AN INDIAN IN MY BED is a fascinating and upfront true-life account of a 60-year-old Englishwoman's love affair with an Indian waiter half her age. The author met him during a trip to Southern India undertaken with more spiritual objectives in mind. The book's frankness, its romantic spirit, and the light it throws on sexual relations between middle-class western travellers and young opportunist Asian men is not always as clear-cut as one might imagine, as witness the crucial part played in this story by the waiter's dying mother. One reads with increasing curiosity about what becomes of this unlikely couple. Like Jane Juska's 'A Round-Heeled Woman', Gylda Thomas writes openly and sympathetically about the sort of relationship - crossing age, race, nationality and class barriers - that's still considered taboo in some quarters.