Babyji, by Abha Dawesar

It's an interesting idea--an Indian schoolgirl seducing female classmates, maids, and older divorcees--but, sadly, one so implausible as to be nearly unenjoyable. Maybe it was the writing, which failed to either catch my attention or, I thought, appropriate flesh out the characters, beyond the most literal sense, but I thought the idea failed. I didn't see why the main character, the Babyji of the title, was so attractive to all these other characters, as I myself found her an entitled and pretentious little prat. Why didn't her parents catch her? Why did older women, even, fall for her? Why would a sophisticated older man like her friend's father the army colonel be interested in her? Dawesar failed to answer any of these questions sufficiently for me, and so this book has already faded in my memory, only two weeks after reading it. I definitely wouldn't count this among the flourishing of Indian fiction in English.