Bandit Queens

 by Parini Shroff

This book was on the best seller list, I didn't really know anything about it.  It certainly was not anything I expected.  The book takes place in India.  The main character is part of a group of women who get loans to create home crafts.  She is feared in the village because people believe she murdered her husband.  One of the women in her group, whose husband beats her and steals the money she makes to buy booze, comes to the woman and asks for help killing her husband.  The woman is shocked and doesn't want to have any part in this but the woman keeps nagging her so eventually she does help the woman accomplish the task by suggesting how to make a poison.

However, this turns out badly for her beause the woman whose husband was murdered comes to her and says now that her husband is dead she needs money to support her family and she insists the woman give her money or she will go to the police.  The widow says she will deny all knowledge of the murder.

Then another woman comes to her asking for help to murder a man.  She reluctantly agrees to assist with a distraction so the woman can get some poison in a garden.  But in the end the woman ends up murdering the man herself beause he tries to rape her.

One day, the main character's husband shows up claiming he is blind.  He steals her money but tries to endear himself to her.  Eventually she figures out he is faking blindness.  She tries to get him to leave with no success.

While this has all been occuring the woman had met a man who was a bootlegger who was mixing gasoline in with his alcohol, testing concoctions on stray dogs.  She steals one of his dogs and threatens to report him.

At the end of the book the bootlegger shows up at her house.  Her husband had agreed to let the bootlegger beat up his wife in payment for debts he owes the bootlegger.  In the rucus some of her female friends arrive at the house, her husband is shot in the leg by the bootlegger and the woman convinces him that if he leaves her alone she will not report him.

The woman someone gets her husband to leave and at the end delivers divorce papers to him at his parent's house where he is sponging off them.  It is very difficult for women to get a divorce even if spouses are abusive, the woman had to have a local council that would believer her.

This was a very strange book, but an interesting read.