This story about the second-class status of women in India doesn’t fully confront some of the issues it raises.
Mohanty’s debut novel tells the life story of a female born in India during the British occupation, following her to modern times while chronicling her struggles against male-dominated Indian culture.
Renuka was an atypical Indian girl. Born during 20th-century India’s era as Great Britain’s colony, the determined youth became a freedom fighter against the British, even though females were conditioned by Indian culture to accept a passive role in society. Renuka’s outspoken ways and vocal opinions on the second-class status of women caused her trouble when it came to marriage, career, and family. Because her first arranged marriage fell flat, she found the passive Shashank as a husband, but she still struggled against traditions and beliefs that kept Indian women oppressed. Among the community, one such attitude held that her husband’s family was cursed and that ill fortune would befall the women they married. Although Renuka managed to overcome this and became a successful businesswomen and feminist author preaching better treatment for Indian women, she was occasionally reminded as she went through life that the old ways were not really gone, specifically the methods by which her good friend Mandira also rose to power with “newly bloomed ambitions.” While the book’s title suggests a story about an evil curse, the narrative is actually a broadside against the poor treatment of Indian women by men. “It’s really unfortunate to be born as a female in this world,” says Papia, one of Renuka’s friends. The author knows Indian customs and traditions and writes with authority about both. Renuka is a well-characterized bundle of contradictions, capable one second of giving Shashank an ultimatum in an “icy-cold voice” and desiring sex with him in the next. Unfortunately, Shashank is so passive as to seem unrealistic. Mandira, who’s as ambitious as Renuka but without a Shashank-type husband, uses guile and cunning—like Indian men—to get what she wants, yet she’s portrayed as vile and duplicitous. Readers might conclude that only through luck—the fortune of a failed first arranged marriage—was Renuka able to succeed on her terms.
This story about the second-class status of women in India doesn’t fully confront some of the issues it raises.Pub Date: July 14, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4828-5108-3
Page Count: 200
Publisher: PartridgeIndia
Review Posted Online: Sept. 19, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.
A woman accused of shooting her husband six times in the face refuses to speak.
"Alicia Berenson was thirty-three years old when she killed her husband. They had been married for seven years. They were both artists—Alicia was a painter, and Gabriel was a well-known fashion photographer." Michaelides' debut is narrated in the voice of psychotherapist Theo Faber, who applies for a job at the institution where Alicia is incarcerated because he's fascinated with her case and believes he will be able to get her to talk. The narration of the increasingly unrealistic events that follow is interwoven with excerpts from Alicia's diary. Ah, yes, the old interwoven diary trick. When you read Alicia's diary you'll conclude the woman could well have been a novelist instead of a painter because it contains page after page of detailed dialogue, scenes, and conversations quite unlike those in any journal you've ever seen. " 'What's the matter?' 'I can't talk about it on the phone, I need to see you.' 'It's just—I'm not sure I can make it up to Cambridge at the minute.' 'I'll come to you. This afternoon. Okay?' Something in Paul's voice made me agree without thinking about it. He sounded desperate. 'Okay. Are you sure you can't tell me about it now?' 'I'll see you later.' Paul hung up." Wouldn't all this appear in a diary as "Paul wouldn't tell me what was wrong"? An even more improbable entry is the one that pins the tail on the killer. While much of the book is clumsy, contrived, and silly, it is while reading passages of the diary that one may actually find oneself laughing out loud.
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-30169-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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