Sankaran’s debut novel, like her well-received short story collection (The Red Carpet, 2005), is a vivid exposé of modern...
The brisk pace of economic and social change in India does not always bode well for a Bangalore factory owner and his servants.
Anand has a chance to achieve true prosperity at last: Cauvery Auto, the auto parts manufacturer he built from scratch, is courting a major Japanese account. However, the Japanese are entertaining other bids, and in order to bring Cauvery Auto to the necessary level of productivity, Anand needs additional real estate. Largely beneath his notice, Anand’s house servants, house maids Kamala and Thangam and cook Shanta, contend with their own dramas. Kamala, a widow who has been struggling to raise her son, Narayan, ever since being cut off by her brother, hopes to get the boy into a private school, his only chance for upward mobility. Shanta’s husband beats her and steals from her, and Thangam is moonlighting by running a pin-money Ponzi scheme which is on the verge of collapse. Anand’s life has always been run by his vain, spendthrift wife, Vidya, and her meddlesome father, Harry Chinappa. So far, Chinappa’s inroads have been limited to organizing lavish parties bankrolled by Anand. But when Anand hires a “Landbroker” to acquire land from several farmers, Chinappa, without consulting Anand, brokers his own deal. When Anand objects, Chinappa’s politically powerful friends operate behind the scenes to subvert and stymie the Landbroker’s negotiations. So heavily leveraged is Cauvery that the failure of the land acquisition would spell irretrievable ruin for Anand and all who depend on him: not only his wife, children and servants, but Narayan, whom Anand is sponsoring to attend private school. Meanwhile, the humble rental Kamala occupies is being sold to developers, and she and Narayan will shortly be homeless. Having contrived suspenseful ways to get her characters into terrible trouble, the devices deployed by Sankaran to extricate them—or not—do not disappoint.
Sankaran’s debut novel, like her well-received short story collection (The Red Carpet, 2005), is a vivid exposé of modern India’s growing pains.Pub Date: April 23, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-385-33819-6
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Dial Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
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