“Secrets, relationships, and food; there is truly nothing more you could ask for in a novel.”
—Katherine Heiny, author of Early Morning Riser and Games and Rituals
An Indian American family is turned upside down when the parents split up thirty-six years into their arranged marriage in this witty, big-hearted debut.
“I have a soft spot for underdogs. And late bloomers. You’ve told me a lot of things about yourself, so let me tell you something about me.”
After thirty-six years of a dutiful but unhappy arranged marriage, recently divorced Suresh and Lata Raman find themselves starting new paths in life. Suresh is trying to navigate the world of online dating on a website that caters to Indians and is striking out at every turn—until he meets a mysterious, devastatingly attractive younger woman who seems to be smitten with him. Lata is enjoying her newfound independence, but she’s caught off guard when a professor in his early sixties starts to flirt with her…read more
Praise & Reviews
May 2023 TARGET BOOK CLUB PICK
“Late Bloomers follows the lives of a South Indian‒American family as they deal with love in all its permutations: marital, romantic, familial, lost, unrequited. Deepa Varadarajan deftly weaves modern-day problems like internet dating and complicated living arrangements with the eternal yearning for acceptance and the ageless desire to live up to family expectations. Secrets, relationships, and food; there is truly nothing more you could ask for in a novel.”
—Katherine Heiny, author of Early Morning Riser and Games and Rituals
“Equal parts funny and heartbreaking, Late Bloomers is a charming story about starting over, stumbling, and finding yourself at any age. I found myself rooting for Varadarajan’s characters as they navigated love, loneliness, and the complicated family relationships that define them.”
—Jennifer Close, author of Marrying the Ketchups
“Deepa Varadarajan’s debut novel is funny, heartbreaking, engrossing, surprising, and smart. Late Bloomers tells the story of the Raman family, beginning after the children have grown up. I never knew what would happen next and I absolutely loved that about this beautiful book.”
—Marcy Dermansky, author of Hurricane Girl and Very Nice
“A stirring, tender novel about the bonds and binds between families and strangers. By reversing roles in the immigrant tug of war—here the parents are online dating and the children looking to ‘settle down’—Varadarajan poignantly delivers a page-turner in which both the young and the not so young have to reconfigure expectations and forge new pathways in order to find fulfillment. Late Bloomers asks what it means to be a family—a happy family—in a rapidly changing world, and offers promising answers. You’ll laugh and cry through this deft tale about personal growth, family entanglements and reignited dreams.”
—Soniah Kamal, author of Unmarriageable
“Late Bloomers is about love won and lost and rearranged and rediscovered; it is about how love and family can be made and remade; it is about the marvelous fluidity of love. Varadarajan writes about the everyday life of the Raman family with so much humor and affection that she makes the ordinary feel extraordinary. I adore this family and I adore this book.”
—Whitney Otto, author of How to Make an American Quilt
“Varadarajan has written her characters with intelligence and compassion, imbuing them with complexity; each narrative mirrors, refracts, refutes, and informs the others in what’s ultimately a tender exploration of family patterns, choices, regrets, and the possibility for change… Warm, hopeful, often charming. The Ramans are an idiosyncratic oasis in the world of literary unhappy families.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“Varadarajan debuts with an endearing exploration of an Indian American family’s search for new beginnings... Striking narration from each of the family members and believable character development add to Varadarajan’s bold challenge to traditional South Asian conventions for a stringent life plan. These strong voices leave an indelible mark.”
—Publishers Weekly
