Tell It to the Trees
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Tell It to the Trees Audible Audiobook – Unabridged

Anita Rau Badami (Author), Gia Sandhu (Narrator), Ana Sani (Narrator),
4.0 4.0 out of 5 stars 36 ratings
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One freezing winter morning a dead body is found in the backyard of the Dharma family’s house. It’s the body of Anu Krishnan. 

For Anu, a writer seeking a secluded retreat from the city, the Dharmas’ “back-house” in the sleepy mountain town of Merrit’s Point was the ideal spot to take a year off and begin writing. She had found the Dharmas’ rental through a happy coincidence. A friend from university who had kept tabs on everyone in their graduating year - including the quiet and reserved Vikram Dharma and his first wife, Helen - sent her the listing. Anu vaguely remembered Vikram but had a strong recollection of Helen, a beautiful, vivacious, social, and charming woman.

But now Vikram had a new wife, a marriage hastily arranged in India after Helen was killed in a car accident. Suman Dharma, a stark contrast to Helen, is quiet and timid. She arrived from the bustling warmth of India full of the promise of her new life - a new home, a new country, and a daughter from Vikram’s first marriage. But her husband’s suspicious, controlling, and angry tirades become almost a daily ritual, resigning Suman to a desolate future entangled in a marriage of fear and despair.

Suman is isolated both by the landscape and the culture, and her fortunes begin to change only when Anu arrives. A friendship begins to form between the two women as Anu becomes a frequent visitor to the house. While the children, Varsha and Hemant, are at school, Anu, Vikram’s mother, Akka, and Suman spend time sharing tea and stories.

But Anu’s arrival will change the balance of the Dharma household. Young Varsha, deeply affected by her mother’s death and desperate to keep her new family together, becomes increasingly suspicious of Anu’s relationship with her stepmother. Varsha’s singular attention to keeping her family together, and the secrets that emerge as Anu and Suman become friends, create cracks in the Dharma family that can only spell certain disaster.

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  1. Listening Length
    6 hours and 41 minutes
  2. Author
    Anita Rau Badami
  3. Narrator
    Gia Sandhu, see all
  4. Audible release date
    January 15, 2019
  5. Language
    English
  6. Publisher
    Vintage Canada
  7. ASIN
    B07KX56KVG
  8. Version
    Unabridged
  9. Program Type
    Audiobook
  10. See all details
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Product details

Listening Length 6 hours and 41 minutes
Author Anita Rau Badami
Narrator Gia Sandhu, Ana Sani, Anand Rajaram, Tennille Read
Audible.com Release Date January 15, 2019
Publisher Vintage Canada
Program Type Audiobook
Version Unabridged
Language English
ASIN B07KX56KVG
Best Sellers Rank #322,877 in Audible Books & Originals (See Top 100 in Audible Books & Originals)
#5,747 in Family Life Fiction (Audible Books & Originals)
#6,089 in Psychological Thrillers (Audible Books & Originals)
#10,637 in Women's Fiction (Audible Books & Originals)

Customer reviews

4 out of 5 stars
4 out of 5
36 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Mizmarzie
5.0 out of 5 stars A well written book .... that will remain with you.
Reviewed in the United States on August 14, 2019
Verified Purchase
Another one of Anita Rau Badami's masterpieces. Written in her effortless style depicting life within an Indian family in Canada ... with its complex family politics... the need to conform and to yet to retain old traditional values and systems... there is bound to be victims.... in the end all are victims...
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Zara Garcia-Alvarez
4.0 out of 5 stars Book Review: Tell It to the Trees by Anita Rau Badami from The Bibliotaphe Closet
Reviewed in the United States on November 9, 2012
The book, Tell It to the Trees, by Anita Rau Badami is a gripping novel about an Indian family that lives in the isolated recluse of the wilderness found in a small town, Merrit's Point, in northern British Columbia. And much like the setting, the family itself is hidden by the burden of their family secret---the domestic violence of their authoritarian father, Vikram Dharma.

One of Anita Rau Badami's literary gifts is to be able to speak so effectively through first person narrative. Her prose as written through the eyes of her main characters, is natural, realistic, and effortless, and is as convincing as a controlling, self-indulgent child to a terrified, insecure one, to a bitter, nostalgic elder and an idealistic, empowered young woman.

The internal dialogue of the characters reveal a deeply wounded psychology, one that evolves from the suffering of domestic violence and the feelings of unworthiness, helplessness, and a lack of freedom, power, and control.

This voicelessness for each character is emotionally rerouted in different ways:

For Helen. Vikram's first wife, she finds means of escape through the fantasy and adventure of an adulterous affair and eventually the courage to walk out on her abusive husband and only child.

For Akka, Vikram's mother and children's grandmother, she finds solace in the nostalgic memory that her own abusive husband is now long gone, having died from the freezing temperatures of British Columbia's harsh winter. And the continual hope that others like her, who find themselves trapped in abusive relationships, might muster the courage to flee towards freedom independence.

Suman, Vikram's second wife, in her subservient nature desperately tries to overcompensate for her husband's cruelty with her full submission to him and the spoiling of the children. While she desires to leave a life of domestic violence, she is traumatized by fear of pain and retaliation.

Anu Krishnan, the family's house tenant, while she suspects dysfunction in the family, can only communicate her thoughts openly and honestly in the pages of her not-so-private journal.

Hemnant, Vikram and Suman's son, who is young and impressionable, is manipulated by his older half-sister into believing everything she says and is compelled and left to share the burden of his own fears with no one and nothing more than Tree, a tree on the family property that the children have named and chosen to be their confidant of secrets.

