This was perfectly good and a bit of a fun surprise. A solidly 3 star book. Very interesting look into the Southall community in London. Independent young woman and daughter of immigrants, Niki gets a job teaching English and the Sikh Gurdwara (temple, community center, gathering space). But through a mishap suddenly these widows are wanting to spend their time crafting naughty stories. It’s charming. The characters are varied and interesting. And I was a bit surprised to find that they included snippets of the erotic stories, but that was a fun surprise, and helped add to the many layers of the human experience and the differences between these women. Also, lots of really important discussions of gender and power dynamics, and the Societal Erasure so many of these women face once their husbands have died. Learning English could offer some greater options (beyond proscribed community roles/norms), but even these classes are being controlled and overseen and judged by some more fundamentalist and traditionalists in the society, and the almost exclusively male community leadership. But we learn some important lessons about Asking people what their own goals are, rather than ascribing them from the top. Seeking community and laughter and joy and shared strength are important for these often isolated women. Complicated family relationships. Complicated paths of finding and defining ones identity, especially as the children of immigrants, living up to (or not) familial expectations, etc. Plus, there’s a dark side plot/glimpse into some really dangerous secrets in the community. So it was a perfectly pleasant book to read about a community that I don’t often encounter in Literature. But I often found that the writing wasn’t transcendent, just serviceable. And that while some of the characters were fascinating and richly imagined, others felt very two-dimensional. And some of the plot reveals felt un-earned or easily predicted and jarring. Still, glad I read it.