Quibbles, these, nonetheless. Chaudhuri has given us an immensely revealing and engagingly readable introduction to a...
Another fine collection, comparable to Vintage’s recent volumes of Scottish and Latin American fiction, and that rarest of contemporary publishing rarities: a real bargain.
The Anglo-Indian author of Real Time (p. 120) has assembled 38 examples of fiction and nonfiction prose ranging from the early-19th century through the contemporary period and representing Bengali, Hindi, Urdu, and English literatures. Several of its earlier entries demonstrate that (as Chaudhuri’s eloquent introduction and headnotes to individual selections attest) we in the West tend to know a little about trendy writers of the moment like Salman Rushdie and Arundhati Roy, and virtually nothing about such important forerunners as India’s only Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore (represented by his limpid short story “The Postmaster” and charming “Essay on Nursery Rhymes”); Sukumar Ray (author of the delightful animal fable “A Topsy Turvy Tale”); and Bibhuti Bhusan Banerjee (whose famous novel of childhood Pather Panchali inspired the “World of Apu” trilogy of Sukumar Ray’s son, celebrated filmmaker Satyajit Ray). The remarkable R.K. Narayan is represented by a pungent excerpt from his wry nostalgic novel The English Teacher, and Chaudhuri also offers self-contained chunks from Raja Rao’s important novel of exile, The Serpent and the Rope, and Nirad C. Chaudhuri’s seminal Autobiography of an Unknown Indian. Conversely, do we really need large dollops of Sunetra Gupta’s pedestrian Memories of Rain, Vikram Seth’s distinctively un-Indian verse narrative The Golden Gate, and the exceedingly well-known Midnight’s Children? One of Rushdie’s elegant short stories might better have been chosen, to set aside such gems as the pseudonymous Premchand’s Borgesian-Nabokovian classic “The Chess Players” (also filmed by Satyajit Ray), Nirmal Verma’s disturbing “Terminal,” and Naiger Masud’s Kafkaesque “Sheesha Ghat.” One further cavil: Why nothing from Rohinton Mistry, whose award-winning novels have virtually reinvented the Victorian family chronicle?
Quibbles, these, nonetheless. Chaudhuri has given us an immensely revealing and engagingly readable introduction to a literature whose evident riches will lure many readers to further exploration.Pub Date: June 18, 2002
ISBN: 0-375-71300-X
Page Count: 672
Publisher: Vintage
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2002
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
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