Leave It to Me Critical Essay | Critical Review by Lorna Sage

SOURCE: "Wrath of the Goddess," in The New York Times Book Review, July 20, 1997, p. 33.

In the following review, Sage asserts that "Devi [from Leave It to Me is a brilliant creation—hilarious, horribly knowing and even more horribly oblivious—through whom Bharati Mukherjee, with characteristic and shameless ingenuity, is laying claim to speak for an America that isn't 'other' at all."]

Bharati Mukherjee is a writer who likes to ventriloquize. She lives inside her characters' first-person voices, so they always seem driven, a touch paranoid, a little too creative in their dealings with the Brave New World. The heroine of Leave It to Me, Debby DiMartino, is no exception. Indeed, once she comes of age she jettisons with scorn the ready-made life she inhabits—as a fun-loving college girl from Schenectady, N.Y., with a great future in telemarketing—to search for her true identity. It turns out that Debby was only...
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