Leaving Everything Most Loved by Jacqueline Winspear

Leaving Everything Most Loved: A Maisie Dobbs Novel ---339 pages

In 1933, two months after a murdered Indian woman named Usha Pramal was found dumped in the Grand Surrey Canal in Camberwell, the victim's anguished brother arrives in London and retains Maisie Dobbs to investigate the death, since Scotland Yard has made no progress in solving the murder.  Indeed, it appears to Maisie that the police have conducted only the most cursory investigation at all.

But when Maisie begins to look into the matter a second woman --- another Indian woman staying in the same hostel who was friends with Usha --- is murdered in the same way just hours before she was due to meet with Maisie and reveal what she knew about Usha's activities and acquaintances in the weeks before her death.

As part of her investigation Maisie finds herself talking to other Indian immigrants living in London, and becomes more and more attracted to the history, culture and spirituality of India. All of the success she has achieved, the place she has made for herself, and the relationships she has established, though satisfying are not enough any more. She has a hunger to see more, to learn and to stretch herself in new and different directions. And so, as she pursues her case she also pursues an important decision: is it time to leave behind everything she most loves --- to break her heart so that she can open herself to new experiences and possibilities?

The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel by Deborah Moggach

The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel: A Novel by Deborah Moggach --- 320 pages

Since I thoroughly enjoyed the charming, quirky and very British humor of the movie, I thought it would be fun to read the novel on which the film was based. The author is an experienced and successful novelist in her native Britain. What I discovered however, is that --- oh so typically --- the studio that acquired the rights to this novel took the title, the setting, the characters, and the plot and turned them all into something quite different from the original. Only in this case the film is better than the novel, which while entertaining enough, has nothing of the charm, quirkiness or humor of the film.

The book is about the experiences of a group of British retirees trying to stretch their reduced resources by going to live in a retirement "hotel" in India, but that's where the resemblance ends. Treat yourself to another view of the film; it takes less time and you'll enjoy it far more.