[Anita Desai's] work is known for its texture and for its ability to place us solidly within any scene, however foreign. She constructs her plots with infinite care, relying less upon physical events than upon a mosaic of details, thoughtfully selected and arranged.

In "Clear Light of Day," she describes the airless, stagnant, dreamlike lives of a decaying family in post-partition India; and she draws us into these lives by giving her story an unusual shape. Appropriately, this is a book without apparent movement. It hangs suspended, like the family itself, while memories replay themselves and ancient joys and sorrows lazily float past.

Its outward plot is the visit of Tara, an Indian woman now living abroad, to her family's house in Old Delhi. Both of her parents are dead, and her older brother lives in another city. Only a sister and younger brother remain at home. Bim...