A flawed gem.
A young British-Indian woman faces a moral crisis while filming a BBC documentary, in Lalwani’s follow-up to Gifted (2007).
Ray, 27, has received a plum assignment for a relative rookie: She will direct a television documentary about a noble experiment in Indian corrections—Ashwer, a prison camp in the form of a small village where the convicts live with their families and work for a living, either at day jobs on the outside or in cottage industries of their own devising. Ray’s crew—Serena, a seasoned producer, and Nathan, a parolee who did time in a conventional English prison—are difficult to manage: They have their own ideas about the direction of the film, although they grudgingly depend on Ray, a Hindi speaker, to act as interpreter and mediator for the villagers. All of the people sentenced to Ashwer are murderers whose crimes were committed under extenuating circumstances, such as self-defense against spouse abuse. After a marijuana-fueled late-night seduction attempt foiled largely by Ray’s determined virginity, Nathan gives up on her and turns to Serena. Their alliance thus strengthened, the crew rebels against Ray’s ethical scruples and attempts (with some prompting from the home office) to inject sensational elements into the film. They insist on arranging and filming an encounter between an inmate, Nandini, and her ex-husband, who had starved her while pregnant and tried to burn her. (She killed his mother while trying to escape.) Then there is the segment in which another inmate, in front of his wife, is given an instant-read HIV test on camera. Fearing that she has betrayed the trust that she has built up with the villagers, Ray must make a painful choice. The language, gorgeous and evocative, occasionally waxes florid, as overheated as the tropical atmosphere it describes. Extraneous detail about the technical aspects of TV production slows the action. And Ray, a passive character who acts impulsively if at all, lacks the courage of the author’s convictions.
A flawed gem.Pub Date: July 9, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-4000-6649-0
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 14, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2013
This book sings with the terrible silence of dead civilizations in which once there was valor.
Written with quiet dignity that builds to a climax of tragic force, this book about the dissolution of an African tribe, its traditions, and values, represents a welcome departure from the familiar "Me, white brother" genre.
Written by a Nigerian African trained in missionary schools, this novel tells quietly the story of a brave man, Okonkwo, whose life has absolute validity in terms of his culture, and who exercises his prerogative as a warrior, father, and husband with unflinching single mindedness. But into the complex Nigerian village filters the teachings of strangers, teachings so alien to the tribe, that resistance is impossible. One must distinguish a force to be able to oppose it, and to most, the talk of Christian salvation is no more than the babbling of incoherent children. Still, with his guns and persistence, the white man, amoeba-like, gradually absorbs the native culture and in despair, Okonkwo, unable to withstand the corrosion of what he, alone, understands to be the life force of his people, hangs himself. In the formlessness of the dying culture, it is the missionary who takes note of the event, reminding himself to give Okonkwo's gesture a line or two in his work, The Pacification of the Primitive Tribes of the Lower Niger.
This book sings with the terrible silence of dead civilizations in which once there was valor.Pub Date: Jan. 23, 1958
ISBN: 0385474547
Page Count: 207
Publisher: McDowell, Obolensky
Review Posted Online: April 23, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1958
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Doerr captures the sights and sounds of wartime and focuses, refreshingly, on the innate goodness of his major characters.
Doerr presents us with two intricate stories, both of which take place during World War II; late in the novel, inevitably, they intersect.
In August 1944, Marie-Laure LeBlanc is a blind 16-year-old living in the walled port city of Saint-Malo in Brittany and hoping to escape the effects of Allied bombing. D-Day took place two months earlier, and Cherbourg, Caen and Rennes have already been liberated. She’s taken refuge in this city with her great-uncle Etienne, at first a fairly frightening figure to her. Marie-Laure’s father was a locksmith and craftsman who made scale models of cities that Marie-Laure studied so she could travel around on her own. He also crafted clever and intricate boxes, within which treasures could be hidden. Parallel to the story of Marie-Laure we meet Werner and Jutta Pfennig, a brother and sister, both orphans who have been raised in the Children’s House outside Essen, in Germany. Through flashbacks we learn that Werner had been a curious and bright child who developed an obsession with radio transmitters and receivers, both in their infancies during this period. Eventually, Werner goes to a select technical school and then, at 18, into the Wehrmacht, where his technical aptitudes are recognized and he’s put on a team trying to track down illegal radio transmissions. Etienne and Marie-Laure are responsible for some of these transmissions, but Werner is intrigued since what she’s broadcasting is innocent—she shares her passion for Jules Verne by reading aloud 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. A further subplot involves Marie-Laure’s father’s having hidden a valuable diamond, one being tracked down by Reinhold von Rumpel, a relentless German sergeant-major.
Doerr captures the sights and sounds of wartime and focuses, refreshingly, on the innate goodness of his major characters.Pub Date: May 6, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4767-4658-6
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: March 5, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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