Memorable people in an equally memorable setting, but their fates seem determined more by plot than passion.
From a Sri Lankan–born writer now living in California, a cool-blooded first novel, an emotionally cool debut luminously detailing the course of unlikely loves and friendships on a tea plantation in the days before independence.
In this stately narrative, thoughts and feelings are sensitively reported, and characters, with rare exceptions, behave decently. The story therefore often seems more a portrait of colonial life than a searing tale of crossed lovers and doomed friendships. When Lizzie Buckwater is born on Chandi's fourth birthday in the early 1930s, the two seem unlikely to become best friends. On the Glencairn tea plantation managed by Lizzie’s English father, Chandi lives next to the kitchen with his mother, Premawathi (the housekeeper), and his two elder sisters, Leela and Rangi. John Buckwater and his family inhabit the spacious rooms of the plantation’s bungalow. Chandi, who dreams of living in England, secretly starts saving the money he makes selling flowers to passersby. When Lizzie's mother Elsie, tired of living in Sri Lanka, returns to England, Chandi and Lizzie are soon inseparable, freely roaming the estate. As the years pass, Premawathi falls out of love with her husband, who has been working in the capital, and one night she and John, a tolerant and decent man, become lovers. Chandi worries about his mother's relationship with John, fears the vengeance of Krishna, a former servant who’s been fired for lewd behavior, and feels responsible for his sister Rangi's suicide. Then in a brief interlude of tranquility, Premawathi accepts her feelings for John, daughter Leela makes a good marriage, and Chandi, still Lizzie's best friend, develops into a bright young man with prospects. But like all Edens, Glencairn's happiness is precarious, and, when Sri Lanka gains its independence, life for the English colonials turns dangerous and uncertain.
Memorable people in an equally memorable setting, but their fates seem determined more by plot than passion.Pub Date: June 15, 2000
ISBN: 0-375-50316-1
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2000
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
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
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