Leave It To Me
Bharati Mukherjee
Hardcover
(Knopf, 1997, March 15, 1997)
In her follow-up to the highly acclaimed The Holder of the World, Bharati Mukherjee has written an audacious, often deadpan funny story of a young woman's strong-arm struggle for reinvention against the hammer hold of the past.Debby DiMartino, saved from death in infancy by Indian nuns, and adopted by loving American parents in Schenectady, New York, can't figure out if she is someone special or just a special kind of misfit. Her quest to track down her biological parents takes her deep into the counterculture of San Francisco and the legacy of Viet Nam, where she becomes "Devi Dee," a woman who begins to discover a past  and present  that defines her own role in an ultimately shocking, yet compelling universe. A cocky, breakneck-pace read, Leave It to Me is Bharati Mukherjee at her provocative best."There is much to puzzle over, and also much to admire, in Mukherjee's in-your-face, zeitgeist-funny, and always disturbing novel."  The Globe and Mail"Šan astute, ironic and merciless insight into an aberrant version of the American dream."  Publishers Weekly (Starred review)"Pain and sorrow, hurt and humiliation, rage and violence  Bharati Mukherjee deftly mixes these elements into a disturbing, explosive tale of 1990s AmericaŠ"  The Ottawa CitizenBharati Mukherjee is the author of six previous novels, including Jasmine and The Middle man and Other Stories (which won the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1989), and two books of nonfiction, written with her husband, Clark Blaise. Born in Calcutta, she came to the US in 1961 to complete her Master of Fine Arts and Ph.D. She is a professor of English at the University of California at Berkeley.