I recall enjoying Desai's Baumgartner's Bombay and Fasting, Feasting very much. Journey to Ithaca is another novel of Westerners enthralled with the mysteries of the East, and not understanding those mysteries, to their detriment. Sophie and Matteo are wealthy newlyweds who spend their honeymoon in India, seeking novelty, excitement, and enlightenment. Sophie becomes overwhelmed and exhausted, but Matteo is pulled deeper into the country and the culture, and once he meets a famous guru called The Mother, their lives are changed forever. Told from the points of view of Sophie, her children, and the Mother herself, this was simultaneously fascinating and a slog, and I can't figure out why, exactly. The tone of bewildered disenchantment was so pervasive and heavy I became unable to engage with the particulars of the plot.
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