A zesty South Asian accent gives this lightweight romp some heft.
In Pakistan-born, London-resident Mohsin’s U.S. debut, an affluent Lahore housewife reluctantly seeks a suitable bride for her nerdy cousin Jonkers.
Really, it was mean of her Aunty Pussy to pressure our unnamed narrator into helping with this daunting task. Sure, the family has plenty of money, thanks to Uncle Kaukab’s stint as “chief of central board of revenew” in the ’80s, but Aunt Pussy wants Jonkers “to make a big marriage, na, to a nice rich, fair, beautiful type from an old family.” He wants to marry for love and actually asks his cousin if she is happily wed. Well of course! Husband Janoo may spend a lot of time in “his bore village” and seem disappointed that his empty-headed spouse displays no shred of social conscience or glimmer of intellect as Pakistan goes to pieces in late 2009. What does she care? She has “a big house, servants, social life, status, cars, cupboards full of designer joras and jewellery, and so on and so fourth.” If only the “beardo-weirdos” would quit setting off bombs and threatening girls’ schools, she could seriously enjoy shopping and hanging out with her equally status-conscious girlfriends. Our heroine’s solipsistic diary entries aren’t quite as hilarious as the author imagines, though her mix of Urdu and English filled with misspellings and malapropisms gives a tangy sense of her semi-educated, privileged mindset. Readers may not feel terrible when the narrator and a friend are robbed at gunpoint as they’re having “a good old goss” in her car while a servant buys them fruit. But just as we’re about to write her off, she proves to have a heart and decides to defend the hardworking travel agent Jonkers has fallen for against snobbish Aunty Pussy. Her discovery of an ethical core is a trifle sudden, but Mohsin’s tale is good-natured enough so that we’re happy it ends with a wedding and reconciliations all around.
A zesty South Asian accent gives this lightweight romp some heft.Pub Date: Sept. 6, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-307-88924-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Broadway
Review Posted Online: July 26, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2011
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
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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