Anita Rau Badami: Personal Circumstances

New Novel Dept: What the Indian-born author has learned from living in Canada for the last 20 years - about half that time in Montreal - is that winter, hate it or not, is always coming. Coincidentally, its arrival plays a crucial role in the plot of her new novel, Tell It to the Trees. You could almost call it the villain of the piece, according to Montreal Gazette. "Oh yes, in this place winter is always lurking around the corner, a wicked creature roaming these lonely spaces, waiting to pounce on your bones, freeze your blood." On a lovely afternoon in late summer, novelist Anita Rau Badami looks out on her garden from the backyard of her N.D.G. home and anticipates the coming of winter. Badami, who's about to turn 50, laughs at herself easily and often; and this is one of those times. After all, she knows she's getting way ahead of herself - skipping an entire season, for starters - but she can't help it. "I always begin to feel low by this point of the year. That's probably why my garden is looking so shaggy around now. I think I start getting angry with winter. . I hate it." It is for Suman Dharma, anyway. One of several narrators in Badami's multi-voiced narrative, Suman is a recent immigrant to Canada, trapped in a small Northern town as well as an abusive marriage. But rather than blame her feelings of isolation and dread on her personal circumstances, she blames the weather: (www.immigrantscanada.com). As reported in the news.