Intemperance by Sonora Jha (HarperCollins) ~Janet Brown

Nobody is too old for a fairy tale. Just look at the success of the classic movie Pretty Woman or the undying allure of Pride and Prejudice whether it’s presented in print, in a movie theater, or on streaming video. Now Intemperance gives the fairy tale a new twist, putting it on social media with a dip into Hindu ritual, and help from various Indian goddesses.

“I am fifty-five years of age, own my own home but am otherwise modest of income, am twenty pounds overweight and face increasing disability in my legs as my age advances.” This is hardly the sort of post that’s likely to go viral except for one key factor. The writer plans to select her own husband from a host of contenders that will compete for her hand in marriage, in a ritual known as a swayamvar, once practiced in ancient India and now known largely through Bollywood musicals. 

The unnamed narrator, a Seattle university professor, expects outraged reactions from the Sociology department where she works, especially from the branch that concentrates on Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. To her surprise, she’s heralded as a feminist beacon for assuming agency in mate selection and is suddenly a subject on The View and Oprah. Drew Barrymore and the mayor of Seattle provide moral support and a successful wedding planner offers her services for free. The opposition comes from India, where strangers and family members excoriate her for brazenly bringing shame to her native culture.

The professor’s “quiet life of books and bookstores…in this soggy little town of Seattle” becomes besieged with media attention and unsettling encounters with mysterious women whom she’s never seen before, all of them eager to offer their wisdom and advice. At night her dreams become cinematic nightmares as she relives a scandalous portion of her family history, recently told to her in letters from a “distant cousin-brother” in New Delhi. Worst of all, she has a feeling that her “goddesses are coming after her.”

But the swayamvar takes on a life of its own, as the wedding planner enlists the help of a renowned culinary artist to make the wedding cake and a sought-after stylist who provides the perfect bridal outfit, traditionally Indian in blazing red. When the day finally arrives, twelve men show up at the beachside park where they may or may not be chosen. Is this fate or the launching of a public disaster?

Although this may sound like an average rom-com scenario with a dash of kohl and mythology to liven things up a bit, Intemperance is a chocolate bonbon laced with a satirical sense of humor, an unflinching examination of female desire in midlife, and a look at the way physical disability can shape a woman’s life as she develops attractions to compensate, increasing her power.

Under the guise of a modern day Cinderella story, Sonora Jha has written a smart, sensual, and mildly scathing look at the way we live now. The absurdity of dating apps, the power of the algorithm, the invisibility of aging women are all dissected cleverly within a framework of an impossible dream--or is it?