationships change as life gives them tragedies and triumphs, unified through a weekly card game. The emotions are common to all humans, but the details of a foreign culture and how it translates to American soil is done seamlessly. I enjoyed the four women and the glimpse into traditions unlike my own. I'd love to join all of them for a hand or two.

Easy read about 4 girlfriends from high school in India and end up growing old in the bay area together. Simple writing but still evokes emotion!

Manoj Vaz, a young Indian author, has quoted remarkably about card games as:“Life may not have dealt you a great set of cards... but who says the one with better cards will win?”Anoop Ahuja Judge, an Indian origin American author's debut book, The Rummy Club is all about cards, friendships, hardships and clearly conveys the message that someone in possession of better cards will not necessarily win.Synopsis:Five years ago Divya Kapoor moves from the immigrant ghetto of Queens to the SF Bay Area with her husband and children to start over. In this new place, she re-discovers her three closest friends from the girls’ boarding school they all attended in a Himalayan foothill town. The four women commit to meet weekly at one another’s homes to eat and share and gossip, and to play the popular Indian version of Rummy.Now the friends’ lives are all in crisis. Brilliant Alka’s thwarted ambitions and her dissatisfying marriage have turned her into an obsessive Tiger Mother. Big-hearted Priya must face the truth about her collapsing marriage. Divya herself lies awake at night struggling with her envy of the comfortable stability her friends have already attained. And, in one unexpected moment, beautiful Mini suddenly becomes a widow.When the worst befalls Alka’s son and Divya’s frustrations spill over into the Rummy game, their once dependable world is torn apart. Will Alka’s son make it? Will Alka and Divya repair their friendship? Will Priya’s fledgling business and her blossoming relationship with a Hispanic hunk survive? Will Mini marry a WASP? Will the four friends ever play Rummy together again?The four once upon a time besties are all grown up now and are leading their own lives with their families and the author captures their journey from their boarding school in India through marriage and kids to their lives in the US. And the whole process of portraying their drastic transformation is very striking. With the author's careful and polished chosen words, makes the story groovier and a pleasurable read. What I liked the most was that the author has tried to instill that same old friendship among the four women over a game of rummy and delicious Indian food regardless of their own sufferings and grief. All the elements to make the plot an emotional roller-coaster ride was done successfully by the author. I felt every bit of their trauma and every bit of their happiness. Moreover, the east-west culture clash is very vivid in the author's story-telling. With her elegant prose, it becomes an easy read for us. The issues shown by the author in these four women's lives are not so surreal, in fact, it's quite believable from an Indian immigrant's POV. I liked the effort that the author has given to make her debut book such a compelling one.Verdict: Don't miss this debut book of Anoop Ahuja, in which she will take you in a whirlwind of journey full of troubles and card games.Courtesy: Thanks to Good Reads for once again choosing me as a First Reads Winner and a huge thanks to the author for providing me with a copy of her book.

Every once in a while, you come across and author who just "gets it." This was one of those time. "Women's Fiction" is frequently sort of a throw-away genre--just a readable story without much meat. Judge, on the other hand, has written a multi-layered story that stands out among the genre.There are a lot of books about women's friendships that deal with the relationship between 2 women or one group as a whole. Here, Judge has brought 4 distinct characters together and explored not only the relationships between each of the women in the group, but also the relationships the women have outside the group. While the 4 women met at a young age and they have all ended up in roughly the same place 25 years later, they have very different circumstances and Judge highlights this quite well.I also really enjoyed reading the cultural details in this book. I'm not very familiar with the Indian culture and Judge really brought it to life for me-both in terms of the traditional culture and how that culture translates to those now living in the USA. Judge also includes a glossary of Indian terms at the beginning of this book, which I put to good use (and, because of this, I would recommend that anyone who wants to read this book read it in paper form instead of as an ebook).My only complaint about this book is a technical one. Judge employs the 3rd person omniscient narrative most of the time. However, when she tells Divya's story, she switches to the 1st person. This in itself is fine, but I noticed a couple times when she seemed to get a little confused in her narration and she'll start a section or even a paragraph with one narration and end with the other. However, while the stood out for me, other readers may not even notice it.One other criticism I have does not deal with the book itself (and, because of that, I didn't take it into consideration when putting together my thoughts for this book), but with the summary. This is one of my pet peeves...it gives away too much of the story! Authors normally don't write these, so this is not a knock against Judge or this book, but whoever did write it should have stuck with a shorter synopsis that gives potential readers a feel of the book instead of an outline of the plot.Okay, all that aside, this is a book I highly recommend! It is an easy read with a lot of meat that should appeal to readers who like the idea of Women's Fiction, but never seem to be satisfied by it.