A coming-of-age story set in early-20th-century India.
Two sisters’ personal lives get caught up in the changing politics of India in this historical novel.
Chandrapur, India. Sixteen-year-old Leela is training to become a teacher in the early 1900s, but she isn’t overly excited about her career, especially now that her betrothed, Nash, is coming home from Tokyo. He has studied engineering there the past three years, but due to the Russo-Japanese War, the British have ordered all Indian students to leave Japan. Her sister, 15-year-old Maya, is even more restless. “It’s a new world,” she says, dreaming of the end of school. “They have films now, and automobiles. Two years ago we never would have dreamt that we’d get a teacher training college. Two years from now the whole world may be unrecognizable. Why not dream up a place for ourselves within it?” When Nash returns, it is with a revolutionary zeal to unite Hindus and Muslims and throw off British rule—a zeal he attempts to spread to Leela and Maya. The sisters take his advice to try to merge the two girls’ schools—one Hindu, one Muslim. They bring the idea to Zainab, a Muslim colleague. But when Maya gets to know Zainab’s brother, Hassan, a Hindu-Muslim alliance that Leela did not bargain for takes root. Rohatgi’s (Fighting Cane and Canon, 2014) prose is measured and highly detailed, even when balancing the emotional lives of her characters. At one point, Leela narrates: “When Maya chews her cauliflower at dinner that night, her lips are exaggerated, her manner sullen and defiant. I can’t look at my father without feeling tears pool in my eyes, so I stare back at her as she tries to assess whether or not she should tell Papa everything.” The novel does an excellent job of placing readers directly into the politics of the time, highlighting the clash between old and new and between the region’s various subcultures. There are places where the plot drags a bit, but Leela and Maya are so carefully composed that readers will get caught up in this pivotal time in their young lives.
A coming-of-age story set in early-20th-century India.Pub Date: March 8, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-73323-329-3
Page Count: 270
Publisher: Galaxy Galloper Press, LLC
Review Posted Online: Nov. 29, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
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SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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