Masterful Indian tales showcasing slick, expressive writing.
This debut collection of short stories examines the complexity of human connections in urban India.
The Indian metropolis depicted in these 16 tales is a place of opposing forces. Amid the chaotic swirl of urban life, strangers are thrown together by chance while others are dramatically and surprisingly riven apart. The collection opens with a story titled “Receding Shoreline,” which describes an engineer and his wife awaiting the arrival of a dinner guest at an upscale restaurant. When the guest appears, what was first perceived as an innocuous dinner date suddenly becomes a pivotal moment in the couple’s marriage. The theme of unexpected encounters is pervasive throughout the volume. In the title story, the narrator makes eye contact with a young woman while battling rush-hour traffic in Bangalore. He then seeks out her red compact daily to enjoy a silent exchange. Other tales, such as “No Time for a Joke,” about riding in a Kolkata taxi, and “Everyone Needs Closure,” which features a college student returning home to Bengal, also focus on peculiar meetings but have chilling paranormal twists. Dasgupta introduces an admirable range of characters, from codebreakers to corporate climbers, all of whom have distinct voices and personalities. His attention to detail is epitomized by his tender portrayal of Nayna sitting in rush-hour gridlock in the title story: “Nayna’s hair was tied in a loose bun and carelessly clipped at the back. Unruly locks hung on her nape, and another caressed her cheek….The tail lights from the cars threw a red hue on her and brought a pang of inexplicable warmth in my heart.” The author is skilled at creating such serene moments of intimacy in scenes of chaos as well as equally unanticipated jolts that spring violently from quietude. His book bears the marks of a perceptive writer, although his preoccupation with the machinations of corporate life may not be for everyone, and his prose appears to burn most brightly when evoking the hubbub of Indian traffic and street life. Still, this is a delightfully idiosyncratic portrait of urban India riddled with sophisticated and unpredictable twists.
Masterful Indian tales showcasing slick, expressive writing.Pub Date: Sept. 17, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5437-0383-2
Page Count: 146
Publisher: PartridgeIndia
Review Posted Online: Nov. 20, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
It's being called a novel, but it is more a hybrid: short-stories/essays/confessions about the Vietnam War—the subject that O'Brien reasonably comes back to with every book. Some of these stories/memoirs are very good in their starkness and factualness: the title piece, about what a foot soldier actually has on him (weights included) at any given time, lends a palpability that makes the emotional freight (fear, horror, guilt) correspond superbly. Maybe the most moving piece here is "On The Rainy River," about a draftee's ambivalence about going, and how he decided to go: "I would go to war—I would kill and maybe die—because I was embarrassed not to." But so much else is so structurally coy that real effects are muted and disadvantaged: O'Brien is writing a book more about earnestness than about war, and the peekaboos of this isn't really me but of course it truly is serve no true purpose. They make this an annoyingly arty book, hiding more than not behind Hemingwayesque time-signatures and puerile repetitions about war (and memory and everything else, for that matter) being hell and heaven both. A disappointment.
Pub Date: March 28, 1990
ISBN: 0618706410
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: Oct. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1990
SEEN & HEARD
IN THE NEWS
A newcomer to watch: fresh, funny, and tough.
Seven stories, including a couple of prizewinners, from an exuberantly talented young Thai-American writer.
In the poignant title story, a young man accompanies his mother to Kok Lukmak, the last in the chain of Andaman Islands—where the two can behave like “farangs,” or foreigners, for once. It’s his last summer before college, her last before losing her eyesight. As he adjusts to his unsentimental mother’s acceptance of her fate, they make tentative steps toward the future. “Farangs,” included in Best New American Voices 2005 (p. 711), is about a flirtation between a Thai teenager who keeps a pet pig named Clint Eastwood and an American girl who wanders around in a bikini. His mother, who runs a motel after having been deserted by the boy’s American father, warns him about “bonking” one of the guests. “Draft Day” concerns a relieved but guilty young man whose father has bribed him out of the draft, and in “Don’t Let Me Die in This Place,” a bitter grandfather has moved from the States to Bangkok to live with his son, his Thai daughter-in-law, and two grandchildren. The grandfather’s grudging adjustment to the move and to his loss of autonomy (from a stroke) is accelerated by a visit to a carnival, where he urges the whole family into a game of bumper cars. The longest story, “Cockfighter,” is an astonishing coming-of-ager about feisty Ladda, 15, who watches as her father, once the best cockfighter in town, loses his status, money, and dignity to Little Jui, 16, a meth addict whose father is the local crime boss. Even Ladda is in danger, as Little Jui’s bodyguards try to abduct her. Her mother tells Ladda a family secret about her father’s failure of courage in fighting Big Jui to save his own sister’s honor. By the time Little Jui has had her father beaten and his ear cut off, Ladda has begun to realize how she must fend for herself.
A newcomer to watch: fresh, funny, and tough.Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2005
ISBN: 0-8021-1788-0
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Grove
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2004
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