A portrait of expatriate nostalgia, shaded heavily with immigrant identity angst and generational conflict, by a leading...
Transcontinental family saga about a young Indian immigrant to California who slowly rebuilds her life after a failed suicide attempt.
Poor Devi has come to the conclusion that she’s a failure: an unendurable thought for the daughter of overachievers. Born in India to a socially prominent family, Devi came to America as a girl when her father, Avi, founded a technology firm that prospered and grew into one of the earliest successes of Silicon Valley. Devi’s sister Shobha is the vice president of an engineering firm, and Shobha’s husband, Girish, is a professor at Stanford. Devi’s mother, Saroj, is a traditional Indian wife and mother, but even she grew up in an atmosphere of success as the daughter of an Indian Army brigadier. So the expectations for Devi are pretty high—which makes good odds for failure, statistically speaking. And she flunks the test with flying colors. To begin with, she is unmarried and has just ended an affair with a married man. Second, she has lost her job in the midst of the NASDAQ crash of the late 1990s. Plus, she has lost a baby that no one knows about. So Devi slits her wrists one morning in her bathtub and settles back to let nature take its course. Fortunately for her, however, her pushy mother likes to drop in unannounced and arrives for a visit in time to call an ambulance. After a close call like that, Devi is returned to her parents’ for observation and recovery. Saroj broods over her daughter and begins for the first time to question her own fate as well: an introspection that leads to some unusual developments, as does the revelation of Devi’s miscarriage. Things were so much easier back in India.
A portrait of expatriate nostalgia, shaded heavily with immigrant identity angst and generational conflict, by a leading multicultural voice (The Mango Season, 2003, etc.).Pub Date: Oct. 26, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46612-8
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2004
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her...
Another middle-aged mom in a muddle.
After years of false starts and big hopes, Elizabeth’s ruggedly handsome husband Jack, a former football star, just landed a spot as a sportscaster on national news. He still loves her, even though much younger women are giving him come-hither looks. Heck, he doesn’t want to betray the love of his life after she helped him kick drugs and stuck by him even when he was a struggling has-been. And won’t it seem hypocritical if he fools around with his sexy assistant while he does in-depth reporting on a rape case involving a famous basketball center? Well, he fools around anyway. Elizabeth, nicknamed Birdie, knows nothing of this, but she withdraws from Jack when her hard-drinking, salt-of-the-earth father has a stroke and dies. Now no one will call her “sugar beet” ever again. Time to return home to Tennessee and contend with Anita, the sort-of-evil stepmother so trashy she wears pink puffy slippers all day long. Naturally, it turns out that Anita actually has a heart of gold and knows a few things about Birdie’s dead mother that were hushed up for years. Mom was an artist, just like Birdie, and an old scandal comes to light as Anita unrolls a vibrant canvas that portrays her secret lover. Perhaps, Birdie muses, her mother died of heartbreak, never having followed her true love or developed her talent. Has she, too, compromised everything she holds dear? Hoping to find out, Birdie joins a support group that promises to reconnect confused women with their passion. She and Jack separate, prompting a how-dare-you fit from their grown daughters. Will Birdie fly her empty nest? Will she go back to college for a degree in art? Will her brooding watercolors ever sell?
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her previous tales (Summer Island, 2001, etc.).Pub Date: July 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-345-45071-X
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2002
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