Gage beautifully describes the waters that evoke the transformative moments of Maya’s journey. Yet Parvati, the...
Can goddesses walk among us? Can an entire family really be cursed? Can a modern woman find her inner goddess?
In her debut novel (following her 2005 memoir North of Ithaka), Gage tells the tale of Maya Das. She has it all: a promising career in psychiatry, a family chock-full of successful physicians, a supportive best friend and a loving boyfriend. So why can't she manage to introduce her white boyfriend, Scott, to her Indian family? With her best friend, Heidi, and her residency-required therapist urging her to commit to her relationship and introduce him to the family, Maya is poised to assert her own independence. Yet the death of Dadiji, Maya's grandmother, far away in India, sets in motion not only some soul-searching but also a possible family curse. As a child visiting India, Maya had witnessed a father beating his daughter, dressed as a goddess and forced to beg on the streets. Maya begged her grandmother to intervene with the surprising result that the young girl was brought into Dadiji's home. Raised as a sort of servant slash inferior daughter, Parvati makes Maya and her older sister, Priya, uncomfortable. Indeed, Maya continues to wonder well into adulthood whether Parvati might actually be a goddess or have supernatural powers. Of course these wonderings conflict with her modern medical training, not to mention her family's practical approach to life. So when Maya's father discreetly calls to tell her Parvati has cursed the family, Maya is both dismissive and afraid. After her father's heart attack, her mother's hemorrhage, her sister's miscarriage, her brother's marital strife and her own personal and professional difficulties, however, Maya begins to take the curse much more seriously. A quest to India is in order. The journey offers Maya the chance not only to lift the family curse but also to assess her life, particularly her relationship with Scott and her own attitude towards her ethnicity.
Gage beautifully describes the waters that evoke the transformative moments of Maya’s journey. Yet Parvati, the curse-caster, remains mysteriously underdeveloped. A lovely read, but a missed opportunity to delve deeply into the superstitions that still lurk in our modern minds.Pub Date: Feb. 14, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-312-65851-9
Page Count: 352
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Jan. 4, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
Sisters in and out of love.
Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-345-45073-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.
Coelho is a Brazilian writer with four books to his credit. Following Diary of a Magus (1992—not reviewed) came this book, published in Brazil in 1988: it's an interdenominational, transcendental, inspirational fable—in other words, a bag of wind.
The story is about a youth empowered to follow his dream. Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who learns through a dream of a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. An old man, the king of Salem, the first of various spiritual guides, tells the boy that he has discovered his destiny: "to realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation." So Santiago sells his sheep, sails to Tangier, is tricked out of his money, regains it through hard work, crosses the desert with a caravan, stops at an oasis long enough to fall in love, escapes from warring tribesmen by performing a miracle, reaches the pyramids, and eventually gets both the gold and the girl. Along the way he meets an Englishman who describes the Soul of the World; the desert woman Fatima, who teaches him the Language of the World; and an alchemist who says, "Listen to your heart" A message clings like ivy to every encounter; everyone, but everyone, has to put in their two cents' worth, from the crystal merchant to the camel driver ("concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man"). The absence of characterization and overall blandness suggest authorship by a committee of self-improvement pundits—a far cry from Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince: that flagship of the genre was a genuine charmer because it clearly derived from a quirky, individual sensibility.
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.Pub Date: July 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-250217-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1993
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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