The literary style of the back can be described as simple but evocative. It is simple in the sense that the authoress does not resort to any “post-modern” techniques but instead tells the story simply. The characters are well developed and fleshed out, and the narrative spans a period of thirty years. The authoress draws heavily from her immigrant experience, and the book is an invitation to the readers to revel in their own experiences in a foreign country.
The background of much of the book is centered on food and the way it relates to two cultures. There are descriptions of dinners at the Ganguli household as well as at Maxine’s place. Invariably, the narrative focuses on the food that is being cooked and the way the characters partake of it, and the selection of wines and the like.
The authoress follows the lives of the main characters through a period of time instead of focusing on a plot. Thus, we are left with individual biographies of the characters and an attempt to synthesize them into a story instead of a plot that has a beginning and an ending. The style is more of a “bildungsroman” and a coming of age of the main protagonist and his experiences at synthesizing his Indian identity with that of the American dream.
The style of the novel is that of a cozy family tale that makes the characters endearing to us and connect with them. No wonder that this novel received critical acclaim for the use of the narrative to spin a family drama.