A highly enjoyable, fast-paced tale of Bollywood corruption.
Bharucha, in this debut novel subtitled “A Saga of Sex, Greed and Betrayal,” delivers on all three counts with an ambitious tale centered on an Indian celebrity.
The novel opens with a coffee-drinking professor regaling his students with an anecdote about Ashok Kapoor, the most famous movie star in the world (“[O]ne billion people plus loving him. So many people cannot love your Stallone and Arnold!”). In it, the celebrity, called “the Hero” by his fans, inadvertently causes a commotion on Fifth Avenue in New York City, his Lamborghini holding up traffic as a cop tries to ticket him. Cabbies shout “AK!” in admiration, and locals stop to wonder whether a movie is being shot. This sets the tone for the next 400 pages, which are highly anecdotal, highly amusing, and rich with Indian artistic and political history. Readers continue to follow Kapoor, born Ramu More, and learn that his personal life is something less than heroic, as he carries on affairs and launders money. The story revolves largely around a television station, TV Metro, where AK goes to work after a series of box office flops. There, other people are brought into the mix, such as Shilpa More, AK’s high-caste mistress, whose father runs the network; and Darius Cooper, a powerful TV executive. The prose throughout the book is plain and clear, with Indian accents rendered into dialogue with intelligent subtlety. Indeed, the dialogue contains some of the best writing in the book, and it’s full of humor as it details the relationships between the characters; for example, when AK and his mistress are threatened with jail, the confident Shilpa says to him, “Why are we acting like we have been caught?” The book is, in a way, all about power dynamics, whether it’s talking about sex, the imperial oppression of India, or backroom bribes and shady dealings. There’s much to take away from this story, as it addresses how greed’s destructive nature can affect anyone.
A highly enjoyable, fast-paced tale of Bollywood corruption.Pub Date: Jan. 6, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4921-6505-7
Page Count: 480
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: March 24, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Plenty of suspense and more heart than your average mystery.
An absorbing murder mystery with the right number of moving parts.
It’s hard to say who exactly is the protagonist of Jenkins’ debut novel, though its central figure—the murder victim—looms large throughout. Harley Groves, a Korean War vet who walks using a pair of ingeniously engineered rockers after having lost both feet, is kind and remarkably progressive for mid-20th-century East Texas. After a brief prologue in which we learn of his death, the first part of the book follows Harley’s life after returning home to Longview, Texas, in 1952. Harley opened a pool hall on his property (the eponymous Chicken Shack) and hired Charlie Hiller and Willie Washington, two preteen boys, one white and one black. He became their mentor. Despite the town’s palpable racial tension, Harley fell in love with Willie’s older sister Ramona. Sadly, few of the residents of Longview were as forward-thinking as Groves, and one fateful night, some customers’ intolerance drove him to violence. In 1982, Harley and Ramona are living a quiet, private life; the Chicken Shack has been long shuttered, and developers are hungry for land—especially the 200 acres Harley owns. Jenkins adroitly introduces plenty of characters with plenty of motive before the deed is done, so to speak, and Ramona is left to prove her partner’s death was not a suicide. In a convenient plot development, Charlie Hiller and Willie Washington have both gone on to be wealthy, successful men and devote themselves to solving the case. While these two are the most one-dimensional of the book’s characters, thankfully most of the actual sleuthing falls to Hiller’s beautiful PI friend Jules Elizondo—a brave and whip-smart woman with no qualms about using her looks to put men at ease. Funny and engaging, in Jules, Jenkins has created a character who could easily carry a mystery series of her own. When she finally determines the identity of Harley’s killer, it’s a surprising turn.
Plenty of suspense and more heart than your average mystery.Pub Date: April 25, 2011
ISBN: 978-1936780334
Page Count: 306
Publisher: Mill City Press
Review Posted Online: July 16, 2012
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An adventure story with an engaging plot but underdeveloped craft.
In this debut memoir, a woman details her life-changing sailing experience in the Caribbean.
After her mother’s death, Bukruian buys a boat to fulfill her lifelong dream of becoming a “sea gypsy.” At the beginning of her journey, she meets a fellow sailor named Ed and quickly becomes infatuated. They then embark on a tumultuous journey in the Caribbean, each in their respective boats. Throughout her sailing experience, Bukruian learns how to be self-sufficient and manage unforeseen crises. Her dog, Kia, comforts her during difficult times. Together, they cope with disastrous events and navigate dangerous territories. The narrator vividly describes the idyllic locations and people she encounters on her trip. Though it’s clear this adventure is important to Bukruian, she provides so little back story about her pre-sailing life that it’s difficult to understand its significance. What, besides her mother’s death, compels her to take this risk? Despite the memoir’s subtitle, it doesn’t feel like a love story. Bukruian’s relationship with Ed remains ambiguous throughout the majority of the book. This ambiguity could have been an opportunity to build tension, but instead the relationship is simply perplexing. A few arbitrary jumps in time disrupt plot development, and tedious sailing details and wooden dialogue sometimes drain interest. A few typos and misspellings are also distracting. While Bukruian takes the reader along for a high-seas adventure, the reflection that’s necessary to contextualize how this changed her is scant. It’s apparent that the narrator is a strong woman by the actions she takes, but her inner state isn’t dramatized on the page.
An adventure story with an engaging plot but underdeveloped craft.Pub Date: May 24, 2012
ISBN: 978-1468195897
Page Count: 288
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2012
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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