Former Californian Singh's first US publication is a well- crafted, if somewhat uncomplicated, story describing the adventures of an American woman who surrenders the life she knows to be with her husband—and his other wife—in India. Before 1952, it was legal for Sikhs to have more than one wife (divorce remaining unthinkable), which, here, poses problems for a young couple who fall in love while earning their master's degrees at Berkeley. The handsome, charming Tej convinces Helen to marry him anyway, though, and so she leaves her home to join him in his native Punjabi village, where the newlyweds live in a large family complex without running water or electricity—but with a spare wife. Tej assures Helen that the marriage is a formality: Dilraj Kaur is his dead brother's widow, and the marriage is in name only, the kind of union commonly performed to protect the rights of widows and ensure the inheritance status of their children. It all sounds reasonable enough, but when Helen arrives a domestic power struggle begins. Dilraj Kaur organizes the household tasks, alienating Helen in a world where family service is supreme; further, she attempts to pit Tej's family, his mother, father, two sisters, and brother against Helen, implying that she bewitched the much beloved Tej. Meantime, Tej refuses to believe the situation is anything but cozy, and Helen does try to accommodate Dilraj Kaur, especially since she and Tej are soon to be parents. One accommodation leads to another until Helen feels a shadow of her former self—no longer the adventurous young woman with a passion for photography but a pregnant matron without a voice. She runs away to an ashram, not quite sure whether she wants Tej to follow or not. But of course he does, after sending Dilraj Kaur off to live with her brother, and the future looks rosy. Predictable fare, but Singh nicely depicts her frustrated heroine unraveling the elaborate configurations of domesticity in India.
Pub Date: June 1, 1997
ISBN: 1-877946-85-0
Page Count: 217
Publisher: Permanent Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1997
Contains everything readers have come to expect from powerhouse Connelly. Bonus: Additional installments hold the intriguing...
Fresh from returning Harry Bosch to the LAPD with The Closers (2005), veteran crime novelist Connelly offers intrigue and bracing twists in his first legal thriller.
Criminal defense attorney Mickey Haller is known as a “Lincoln lawyer” because he does business while being driven from courthouse to courthouse in his Town Car. Scraping by by defending lowlifes, some of whom offer their chauffeur services to work off Haller’s fees, he stumbles across a dream client: a rich boy accused of viciously beating a woman. Most important for Haller, Louis Roulet loudly proclaims his innocence, and his family has the dough to pay top-dollar for representation. But Haller’s father, J. Michael Haller (making Bosch and Haller half-brothers, Connelly’s wink to longtime fans) said there was “no client as scary as an innocent man,” and soon Haller is confronted with the consequences that come from the system’s inevitable compromises. When Haller’s investigator and friend is murdered for getting too close to the truth, he’s forced to confront the cost of sacrificing ideals for pragmatism. To spill more plot detail would spoil a good deal of the considerable fun here; suffice to say the conflict sparks in Haller an epic case of cognitive dissonance. Connelly gets the legal details and maneuvers just right, and Haller is a great character—world-weary but funny and likable—he’s never met an angle he couldn’t play or a corner he couldn’t cut.
Contains everything readers have come to expect from powerhouse Connelly. Bonus: Additional installments hold the intriguing possibility of one day seeing Bosch and Haller together on the streets of L.A.Pub Date: Oct. 3, 2005
ISBN: 0-316-73493-4
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2005
BOOK TO SCREEN
PLB 0-688-13166-2 King Midas And The Golden Touch ($16.00; PLB $15.63; Apr.; 32 pp.; 0-688-13165-4; PLB 0-688-13166-2): The familiar tale of King Midas gets the golden touch in the hands of Craft and Craft (Cupid and Psyche, 1996). The author takes her inspiration from Nathaniel Hawthorne’s retelling, capturing the essence of the tale with the use of pithy dialogue and colorful description. Enchanting in their own right, the illustrations summon the Middle Ages as a setting, and incorporate colors so lavish that when they are lost to the uniform gold spurred by King Midas’s touch, the point of the story is further burnished. (Picture book. 7-9)
Pub Date: April 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-688-13165-4
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1999
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
