A flat novel with an interesting structure.
Jbara (Kahraman, 2009, etc.) tells the story of a female photographer in India searching for fulfillment in this fragmentary novel.
Shamyana’s father abandoned the family when she was young, and her relationship with her mother has always been distant. In high school, she discovers photography when her best friend, Shyam, shows her his new camera. Shyam makes his secret feelings for Shamyana known, and the two marry after graduation. Despite his conservative family, Shyam encourages Shamyana to pursue photography, which she sees as a way to access her confusing inner life. “My dream is to let the people see the world through my lens,” she says, to which he replies, “I have faith that you will succeed one day.” The young photographer eventually finds the marriage too constraining for her ambitions, and Shyam agrees to an amicable split. On a trip to Goa, she meets a hotel owner named Rohan with whom she senses immediate chemistry. A new friend sets her up with corporate shoots and magazine features, and her career burgeons. She gets mixed signals from Rohan, however, and when another man expresses interest in her, she marries him. But is it what she wants? Her nervous breakdown suggests otherwise. Jbara tells Shamyana’s story in a series of microchapters, many only a paragraph long. While some depict scenes or dialogue that advance the plot, others are lyrical snippets of the protagonist’s thoughts; from the chapter “Ignite Fire”: “This route is too confining for me to slither. I feel my senses ignite fire. That is seething in my soul. I was unable to be me. I repositioned myself. I felt my body incite fire. That is raging in my body. I can’t be me. I can’t be them.” Despite these windows of interiority, many characters and events feel stilted or flat, and Shamyana’s story elicits surprisingly little emotional investment from the reader. While the novel’s structure is ambitious and original, it’s not used effectively. Shamyana’s true self should be more accessible, and yet by the end of the novel, she still feels like a stranger.
A flat novel with an interesting structure.Pub Date: May 22, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-4505-3186-3
Page Count: 167
Publisher: AuthorHouse
Review Posted Online: Dec. 28, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her...
Another middle-aged mom in a muddle.
After years of false starts and big hopes, Elizabeth’s ruggedly handsome husband Jack, a former football star, just landed a spot as a sportscaster on national news. He still loves her, even though much younger women are giving him come-hither looks. Heck, he doesn’t want to betray the love of his life after she helped him kick drugs and stuck by him even when he was a struggling has-been. And won’t it seem hypocritical if he fools around with his sexy assistant while he does in-depth reporting on a rape case involving a famous basketball center? Well, he fools around anyway. Elizabeth, nicknamed Birdie, knows nothing of this, but she withdraws from Jack when her hard-drinking, salt-of-the-earth father has a stroke and dies. Now no one will call her “sugar beet” ever again. Time to return home to Tennessee and contend with Anita, the sort-of-evil stepmother so trashy she wears pink puffy slippers all day long. Naturally, it turns out that Anita actually has a heart of gold and knows a few things about Birdie’s dead mother that were hushed up for years. Mom was an artist, just like Birdie, and an old scandal comes to light as Anita unrolls a vibrant canvas that portrays her secret lover. Perhaps, Birdie muses, her mother died of heartbreak, never having followed her true love or developed her talent. Has she, too, compromised everything she holds dear? Hoping to find out, Birdie joins a support group that promises to reconnect confused women with their passion. She and Jack separate, prompting a how-dare-you fit from their grown daughters. Will Birdie fly her empty nest? Will she go back to college for a degree in art? Will her brooding watercolors ever sell?
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her previous tales (Summer Island, 2001, etc.).Pub Date: July 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-345-45071-X
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2002
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