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Dava Shastri has gathered her family for one last holiday at her large home on a manmade island. She’s had a full life, raising four children, succeeding in business and investments, and running a huge charitable foundation. Now her time is almost up, and she’s going to conclude her life on her terms.
Having recently been diagnosed with brain cancer, Dava engineers the last days of her life and arranges for news of her death to be released early so she can read her obituaries. She’s focused for decades on her philanthropy and emulated John D. Rockefeller. Dava cherishes her reputation and plans for her legacy to live on through continued charitable work in the Shastri name.
So while she expects to read about her work empowering women, she is upset to find news about her reveals two big secrets from her life. It’s degrading gossip that tarnishes all she set out to do.
While that’s upsetting enough, the fact that she’s still alive means she has to talk to her kids (and grandkids) about these long-locked-up secrets.
She and her family only have a few private days together, to come to terms with her death, to come to terms with her secrets, and for them to figure out exactly how they want to move forward as the children of the great Dava Shastri. The four have largely lived in her shadow; now they can and must carve out their own paths.
Dava Shastri’s Last Day has an interesting premise: a woman tells the world she’s dead but lives a few days past that date. The book starts out with her announcement to her family (and then news breaking to the world outside of their carefully closed-off holiday haven). Then it goes back and forth between the present (well, technically, the future as it is for us because this is set about 20 years from now) and the past. As information is shared in news articles and Dava and her family read about it, the story flashes back to what happened.
The novel is a profile of a very strong-willed, determined personality and the effects she had on her family and others in her orbit. Dava is sometimes not very likeable; her toughness and zeal for her work made her often distant to her children. But the point is made that these qualities would be forgiven, indeed, praised, if she had been a man. Several interesting things to think about.
Rated: High. Profanity includes 10 uses of strong language, around 30 instances of moderate profanity, one use of mild language, and a dozen instances of the name of Deity in vain. Mentions of sex, a few short sex scenes that have fairly minimal detail. An extramarital affair.
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