The 'special' omelettes are tasty and you wouldn't want to put down the plate until you are done. In her first attempt as a novelist, Delhi-born author Kavita Khanna entertainingly narrates a unique, heartwarming tale about the fortunes of a modern Indian family.  Saturday Morning Omelettes looks at the centrality of family in Indian culture by narrating the tale of an Indian couple that emigrates to the United States — for good or not -- in an attempt to mitigate financial strain of a gambling addiction.

This is uniquely an immigrant's tale – a tale that is unlikely to have been conceived by anybody except a first-generation immigrant with his or her distinctive perspective of American life – the hard yet ultimately satisfying life filled with longing for 'home'. Let me qualify my assertion here, however, for the novel is as much an immigrant's tale as it is a tale of how two people grow together in a relationship as it is about family.

Ms. Khanna does an admirable job in pacing her novel, though she does so at the expense of observation. She accepts as much, saying, "When I started writing Saturday Morning Omelettes, I made one conscious decision – to portray the story through dialogue rather than too many essay-style descriptions. I am guilty of tending to skip long wordy descriptions when I come across them in most books and wanted to avoid that in my work."

Many times the novel chugs through the story but we don't get to bite into the psychology of the characters or languorously appreciate the aroma of the morning omelette. Neither does Ms. Khanna spend time describing the initially humbling experiences that generally dent a recent immigrant's life. For example, except for describing the damning quiet of the airport and the apartment, she neither spends time noticing the well-tarred roads nor the plush charm of the US or the problems of interacting with Americans.

In all, Ms. Khanna's fails to conjure up the experiences of first-time visitors to the US in a nuanced fashion. The novel lacks the earthiness of a true immigrant tale when, for instance, it shies from the endless awkwardness of superficial talk about chipped nails and the nauseous fumes of ammonia. Ms. Khanna would do well to write more honestly about the challenges of an immigrant's life. More damningly, the story sometimes seems rushed and mishandled. But then again, perhaps the novel wouldn't have been a compulsive page-turner had it been written any other way.

Yet, I can't help but bemoan the fact that Ms. Khanna fails to deal with issues more substantively, given that she brings up important issues including gambling, the status of seniors, and the dynamics of family life. A lot of characters in the book don't get much attention from the writer and hence come across as standard stereotypes, such as the struggling black girl and the sensible black grandparent.

Yet, Saturday Morning Omelettes is a treat – a calorie-rich fatty one, but a good nonetheless.