Nair’s story may appeal to readers who enjoy novels set in India, but most will want to pass on this overwritten tale.
Nair’s latest novel (Ladies Coupé, 2004, etc.), set in India, traces the intersection of the lives of two individuals undergoing devastating personal tragedies.
Meera’s husband, Giri, fell in love after spying her in the yard of her family home, the Lilac House. After marriage, the couple lived there with their two children and Meera’s mother and grandmother. As of late, Giri has been pressuring Meera to sell the house, but she refuses and won’t tell him why the house cannot be sold. Meanwhile, Jak, a professor who has been living in the United States, is back in India to determine how his beloved oldest daughter, a university student, was injured. Smriti, bedridden and unable to communicate, must be cared for around the clock. All Jak and his wife know about Smriti’s actions prior to her being injured is that she was in an “accident.” He travels to see the place where it happened, hoping to obtain answers from her friends, the police and the doctor at the hospital where she was brought, but no one will talk to him. Jak and Meera meet at a wine launch where Meera, a successful cookbook author, and Giri appear for the last time as a couple. Before the party ends, Giri abandons her and their son, running off to another life without them. Forced to find work in order to support her family, Meera takes a position working as Jak’s assistant, but not before realizing that he is the man who gave her a ride home from the party where her husband dumped her. Frantic about money and unsure of herself, Meera struggles with her change of fortune while Jak faces a future with a child who will never again regain her functionality. Even worse, he can’t seem to resolve the mystery of how she ended up so damaged. Nair tells the story of these two wounded birds through melodramatic prose that grows more plodding with each page.
Nair’s story may appeal to readers who enjoy novels set in India, but most will want to pass on this overwritten tale.Pub Date: April 24, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-312-60677-0
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Minotaur
Review Posted Online: March 18, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2012
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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