Varsha, Vikram and Helen's eldest daughter is so traumatized by her mother's absence that she clings to the idea of a family unit with such tenacity and fervor that to please her father and uphold the honour of her family name is her heartfelt aspiration, duty, and compulsion---even if the family she desperately tries to hold together is one with violence at its centre.

To read the rest of my review, you're more than welcome to visit my blog, The Bibliotaphe Closet:

[...]

Zara Alexis of The Bibliotaphe Closet
[...]
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Mary Gina Machado
3.0 out of 5 stars Don't leave me hanging,please
Reviewed in the United States on November 29, 2011
Dear author, you had this so right, until the ending
It was so good, why did you spoil it
Could,t you think of a finish
I won't say anymore
Maybe other readers won't mind
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J.S.
5.0 out of 5 stars An engrossing novel about family dynamics and the events leading ...
Reviewed in the United States on May 30, 2016
Verified Purchase
An engrossing novel about family dynamics and the events leading up to an unexpected horrifying outcome. Couldn't put it down.
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B. Siemens
4.0 out of 5 stars Enjoyable story that is cohesively written
Reviewed in the United States on July 22, 2012
Anita Rau Badami has done a wonderful job of compiling several perspectives into one compelling story, in Tell It to the Trees. And the poetic language with which Suman, the protagonist, shares her perspective offers a foretaste of events that will have occurred. We learn about Lalli, Suman's childhood friend, whose father "descended to Madras from northern India." This interesting quote suggests coming south and moving from the mountains to the seaside; it also suggests a change in life, which is evidenced by Lalli's later suffering.

In the same chapter, Suman tells about sneaking out to "witness the birth of the new moon. Not too far away, despite the darkness, I could see the dome of the Taj Mahal thrusting up at the sky like a pale breast. I gazed at my face dimly reflected in the mirror. I. Such a sliver of a word to hold the meaning and the matter of all that I was and would be. I believed that I was tougher than that frail stick of a word, I could leap over its scrawny boundaries, I could become more than I was." What a magical thought! And how interesting to watch Suman lose focus, "When you are unhappy, you use any little thread, imagined or otherwise, to fabricate an entire quilt to comfort you." Suman struggles against the antagonist, who holds other characters in thrall, until finally Suman realizes that she has descended to the bottom, "That beetle was me, caught inside the house, inside the town, within the circling mountains." Suman's struggle is to return to the reality that she once held.

Deeply integrated into the whole story are two deaths. Their questionable circumstances have parallels and with death comes new life. This engaging novel will stick with me for some time to come.
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Jill
5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent story
Reviewed in the United States on November 1, 2012
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Terrific insight into a culture i know very little about. Intriguing concept - safe way for children to share deepest thoughts and concerns in a highly critical family situation.
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clint boutilier
4.0 out of 5 stars Four Stars
Reviewed in the United States on July 21, 2014
good
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Top reviews from other countries

Janet B
5.0 out of 5 stars PROTECTING THE FAMILY NAME!
Reviewed in Canada on May 9, 2012
Verified Purchase
This story takes place in the mountain town of Merrit's Point in Northern British Columbia. The Dharma home is isolated. It is the only inhabited building for miles around.

It opens with a dead body found in the backyard of the Dharma family house. It is the body of their tenant Anu Krishnan. It was 30 degrees below zero that night. Anu had taken her jacket off. The question is why would Anu go out in a blizzard? Didn't she know how dangerous cold can be?

Anu wanted time away from the busy city so that she could write and reflect. Vikram rented the back-house to Anu for one year. She had found the house through an university friend who kept in touch with everyone in the graduating year including the quiet and reserved Vikram Dharma and his first wife Helen(Harini). Anu didn't remember Vikram, but she did remember Helen, a pretty, fun loving and outgoing woman. During her stay, she befriends Suman, the second wife, and Akka, the matriarch of the Dharma family. Her arrival will soon change the balance of the Dharma household.

Living in the house is the Dharma family. The husband Vikram, his first wife Helen, their daughter Varsha and Vikram's elderly mother Akka. Helen was a messy housekeeper, a bad cook, but she loved to dress up and go out. Vikram was a jealous man and treated her poorly. One day, she decides to leave. She has had enough of Vikram. She takes her car and off she goes. Shortly after leaving, Helen is killed in a car accident. Vikram is shocked and very angry.

Vikram then decides to go to India for the first time and in an arranged marriage, marries Suman. Six months later she arrives at the Dharma house. Suman is so different from Helen. She is quiet and timid. She arrived from India, full of promise of her new life, a new home, a new country and a daughter from Vikram's first marriage. Soon after, Suman gives birth to a son named Hemant. Suman is a wonderful housekeeper and a very good cook, but Vikram finds fault with everything she does. He has a bad temper and begins to abuse her in the same way he did with his first wife. He calls Suman a fool and criticizes her for still wearing saris. Suman stops smiling and now she cries a lot. He even whips his own daughter with his belt.
Vikram's mother Akka tells Suman to leave and run as fast as she can to get away from her son. Varsha loves her step-mother and hides her passport so that she can't leave.
With Anu's friendship with the two women, terrible things are bound to happen. Secrets are now beginning to spill out and that will cause more problems.

Tell It to the Trees is a domestic drama of family life set in an Indian household, about the impact of family secrets and the cost of preserving and protecting the family name.

The writing is beautifully descriptive. The characters are vivid and you will be transported to a different world. The novel is filled with suspense and family secrets that will hold your interest from beginning to end.

Anita Rau Badami's novel Tell It to the Trees is a WINNER.
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kgkbooks
5.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars
Reviewed in Canada on June 23, 2017
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I liked this even better than her last novel- tighter pacing and a smaller cast of characters.
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tori
5.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars
Reviewed in Canada on November 28, 2014
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excellant book
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