A funny, unusual read that rises above its more distracting elements.
Mishra’s debut comic novel is an absurdist tale of office and personal politics set in a small town in northern India.
A clerk called Coinman can’t stop jingling the coins in his pocket. It’s a simple addiction, but it’s one that comes to rule his life. His real name is Kesar, but his lifelong habit earned him his nickname, and because he’s a bit of a shrinking violet, he accepted it. His obsession drives his work colleagues and his spouse a bit nuts. His wife, Imli, an actress who’s so obsessed with her craft that she becomes her characters at home, bans coins from the house. At the same time, his co-workers conspire in their own ways to rid themselves of Coinman’s constant jingling. One co-worker, Ratiram, poses as Coinman’s friend in order to ingratiate himself with his fellow employees. Another colleague, Hukum, has a penchant for bullying. They and their fellow workers love to get together to gossip, and their chief target is Coinman himself. It gets to the point where they start ganging up on him physically, which is a turning point in all their lives; it changes the office dynamic and sends a few people on unexpected paths. Things also change in Coinman’s relationships with his parents and Imli, and he soon decides that he must deal with his habit himself. Mishra takes the central motif of coin jingling to an extreme, and it wears thin at times, but it’s an effective stand-in for any personal problem that causes social friction. The author also has a good eye for offbeat, comic moments; for example, at one point, Imli, caught up in her role as a doctor in her latest play, shocks Coinman by giving him an injection in his behind. In another scene, Ratiram nearly convinces Coinman that he can solve his problems by growing a goatee. However, the prose has a strange cadence that sometimes makes it hard to parse its meaning; for example, when Coinman is attacked, Mishra writes, “As a result the coins sheepishly fell to the floor—old and new, outdated and in use, humiliated but still in the news.”
A funny, unusual read that rises above its more distracting elements.Pub Date: Nov. 4, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-692-47567-6
Page Count: 230
Publisher: Lune Spark
Review Posted Online: April 29, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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