An entertaining if occasionally cheesy love story in the rich historical setting of strife-torn Bangladesh.
Two generations of Bengalis weather religious tensions, political upheaval, and star-crossed love in this fizzy romance.
He’s Bakhtiar Khan, a Muslim physics student in Dhaka, Bangladesh; she’s Pooja Roy Chowdhury, a Hindu philosophy student in Kolkota, India. They meet cute in a Bangkok hotel and soon realize they are soulmates. Pooja’s prejudiced grandmother hates the idea of her marrying a Muslim and starts fasting to protest the wedding but relents when Pooja counters with her own fast. The interfaith marriage goes swimmingly, and the couple moves to Florida. They both become professors, and the novel’s focus shifts to their son, Satya, a prodigy who, at age 7, speaks six languages, has a physics lab in his bedroom, and relentlessly fact-checks fairy tales. At 17, he gets his math Ph.D. and is offered a position as CEO of a tech startup, but he opts instead for a grander vision: establishing a retirement home for indigent old folks back in Bangladesh with a school attached for poor kids, all financed by produce fields and a fish pond. Satya’s meticulous plan for the project, called Shanti Kunja, goes great, and love softens his austere intellect. He friendzones his besotted assistant, Roma, but is smitten himself by fetching journalist Aratrika. Passion erupts when Satya and Aratrika are drenched in a downpour, and Aratrika demands that Satya help remove her bra—the clasp is stuck—so she can change into dry clothes. Then turmoil breaks out with the (real-life) overthrow of Bangladesh’s Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina in a 2024 uprising led by Islamic fundamentalists, and violence threatens to undo the new relationship and sink Shanti Kunja. Mohit’s yarn is an energetic take on Bengali-style romance, reigned over by matriarchs and gal-pal matchmakers, prodded along by whirlwind courtships and happenstances that fling lovers into each other’s arms, and written in throbbing, heartfelt prose (“The moment I saw you, my soul was trapped in your eyes”). Threading through is an earnest, philosophically complex critique of organized religions— “Religion is the progression of early sorcerer’s magic,” says Satya, a stance that puts him dangerously at odds with mullahs—and a plea for tolerance and freedom of thought. The result is a somewhat contrived but still affecting story of people pushing past antagonistic faiths to find love.
An entertaining if occasionally cheesy love story in the rich historical setting of strife-torn Bangladesh.Pub Date: Nov. 10, 2024
ISBN: 9798344031187
Page Count: 284
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Dec. 31, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An affecting portrait of a prickly woman.
A lifetime’s worth of letters combine to portray a singular character.
Sybil Van Antwerp, a cantankerous but exceedingly well-mannered septuagenarian, is the titular correspondent in Evans’ debut novel. Sybil has retired from a beloved job as chief clerk to a judge with whom she had previously been in private legal practice. She is the divorced mother of two living adult children and one who died when he was 8. She is a reader of novels, a gardener, and a keen observer of human nature. But the most distinguishing thing about Sybil is her lifelong practice of letter writing. As advancing vision problems threaten Sybil’s carefully constructed way of life—in which letters take the place of personal contact and engagement—she must reckon with unaddressed issues from her past that threaten the house of cards (letters, really) she has built around herself. Sybil’s relationships are gradually revealed in the series of letters sent to and received from, among others, her brother, sister-in-law, children, former work associates, and, intriguingly, literary icons including Joan Didion and Larry McMurtry. Perhaps most affecting is the series of missives Sybil writes but never mails to a shadowy figure from her past. Thoughtful musings on the value and immortal quality of letters and the written word populate one of Sybil’s notes to a young correspondent while other messages are laugh-out-loud funny, tinged with her characteristic blunt tartness. Evans has created a brusque and quirky yet endearing main character with no shortage of opinions and advice for others but who fails to excavate the knotty difficulties of her own life. As Sybil grows into a delayed self-awareness, her letters serve as a chronicle of fitful growth.
An affecting portrait of a prickly woman.Pub Date: May 6, 2025
ISBN: 9780593798430
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2025
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.
Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II.
In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring passeurs: people who aided the escape of others during the war. Cut to spring, 1940: Viann has said goodbye to husband Antoine, who's off to hold the Maginot line against invading Germans. She returns to tending her small farm, Le Jardin, in the Loire Valley, teaching at the local school and coping with daughter Sophie’s adolescent rebellion. Soon, that world is upended: The Germans march into Paris and refugees flee south, overrunning Viann’s land. Her long-estranged younger sister, Isabelle, who has been kicked out of multiple convent schools, is sent to Le Jardin by Julien, their father in Paris, a drunken, decidedly unpaternal Great War veteran. As the depredations increase in the occupied zone—food rationing, systematic looting, and the billeting of a German officer, Capt. Beck, at Le Jardin—Isabelle’s outspokenness is a liability. She joins the Resistance, volunteering for dangerous duty: shepherding downed Allied airmen across the Pyrenees to Spain. Code-named the Nightingale, Isabelle will rescue many before she's captured. Meanwhile, Viann’s journey from passive to active resistance is less dramatic but no less wrenching. Hannah vividly demonstrates how the Nazis, through starvation, intimidation and barbarity both casual and calculated, demoralized the French, engineering a community collapse that enabled the deportations and deaths of more than 70,000 Jews. Hannah’s proven storytelling skills are ideally suited to depicting such cataclysmic events, but her tendency to sentimentalize undermines the gravitas of this tale.
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-57722-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
© 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.
