The Unlikely Adventures of the Shergill Sisters

The Unlikely Adventures of the Shergill Sisters is a 2019 novel by Balli Kaur Jaswal, published by William Morrow in the United States on 30 April 2019. It tells the story of three British born Punjabi sisters, Rajni, Jezmeen and Shirina, who were never close as children and have drifted even further apart as adults, living in Britain and Australia. When their mother Sita dies, she leaves them a letter asking them to travel together on a pilgrimage to the Sikh holy places of India, ending at the Golden Temple in Amritsar, and to scatter her ashes. Each sister is carrying a private trouble she has told nobody about, and the journey their mother designed for them forces the three of them, for the first time in their adult lives, to really talk to each other.

About the book

The novel is Jaswal's fourth, after Inheritance and Sugarbread and Erotic Stories for Punjabi Widows. American reviewers counted it as her second, because Erotic Stories for Punjabi Widows (2017) was her American debut, but in her full bibliography it is her fourth book. The hardcover runs to 320 pages. Her mother Sita's story drives the plot: a cancer diagnosis stopped Sita from returning to Punjab to complete a pilgrimage of Sikh holy sites herself, so she wrote her daughters a letter commanding them to make the journey after her death. Jaswal has said she wanted the book to be a female take on the Indian travel narrative, asking how different such a trip would be if it were undertaken by women, who face different dangers in a male dominated society, and wanting to explore the tensions between tradition and modernity in immigrant communities, especially among women like these sisters, who are the first generation to be raised outside of India.

Who are the three Shergill sisters?

Rajni is the eldest, by more than a decade, and she organises the trip. She is a school principal, a stickler for order, and the family's drill sergeant: the firstborn who has always taken charge. Her publisher adds a complication that explains her strictness: after a trip to India with her mother long ago, Rajni vowed never to return, yet as a dutiful daughter she cannot refuse her mother's last request even now. Jezmeen, the middle sister, is the rebellious drama queen, a thirty year old struggling actress who fears her big break may never come. She has just been publicly fired from her television job, so the trip to India is a welcome break from a broken career, and a chance to find her voice again. Shirina is the youngest and the family's peacekeeper, the good sister who married into wealth and seems to enjoy a picture perfect life. She has moved to Australia, where she lives with her husband Sehaj and his controlling mother, and her in-laws are pushing her to make a pivotal decision about her married life, whether to meekly obey or to stand up for herself for the first time.

Plot and themes

The journey itself is a mix of tourism, sentimental places and spiritual tasks, laid out in Sita's letter, and the sisters make it in the order she set. On the road, their differences flare at every stop. Publishers Weekly, reviewing the book in February 2019, noted the bickering between Rajni and Jezmeen over Jezmeen's clothing choices, and the sisters' shared worry over Shirina's limited participation in the trip. Flashbacks explain how earlier events shaped each woman's life, and as the three view the splendour of the Sikh temples of India, the bond of sisterhood grows stronger. When Rajni and Jezmeen sense that Shirina is in trouble, they are able to look past their own problems and come to her aid. Under the jokes and the quarrels sit the themes Kirkus Reviews named: the complicated experiences of womanhood, immigration and grief. Each sister is holding back a trial from the others, and the novel's suspense comes not from one big twist but from the slow reveal of those secrets, and of the real story behind Rajni's long ago trip with her mother, the journey that resulted in their mother never being able to return to India again.

ਲੇਖਕ

Balli Kaur Jaswal was born in Singapore and grew up in Japan, Russia and the Philippines. She studied creative writing at Hollins University in Virginia, and was the National Writer-in-Residence at Singapore's Nanyang Technological University, where she taught creative writing while working on Erotic Stories for Punjabi Widows. That book, set among the Punjabi widows of Southall in London, became an international bestseller and a Reese Witherspoon Book Club pick in 2018, and it is also in this Kosh. Her people entry in this Kosh tells her fuller story. The Shergill Sisters is the companion piece to that book in one clear sense: where the widows' story stayed in one London community, this one takes its Punjabi women back to the homeland, and asks what that return does to people who were born somewhere else.

Reception and legacy

Publishers Weekly called the novel witty and emotional, a heartfelt story of three sisters agreeing to the wishes of their deceased mother, and said teen and adult fans of women's fiction would find much to appreciate in it. Kirkus Reviews praised Jaswal's knack for efficient yet affecting summary and swift moving scenes, saying the sisters' past dynamics and present relationships feel wonderfully rich, and closed by calling it a women driven story that explores family relationships and histories with grace, humour and warmth. Her publisher describes it as life affirming and witty, a charming and thoughtful story that illuminates the bonds of family, sisterhood and heritage that tether us despite our differences. For Punjabi readers, it is one of the few novels in English to treat a Sikh pilgrimage as a family comedy and a family reckoning at the same time: the Golden Temple is not scenery here, it is the point of the journey, and the sisters' faith and their arguments with it are part of the plot rather than background.

What should I read next?

Read Erotic Stories for Punjabi Widows (2017), also in this Kosh, for the book that made Jaswal famous: another London Punjabi community, this time a widows' storytelling class in Southall, and the same attention to what women say to each other when men are not in the room. Readers who want Jaswal's Singapore side can look for Inheritance (2013) and Sugarbread (2016), the two earlier novels set in Singapore's Sikh community.