Incremental action, but Shankar has a light touch that proves ultimately moving.
A 65-year-old retiree returns to the Indian village of his youth in this elegiac, ponderous second novel from Shankar (A Map of Where I Live, 1997).
Having lived in New Delhi for the past 40 years, working as a civil servant, married with one grown son, Gopalakrishnan has returned to his ancestral town of Paavalampatti to take care of his widowed mother. Here, he takes daily morning walks through the village’s ethnically changing neighborhoods, which mirror the increasing breakdown of the caste system. He recalls storied memories and battles an encroaching sense of obsolescence. He remembers, among other things, the strictness of his grandfather and father, whose name he bears, and the sometimes arbitrary punishments he received. He recalls his first job as a radio “artiste” in New Delhi, where he moved only because he fell under the sway of his charismatic buddy, T.R. Murthy. He considers the first time Murthy and his glamorous, educated wife meet his chosen provincial bride, Parvati, and comes to suspect that perhaps he married beneath him. Indeed, like so many of the decisions he has made in his life, Gopalakrishnan never questioned the choice of his life’s companion, having accepted the selection his family made. The union proved chilly and loveless, and its emotional barrenness resulted in Gopalakrishnan’s estrangement from scornful son Suresh. But for Gopalakrishnan, who has taken up reading the ancient epic poem Ramayana, hope remains in self-reflection.
Incremental action, but Shankar has a light touch that proves ultimately moving.Pub Date: Oct. 4, 2005
ISBN: 1-58642-093-3
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Steerforth
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2005
BOOK REVIEW
A stunning feat of storytelling and moral clarity.
An Irishman uncovers abuse at a Magdalen laundry in this compact and gripping novel.
As Christmas approaches in the winter of 1985, Bill Furlong finds himself increasingly troubled by a sense of dissatisfaction. A coal and timber merchant living in New Ross, Ireland, he should be happy with his life: He is happily married and the father of five bright daughters, and he runs a successful business. But the scars of his childhood linger: His mother gave birth to him while still a teenager, and he never knew his father. Now, as he approaches middle age, Furlong wonders, “What was it all for?…Might things never change or develop into something else, or new?” But a series of troubling encounters at the local convent, which also functions as a “training school for girls” and laundry business, disrupts Furlong’s sedate life. Readers familiar with the history of Ireland’s Magdalen laundries, institutions in which women were incarcerated and often died, will immediately recognize the circumstances of the desperate women trapped in New Ross’ convent, but Furlong does not immediately understand what he has witnessed. Keegan, a prizewinning Irish short story writer, says a great deal in very few words to extraordinary effect in this short novel. Despite the brevity of the text, Furlong’s emotional state is fully rendered and deeply affecting. Keegan also carefully crafts a web of complicity around the convent’s activities that is believably mundane and all the more chilling for it. The Magdalen laundries, this novel implicitly argues, survived not only due to the cruelty of the people who ran them, but also because of the fear and selfishness of those who were willing to look aside because complicity was easier than resistance.
A stunning feat of storytelling and moral clarity.Pub Date: Nov. 30, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-8021-5874-1
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Grove
Review Posted Online: Aug. 31, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2021
Haig’s positive message will keep his fans happy.
A British widow travels to Ibiza and learns that it’s never too late to have a happy life.
In a world that seems to be getting more unstable by the moment, Haig’s novels are a steady ship in rough seas, offering a much-needed positive message. In works like the bestselling The Midnight Library (2020), he reminds us that finding out what you truly love and where you belong in the universe are the foundations of building a better existence. His latest book continues this upbeat messaging, albeit in a somewhat repetitive and facile way. Retired British schoolteacher Grace Winters discovers that an old acquaintance has died and left her a ramshackle home in Ibiza. A widow who lost her only child years earlier, Grace is at first reluctant to visit the house, because, at 72, she more or less believes her chance for happiness is over—but when she rouses herself to travel to the island, she discovers the opposite is true. A mystery surrounds her friend’s death involving a roguish islander, his activist daughter, an internationally famous DJ, and a strange glow in the sea that acts as a powerful life force and upends Grace’s ideas of how the cosmos works. Framed as a response to a former student’s email, the narrative follows Grace’s journey from skeptic (she was a math teacher, after all) to believer in the possibility of magic as she learns to move on from the past. Her transformation is the book’s main conflict, aside from a protest against an evil developer intent on destroying Ibiza’s natural beauty. The outcome is never in doubt, and though the story often feels stretched to the limit—this novel could have easily been a novella—the author’s insistence on the power of connection to change lives comes through loud and clear.
Haig’s positive message will keep his fans happy.Pub Date: Sept. 3, 2024
ISBN: 9780593489277
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Aug. 3, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2024
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