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HOMESPUN

A flawed novel which nevertheless frequently engages the reader’s imagination and empathy—and bodes well for its ambitious...

Commitment and sacrifice shape and influence the lives of this sweeping debut novel’s characters: three generations of two Indian families absorbed into several decades of radical political and personal change.

The characters’ stories are assembled by Vachani’s narrator Sweta Kalra—from conversations, correspondence and government records—as she seeks information about the death in combat of her father Ranjit, an air force pilot during the India-Pakistan War. Sweta’s discoveries lead back to the unhappy marriage of her maternal grandparents, Nanaji (a freedom fighter involved in Gandhi’s pacifist resistance to British colonial rule) and Naneeji (a frivolous clotheshorse uninterested in her husband’s political passions). Nanaji’s painful life choices are echoed by the film “career” of their son-in-law Ranjit, who quickly outgrows his celebrity as a child star; suffers unrequited love for a girl (Anu) whose socially prominent family outclasses his own; and submissively fulfills his father’s will by qualifying for the National Defense Academy. Vachani, a documentary filmmaker, shows skill in her gradual juxtaposition of episodes from different time periods. But many of the connections made feel forced (e.g., when Anu, who has never stopped loving Ranjit, uncovers the truth about his fatal last flight and subsequently becomes “India’s first woman war correspondent,” the reader groans). Furthermore, Sweta’s over-insistence on achieving self-realization through becoming a skilled writer is unpersuasive and uninteresting. Fortunately, vividly portrayed secondary characters (a substitute teacher who demands her students’ best; an aeronautical savant whose ingenuity seemingly masks an inexorable death wish) are quite compelling figures. And the flawed, haunted figures of Nanaji and Ranjit achieve a memorable intensity.

A flawed novel which nevertheless frequently engages the reader’s imagination and empathy—and bodes well for its ambitious author’s future.

Pub Date: May 13, 2008

ISBN: 978-1-59051-285-2

Page Count: 376

Publisher: Other Press

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2008

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MAGIC HOUR

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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THE CATCHER IN THE RYE

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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