A cute memoir of living in India with some advice for expatriates as well.
The story of the author’s move from New York to Delhi.
After living in Brooklyn for years, Prager (co-author: Poop Culture: How America Is Shaped by Its Grossest National Product, 2007) and his wife took up his company’s offer to move to India for 18 months. Leaving behind their Park Slope brownstone, Prager immediately fell in love with Delhi—at least for a while. “Five months later,” he writes, “I hated it.” The couple would “vacillate back and forth between the two extremes—love India, hate India, love India, hate India”—before finding a balance between the best and worst their new home had to offer. Prager structures the book as a guide for other expatriates, with chapters on food, shopping, workplace culture and transportation (especially Delhi’s traffic, about which Prager seethes). More than just a how-to guide, the book is an appealing memoir, as the author recounts his social blunders and interactions with curious neighbors. There are a few unsatisfactory moments along the way—e.g., his snarky swipes at New Yorkers and living in New York City feel dated and out of place. Prager’s wife never quite comes across as genuine, and readers learn more about her misadventures with India’s health care system than her work for a rural school trying to lift girls out of poverty. Some of the author’s “problems” may occasionally induce eye-rolling for some readers—in one chapter, he details how his need for “periodic respites from…driving past beggars and slums and sidewalk-sleeping laborers” meant taking a room in a five-star hotel so he could indulge in sushi for brunch at “one of the few places [he] trusted the fish.” These flaws aside, Prager is a solid storyteller, and the book is an enjoyable tour through an overwhelming and irresistible city.
A cute memoir of living in India with some advice for expatriates as well.Pub Date: June 1, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-61145-832-9
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Arcade
Review Posted Online: May 11, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2013
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An extravaganza in Bemelmans' inimitable vein, but written almost dead pan, with sly, amusing, sometimes biting undertones, breaking through. For Bemelmans was "the man who came to cocktails". And his hostess was Lady Mendl (Elsie de Wolfe), arbiter of American decorating taste over a generation. Lady Mendl was an incredible person,- self-made in proper American tradition on the one hand, for she had been haunted by the poverty of her childhood, and the years of struggle up from its ugliness,- until she became synonymous with the exotic, exquisite, worshipper at beauty's whrine. Bemelmans draws a portrait in extremes, through apt descriptions, through hilarious anecdote, through surprisingly sympathetic and understanding bits of appreciation. The scene shifts from Hollywood to the home she loved the best in Versailles. One meets in passing a vast roster of famous figures of the international and artistic set. And always one feels Bemelmans, slightly offstage, observing, recording, commenting, illustrated.
Pub Date: Feb. 23, 1955
ISBN: 0670717797
Page Count: -
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1955
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