Well-written, heartwarming: indeed, a kind of Indian Christmas Carol—but one in which the characterization and story play a...
A provincial Bengali family enters the 21st century, in this earnest story set in Toturpuram, "a squalid little town" on the Bay of Bengal.
Badami's second novel (her first was published in 1996 in Canada, where she now lives) is as much about the everyday difficulties—lack of fresh water, erratic electricity, all-pervasive governmental corruption—of contemporary Indian life as it is about the ostensible plot. The author peppers her narrative with precious anecdotes about the eccentrics who populate Toturpuram: a madwoman who directs traffic half-naked; an ancient exhibitionist dubbed "Chocobar" after his cocoa-hued member; a housewife who snips the ends off her neighbor's drying laundry, and so on. Then there’s Sripathi Rao, a high-caste ad copywriter of a certain age, who fears nothing more than the poverty and chaos that surrounds him. He lives with a pack of characters straight from central casting—pious wife Nirmala, activist son Arun, witchy mother Ammaya, spinster sister Putti—in the rundown mansion built by his dead father. At the start, Sripathi learns that his grown daughter Maya, estranged for nine years after her marriage to an American, has been killed, along with her husband, in a car crash. Sripathi travels to Vancouver and fetches Nandana, Maya's headstrong seven year-old daughter, now rendered mute by the trauma of her parents' death. Accustomed to spotless houses, video games, and sugary breakfast cereals, Nandana reacts badly to the ripe smells and mysterious foods of India. The child's presence, however, offers the prickly, embittered Sripathi, who cut his daughter off without a second thought, a chance to redeem himself, in part by becoming free of antiquated ideas about obligation and etiquette (represented, rather clunkily, by the family's rotting house).
Well-written, heartwarming: indeed, a kind of Indian Christmas Carol—but one in which the characterization and story play a subservient role to the somewhat labored strokes of local color.Pub Date: April 27, 2001
ISBN: 1-56512-312-3
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Algonquin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2001
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
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
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