A good read, with interesting and credible characters working their way through the chaos of modern hospital life.
A sort of curried Scrubs, in which physician/novelist Nigam (The Snake Charmer, 1998) takes us on Grand Rounds through a New York City hospital staffed largely by Indian expatriates.
During his residency, Sonny Seth finds himself faced with weird conditions and even weirder patients every day and is given very little time to think about them. Raised in Arizona, Sonny is of Indian birth, but he never knew his father and seems more at ease with American culture than do many of his (largely Indian) patients. There’s Sonali, for instance, whose husband Nishad became so obsessed with her buttocks that he succumbed to temptation one night and took a bite out of one of them (which became badly infected). There’s the Comatose Patient, who is actually perfectly lucid but pretends to be unconscious to avoid dealing with his wife and mistress (who hate him). And the Transplanted Man, in for kidney dialysis, has over the years exchanged his lungs, corneas, pancreas, heart, and liver for new models. Minister of Health in the Indian government, the Transplanted Man is thought to have a good shot at becoming the next prime minister, but there are financial scandals in his past—and his opponents are making hay of his tendency to travel abroad for medical treatment. One of his regular visitors is the Uriah Heep-ish Sharad Kakkar, a Bollywood matinee idol who wants to enter politics and is trying to wrest an endorsement from the Transplanted Man’s feeble fingers. Sonny grows close to the Transplanted Man, who turns out to have more of a connection with him than he would have guessed. Nigam’s cast of characters is large enough to provide plenty of distraction (a psychotherapist named Dr. Guru; a scientist who may have discovered a cure for insomnia; etc.) but not too numerous to overwhelm.
A good read, with interesting and credible characters working their way through the chaos of modern hospital life.Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-688-16819-1
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2002
BOOK REVIEW
Suspenseful, full of incident, and not obviously necessary.
Atwood goes back to Gilead.
The Handmaid’s Tale (1985), consistently regarded as a masterpiece of 20th-century literature, has gained new attention in recent years with the success of the Hulu series as well as fresh appreciation from readers who feel like this story has new relevance in America’s current political climate. Atwood herself has spoken about how news headlines have made her dystopian fiction seem eerily plausible, and it’s not difficult to imagine her wanting to revisit Gilead as the TV show has sped past where her narrative ended. Like the novel that preceded it, this sequel is presented as found documents—first-person accounts of life inside a misogynistic theocracy from three informants. There is Agnes Jemima, a girl who rejects the marriage her family arranges for her but still has faith in God and Gilead. There’s Daisy, who learns on her 16th birthday that her whole life has been a lie. And there's Aunt Lydia, the woman responsible for turning women into Handmaids. This approach gives readers insight into different aspects of life inside and outside Gilead, but it also leads to a book that sometimes feels overstuffed. The Handmaid’s Tale combined exquisite lyricism with a powerful sense of urgency, as if a thoughtful, perceptive woman was racing against time to give witness to her experience. That narrator hinted at more than she said; Atwood seemed to trust readers to fill in the gaps. This dynamic created an atmosphere of intimacy. However curious we might be about Gilead and the resistance operating outside that country, what we learn here is that what Atwood left unsaid in the first novel generated more horror and outrage than explicit detail can. And the more we get to know Agnes, Daisy, and Aunt Lydia, the less convincing they become. It’s hard, of course, to compete with a beloved classic, so maybe the best way to read this new book is to forget about The Handmaid’s Tale and enjoy it as an artful feminist thriller.
Suspenseful, full of incident, and not obviously necessary.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-385-54378-1
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Nan A. Talese
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
Pevear's informative introduction and numerous helpful explanatory notes help make this the essential Anna Karenina.
The husband-and-wife team who have given us refreshing English versions of Dostoevsky, Gogol, and Chekhov now present their lucid translation of Tolstoy's panoramic tale of adultery and society: a masterwork that may well be the greatest realistic novel ever written. It's a beautifully structured fiction, which contrasts the aristocratic world of two prominent families with the ideal utopian one dreamed by earnest Konstantin Levin (a virtual self-portrait). The characters of the enchanting Anna (a descendant of Flaubert's Emma Bovary and Fontane's Effi Briest, and forerunner of countless later literary heroines), the lover (Vronsky) who proves worthy of her indiscretion, her bloodless husband Karenin and ingenuous epicurean brother Stiva, among many others, are quite literally unforgettable. Perhaps the greatest virtue of this splendid translation is the skill with which it distinguishes the accents of Anna's romantic egoism from the spare narrative clarity with which a vast spectrum of Russian life is vividly portrayed.
Pevear's informative introduction and numerous helpful explanatory notes help make this the essential Anna Karenina.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-670-89478-8
Page Count: 864
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2001
PERSPECTIVES
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
