Mirror Made of Rain offers a riveting exploration of class and tradition in contemporary India, following the life of Noomi Wadia, a funny, impulsive, and sharply observant heroine for our modern times. When we first meet her, Noomi is loathe to change her hard-partying ways simply because it’s what’s expected in Kamalpur high society. As quick-witted as she is quick-tempered, Noomi’s social obligations become increasingly fraught as she resists the pressures to marry and start a family of her own. Under constant scrutiny from her peers, and with her mother’s worsening alcoholism putting a strain on things at home, Noomi leaves for Bombay to work as a reporter. Noomi’s independence is interrupted when she falls for Veer—a hard-working consultant from a conventionally upper middle-class background who nevertheless appreciates her for exactly who she is. Joining him in New Delhi (and his judgmental, social-climbing family), Noomi is forced to observe patriarchal and restrictive customs, as the world she rejected threatens to overtake her once again. As Veer and Noomi’s future is threatened by the realities of conventional life, Noomi realizes that her worst fears have come to pass—she is trapped in the same cycle of self-destructiveness as her mother, and she must battle her impulses or risk losing it all. Spanning several years of Noomi’s life, Naheed Phiroze Patel’s exhilarating debut novel unravels how society determines self-image and asks if we can ever break free from expectations, when survival is often contingent on compromise.