The Dream Builders

November 7, 2022
Mukherjee’s sweeping debut charts the rampant class differences in the fictional Indian city of Hrishipur over the course of the summer of 2018. To name a few of the 10 major characters: Maneka, a creative writing professor at a small Midwest college, is back in India to spend her summer break with her newly widowed father; her school friend Ramona, who has recently miscarried, suspects her globe-trotting entrepreneur husband, Salil, is having affairs; Jessica, a caterer and single mother, hustles to take care of her adopted daughter; Pinky gives facials and massages to the wealthy and learns their secrets; and Rajesh, the driver for Ramona and Salil, longs for a better life. Looming over them all is a nearly completed Trump Towers luxury apartment building, representing the country’s wealth, modernity, and progress to some of the narrators, and for others poisonous corruption. By the end, a major disaster impacts everyone. Though some of the many points of view add more insight than others, the author does a great job capturing the setting and exploring the fateful power dynamics. On balance, it’s a penetrating look at the fast-growing country’s shaky façade. Agent: Jessica Friedman, Sterling Lord Literistic.

November 1, 2022
Losses great and small haunt the denizens of a glittering new city in India. In the summer of 2018, Maneka Roy, who's lived in the U.S. for a dozen years, visits the rising and opulent city of Hrishipur to visit her father after the death of her mother. Natives of Calcutta, where they brought her up, Maneka's parents had relocated to Hrishipur so her mother could pursue a longed-for teaching career after her husband's retirement. (Once there, they ominously lost most of their modest nest egg when the development including the dream apartment they had invested in goes bust.) Maneka is drawn into the varied social circle inhabited by Ramona, an old acquaintance now living in Hrishipur. One of the "beautiful girls" back in high school, Ramona seems emblematic of the glitz and glamour of the Oz-like new city. Through a series of interlocking accounts, each told from the perspective of someone in or attached to Ramona's orbit, Mukherjee reveals the actual forces at work behind the glamorous facade of the dream city: loneliness, frustration, classism, misogyny, economic uncertainty, jealousy, disenfranchisement...and worry. People striving to get ahead or stay afloat in Hrishipur lose much-needed jobs, fear the loss of those jobs, and fight battles with ennui and increasingly competitive global market forces. Looming above this all, like an actual illuminated beacon, are the Trump Towers being (contentiously) developed by a famous U.S. developer and his family. Tensions between a traditional way of life and a more modern global approach are exemplified by Maneka's father's wish to return to the comforts of Calcutta. His wife's death has left him alone in a place where he knows few and where the exclusive malls and shops hold little allure for him. Hrishipur itself assumes a characterlike role in this narrative woven from many detailed threads. Mukherjee artfully demonstrates that even a new civilization can have its discontents.

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November 1, 2022
Contemporary India is difficult to capture neatly, but Maneka, a U.S.-based professor returning to her native country after the death of her mother, is determined to try. She arrives in the fictional and beguiling city of Hrishipur, with its frenetic pace, ritzy jet-setting residents, and people attempting to find a foothold. Looming in the background is Trump Towers, an apartment complex for which developers have managed to oil the bureaucratic machinery in order to proceed to near-completion. Mukherjee propels the plot forward through ten voices from different strata of society, including Maneka; her glamorous and rich friend, Ramona; Ramona's husband, Salil; a masseuse, Pinky; and a sly electrician, Gopal. Most have some tenuous connection to the building project. This vibrant chorus sets the stage for an epic story, which the novel capably delivers. Yet the characters lack room for growth; the lifestyles of the rich and famous feel especially anodyne. The seething discontent among the working classes, however, finds fluid expression as the drama picks up steam. All told, a promising first novel.

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