An entertaining kaleidoscope of tales focusing on contemporary Sri Lanka.
A collection of short stories set in Sri Lanka explores the convoluted inner lives of varied characters.
In order to keep her pregnancy a secret, a rape victim must go through the further indignity of giving birth in her parents’ home assisted by her doctor father. A woman wakes up from a night of lovemaking, checks her phone, and sees a news alert about how the local at-large serial killer is reported to have a devil mask tattoo on his chest—a tattoo just like the one on the chest of the man lying in bed next to her. A mother whose son is embarrassed by their poverty attends his cricket games dressed as Eliza Doolittle: “She wore white gloves and carried an umbrella with frills that she stitched herself using old napkins. She also made sandwiches for all the other parents and kids, which people were kind enough to eat even though they were filled with rubbery cuts of meat.” In this collection of 15 interconnected stories, Tenduf-La (Panther, 2015, etc.) follows the lives of average people struggling to survive in the chaotic and colorful capital city of Colombo in Sri Lanka. The author finds a delicate balance of humorous situations and real-world darkness, as in the title story, in which a shy gym trainer becomes overly infatuated with one of his clients—to the point where he watches her outside her window at night, jealous of the love she holds for her infant daughter. Tenduf-La writes in an even-tempered prose that manages to make dramatic situations slightly cartoonish and gives casual occurrences literary weight: “Pasindu Amarasinghe is a closet homosexual with six toes on his left foot,” he writes at the beginning of the story “Everyone Has to Eat,” “but the one thing he never wants his friends to find out is that he’s been allocated a university application fee waiver.” The mix of specific details from daily life in Colombo—where sari-clad Buddhist women exist shoulder to shoulder with mob enforcers—with the universal themes of loneliness, failure, and liberation makes for a memorable and enjoyable work from this talented writer.
An entertaining kaleidoscope of tales focusing on contemporary Sri Lanka.Pub Date: May 17, 2017
ISBN: 978-93-82616-92-4
Page Count: 163
Publisher: Pan Macmillan India
Review Posted Online: March 29, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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