A review by katie_greenwinginmymouth
The Yogini by Sangeeta Bandyopadhyay

dark emotional mysterious reflective medium-paced

• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

LOVED this one. The opening is one of the best I’ve ever read and I was totally hooked from that moment. It’s a brilliantly ambiguous book with a complicated and conflicted main character who starts to feel that she is being stalked by a hermit or yogi figure who represents her fate. Her fate becomes inescapable and she grapples with the idea that she has no control over her life and that everything is predestined.

Homi, the central character, is a young, middle class TV journalist living in Kolkata. She is married and seemingly relatively content or at least comfortable, but everything gets turned upside down by her obsession with fate, making her reassess a lot of her life. The way the story unravels is really compelling but there is also plenty left up to interpretation and the ending really leaves you with a lot to think about. Maybe a key to the story is the title - whilst the figure stalking Homi appears to be a man, the title refers to the female version of a yogi. Perhaps Homi herself has more of these qualities than she thinks? As soon as I got to the end I re-read the opening which takes on new meaning in light of having read the final part of the book. There’s a lot to unpack and I can definitely see it holding up to a re-read.