by Jaswinder Singh ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 27, 2013
An extended, sometimes labored parable of good and evil on “the need for transparency in human interactions.”
Singh’s debut novel exposes the conflicting interests and corrupting desires of trade unions during the last three decades of 20th-century India.
Chosen to replace the latest in a line of negligent managers at the Amlawar branch of India’s nationalized bank, a noble, accomplished man named Purshottam encounters a disheartening situation in which workers are rewarded for laziness, sloppiness and absenteeism. He soon discovers that top union leaders control not just the bank, but the politics of his country, causing its citizens to live under fear and great hardships. Believing that the bank’s productivity reflects that of the nation, Purshottam socializes with his new employees, empowers them in their day-to-day duties and encourages them to take pride in their work. When the ruthless union activist, Pandey, and his proudly manipulative underling, Neki Lal, realize that the new manager’s integrity threatens their very existence, they attempt to intimidate him. Meanwhile, Chanchal, a young orphan desperate for spirituality, also struggles at the Amlawar branch. His rejection of American-influenced business techniques and his desire for truth and justice make him a target. Unfairly dismissed, he’s visited by an angel who confirms his innate goodness before cult members murder him. With the sheen of a martyr, his fate becomes an inspiration for all bank employees—regardless of caste or union involvement—to follow a “religion” of “transparency and truth.” Singh does an excellent job of introducing readers to the perils of unions and the nationalization of competitive industries. His cast of peons, clerks, officers and the laborers reveals India’s complex and unforgiving class system, but the characters come off as two-dimensional and experience little growth, despite a last-minute transformation by Neki Lal “to do the right” after Chanchal’s death. Stilted dialogue and high-minded editorializing mar the storytelling, as does the meandering pace and absence of intrigue.
An extended, sometimes labored parable of good and evil on “the need for transparency in human interactions.”Pub Date: Jan. 27, 2013
ISBN: 978-1481203876
Page Count: 282
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: April 1, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Hanya Yanagihara ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 10, 2015
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
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Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
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by J.D. Salinger ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 15, 1951
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
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