Cassie McCullagh

Well, Dev was my favourite of the secondary characters.

He turned up at Tavoy on foot when he was 14, carrying postcards that Monty's father had written to his father.

His father had died, his mother more recently had died, and the last thing she did from her deathbed was give him these postcards and said, go to this Monty man, he will look after you.

So he walked from Burma to California.

Calcutta and turns up on the doorstep and then becomes an integral part of the household.

He lives on the roof of Tavoi where a mango tree grows and there's a little shack underneath this mango tree which forever is producing the most golden, gorgeous, delicious mangoes.

until an incident occurs and it stops.

But Dev is all seeing, all knowing, but very, very low key as a servant, but a member of the family as well.

His role grows as the novel goes on.

Yes.

So this all unfolds, as you would imagine, through the thread of the story of the girl who wanted the fish.

So what did the paediatrician and the psychologist do?

They came up with a solution that worked.

Because the house was Hindu, as we mentioned, they didn't want any trace of food.

So Dev, driving the big ambassador car – I don't know that brand, but it's well described in the book –

takes Shoma to the household where she picks up little Varsha, three-year-old Varsha, and she sits in the car and she lets her eat fish in the car.

So she then gains her trust and begins to learn more and more about what this child's interior life is like.

And

it does really convince you that she has had another life entirely as a very poor fisherman's wife in a place that's not too far away, but, you know, there's no possible connection with her family.

Yes, there's a level of magical realism to this and quite delightfully so.