As You Wish Reviews: Release Event / Kilingiri by Janna Gray

Book Title: Kilingiri

Author: Janna Gray

Release Date: May 21st 2013

Genre: Romance, Women’s Fiction, Romantic Saga, Saga

One Liner

With exotic locations richly painted, Kilingiri, a saga of love and loss with its many painful twists and turns, proceeds like beads threaded on silk until the circle is completed.

Blurb

1968, Srinagar, Kashmir and Nina is devastated by the death of her new-born baby girl.

Sister Angela and Father Michael at the mission hospital step in to nurse Nina back to health but when the friendship between Nina and Father Michael turns to love, Michael makes a decision which will resonate through the years.

It is 1981 and in Kinsale, Ireland, Nina, devoted to her son Joshua, lives a loveless existence, but a chance encounter changes everything. Michael is back in her life, he leaves the priesthood and happiness is within their grasp.

But when past and present collide, their whole world is turned upside down.

Only by facing the consequences of what has gone before, can Nina and Michael embrace the future.

Janna Gray guides us masterfully through this poignant story of love, loss, betrayal and hope.

Excerpt

The visit to Singapore was almost at an end and she'd had a blast with a group of young bankers, lawyers, real estate agents, a couple of rubber-planters from Malaysia and the Foreign Office crowd who knew how to party with a vengeance. Many an evening was spent at parties or sessions at the Tanglin Club, where sundowners of gimlets, whisky-water or 'Horse's Necks' trickled down throats while conversations revolved around who was screwing who, and the latest amah drama.

Nina met Simon at one such party and sailed with him up the east coast of Malaysia to Terranganu to observe hundreds of turtles crawl out of the surf to lay their eggs on acres of sandy beach. They visited nightclubs in the seediest areas of Singapore where women danced on bars, thrusting out their bikini-clad bums for dollar notes and gropes, and to Bugis Street where she couldn't tell the difference between the female prostitutes and the transvestites who all wore figure-hugging dresses and had hair-styles and bodies to kill for. She fell in love with the busy markets: hawkers urging passers-by to avail themselves of the tawdry, gaudy goods carried in panniers on slim bamboo poles slung across their shoulders; the eye-watering, nose-tingling aroma of garlic, ginger and chilli that infused the clouds of steam wafting from street-side cafes; battered buckets of wriggling eels and leaping prawns; pyramids of golden mangoes, scarlet rambutans and purple mangosteens; bolts of richly coloured brocade and the finest Chinese silk. The blind fortune tellers and the letter writers, the old men slapping mah-jong tiles on ebony tables, the straight-backed amahs in their black and white robes, hair scraped back into pigtails were manna to a photographer, but more often than not the models would avert their eyes or shield their faces with their hands for they believed that the camera was a magical instrument that would steal their souls.

With other chums she attended a Chinese street opera where folk-tales were performed in discordant song, stylised dance and glittering costumes and afterwards ate oyster omelets and chili crab from the hawkers stalls at Newton Circus. With Tom she observed the Thaipusam procession where as part of their penance, the male participants carried, without flinching or moaning, kavadis – cage-like contraptions attached to their bodies with metal hooks and small spears – and shielded her eyes from the vignettes depicting the gruesome consequences of sin and evil in the Tiger Balm Gardens.

Singapore enchanted and horrified in equal measure.

Author Bio

Janna Gray grew up in Ceylon (Sri Lanka) and was educated at boarding schools in Kodaikanal, South India and Derbyshire, England. She trained to be a teacher in London where she met and married her husband Simon. His job took them to Singapore, Hong Kong and Thailand where she raised two sons, worked at British and International schools and wrote articles for newspapers and magazines.

Currently living in the UAE, Janna was the Senior Mistress (a title which caused much merriment among her colleagues!) and Head of Pastoral Care at Repton School before trading her marking pens and report cards for the world of writing novels. She enjoys travelling and sailing and had a love-hate relationship with exercise until she discovered the joy of Zumba where the trainers turn a blind eye to her inability to remember dance sequences. She sings in the shower and with choirs, has an allergy to golf and recently discovered the allure of oils and acrylics – a delightfully messy way to express her inner artist.

Author Links:
Amazon US
Amazon UK