Six admirable female protagonists lead heartfelt and fulfilling tales.
In this short story collection, women from different countries and walks of life undergo transformative experiences through family and culture.
The female characters in the six stories in this volume have diverse backgrounds but also numerous similarities. For example, Uma is a married woman living in Calcutta in “Conscience,” and Mia of “Change” is a widowed Californian. But both women are teachers. And while Mia has lost her husband, Glen, Uma’s marriage to Lalit is strained, as he’s rarely home. All the women dauntlessly face significant changes, which often entail traveling to or living in other countries. In the opening tale, “From the Heart,” Min-Seo is a South Korean wife who moves to France with her husband, Ji Hoon. She’s a sociable individual who now feels withdrawn, as she struggles to communicate with people in an unfamiliar tongue. Likewise, in “Fourteen Days,” Indian American Julie takes a trip to Calcutta, where her parents are from. She’s shocked when she realizes that her 14-year-old maid, Saras, in India doesn’t attend school. Julie is determined to help her despite indifference from the girl’s employer. The female characters furthermore overcome the burden of other people’s expectations. Saras, for one, ran away from home to evade an arranged marriage when she was a mere 11 years old. In the same vein, both Mia’s mother and her son, Pierce, believe she should date eligible Kyle, Glen’s former tennis partner. But Mia asserts that she’s not lonely. Ghose Chotani (Pictures Through the Rearview Mirror, 2018) uses various cultures to enrich her tales. Whether they’re persevering in their own culture or immersed in an entirely new one, the women continually learn from their experiences, which makes for dynamic characters and more robust stories. The author’s detail-laden prose is expressive, though occasionally verbose, like the description of a train that passes “the platform and buildings, then, swiftly, picked up speed, fast.” But she also infuses her stories with profundity: “Life is about constant readjustment,” and anticipating that things will stay the same “is placing oneself in the puddle of ignorance.”
Six admirable female protagonists lead heartfelt and fulfilling tales.Pub Date: April 2, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5437-0510-2
Page Count: 362
Publisher: PartridgeIndia
Review Posted Online: June 28, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 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
Britisher Swift's sixth novel (Ever After, 1992 etc.) and fourth to appear here is a slow-to-start but then captivating tale of English working-class families in the four decades following WW II. When Jack Dodds dies suddenly of cancer after years of running a butcher shop in London, he leaves a strange request—namely, that his ashes be scattered off Margate pier into the sea. And who could better be suited to fulfill this wish than his three oldest drinking buddies—insurance man Ray, vegetable seller Lenny, and undertaker Vic, all of whom, like Jack himself, fought also as soldiers or sailors in the long-ago world war. Swift's narrative start, with its potential for the melodramatic, is developed instead with an economy, heart, and eye that release (through the characters' own voices, one after another) the story's humanity and depth instead of its schmaltz. The jokes may be weak and self- conscious when the three old friends meet at their local pub in the company of the urn holding Jack's ashes; but once the group gets on the road, in an expensive car driven by Jack's adoptive son, Vince, the story starts gradually to move forward, cohere, and deepen. The reader learns in time why it is that no wife comes along, why three marriages out of three broke apart, and why Vince always hated his stepfather Jack and still does—or so he thinks. There will be stories of innocent youth, suffering wives, early loves, lost daughters, secret affairs, and old antagonisms—including a fistfight over the dead on an English hilltop, and a strewing of Jack's ashes into roiling seawaves that will draw up feelings perhaps unexpectedly strong. Without affectation, Swift listens closely to the lives that are his subject and creates a songbook of voices part lyric, part epic, part working-class social realism—with, in all, the ring to it of the honest, human, and true.
Pub Date: April 5, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-41224-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1996
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