A well-portrayed streak of emotional growth runs through this man’s journey from bookish undergraduate to business leader.
Part coming-of-age tale, part dark-side-of-business exposé, this novel chronicles an immigrant experience.
Majid Khan, who’s studying math at Cambridge in the 1970s, is more comfortable with numbers than people. He plans on becoming an insurance actuary, but it’s through Cambridge Union debates that he makes his mark and meets the fellow students who make a profound impact on his life. Ellen Evan is the first and only girl he takes an interest in, and Nick Knights brings out Majid’s competitive side, both in debates and after graduation, when Nick and Majid end up on the management fast track at the same firm. As his relationship with Ellen continues, Majid, who makes frequent references to the fact that he was almost considered autistic as a child, grows more comfortable with the fuzzier, more emotional side of life—something the author symbolizes by having Majid suddenly develop a sense of smell after being without it from birth. His professional life takes off at the same time, with the firm’s executives pushing Majid out of his comfort zone and into a place of prominence. He realizes he could one day see himself as a CEO, if only to ensure that Nick doesn’t get the position. When Majid tries to push the firm to meet the new British regulatory requirements (which, along with the country’s 1980s privatization plans and the intricacies of estate agencies, may be somewhat opaque to American readers), it’s evident that trouble lies ahead, especially when Majid, who has already seen his relationship with Ellen disintegrate, is pushed out of the company. Majid’s ethical man–vs.–corporate corruption battle makes for a compelling storyline, though it can at times get bogged down in the minutiae of financial products and management training exercises. On the other hand, his relationship with Ellen, especially as he sets wedding dates several years in the future and lets them slip by, may leave readers wondering if Majid will ever make it out of his extended adolescence.
A well-portrayed streak of emotional growth runs through this man’s journey from bookish undergraduate to business leader.Pub Date: Nov. 7, 2012
ISBN: 978-0957026636
Page Count: 290
Publisher: DDKM (DADU, DEVI, KAARTU, MOOCHI) Publishing Ltd
Review Posted Online: Feb. 18, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her...
Another middle-aged mom in a muddle.
After years of false starts and big hopes, Elizabeth’s ruggedly handsome husband Jack, a former football star, just landed a spot as a sportscaster on national news. He still loves her, even though much younger women are giving him come-hither looks. Heck, he doesn’t want to betray the love of his life after she helped him kick drugs and stuck by him even when he was a struggling has-been. And won’t it seem hypocritical if he fools around with his sexy assistant while he does in-depth reporting on a rape case involving a famous basketball center? Well, he fools around anyway. Elizabeth, nicknamed Birdie, knows nothing of this, but she withdraws from Jack when her hard-drinking, salt-of-the-earth father has a stroke and dies. Now no one will call her “sugar beet” ever again. Time to return home to Tennessee and contend with Anita, the sort-of-evil stepmother so trashy she wears pink puffy slippers all day long. Naturally, it turns out that Anita actually has a heart of gold and knows a few things about Birdie’s dead mother that were hushed up for years. Mom was an artist, just like Birdie, and an old scandal comes to light as Anita unrolls a vibrant canvas that portrays her secret lover. Perhaps, Birdie muses, her mother died of heartbreak, never having followed her true love or developed her talent. Has she, too, compromised everything she holds dear? Hoping to find out, Birdie joins a support group that promises to reconnect confused women with their passion. She and Jack separate, prompting a how-dare-you fit from their grown daughters. Will Birdie fly her empty nest? Will she go back to college for a degree in art? Will her brooding watercolors ever sell?
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her previous tales (Summer Island, 2001, etc.).Pub Date: July 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-345-45071-X
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2002
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
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BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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