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ECSTASY

Name: ECSTASY
Author: Sudhir Kakar
ISBN: 1-58567-210-6

by Sudhir Kakar ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 24, 2002

Hazy and unrewarding.

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From India, Kakir’s second (The Ascetic of Desire, 2000, not reviewed) tells turgidly of a young Brahmin’s growth into a guru.

Writing as an outsider about mysticism, Kakir offers a simple plot: one boy grows up to be a holy man, then another follows in his footsteps. The first, Gopal, starts out in the small village of Deogarh, 30 miles north of Jaipur, in the 1930s. Cursed—though he’s also gifted—with androgynous physical traits (breasts, a beautiful singing voice), Gopal never fits in with his peers, but he is highly sought after as a singer at religious ceremonies. After a strange encounter with a travelling tantrik, Gopal is overcome by spiritual madness and his mother takes him on a healing pilgrimage to Balaji. There, he comes under the eye of a travelling older sadhu named Madhavacharya, who becomes the boy’s mentor and takes him into the monastery at Galta. After some feeble monastery intrigue—another monk wants to modernize and tries to oust Madhavacharya—Gopal sets out to live alone in a life of selfless contemplation. Eventually he encounters Nangta, a.k.a. “The Naked One,” a more powerful sadhu than Madhavacharya, who becomes his guru. Years later, in the independent India of the 1960s, Gopal, now a full-fledged elder known as Ram Das Baba, finds a promising youngster named Vivek, who he thinks could take his place. One day after meeting with Gopal, Vivek plunges into mental confusion: “His mind was in turmoil as he cycled back to the city. He could not understand what had happened. Was that awful emptiness and the utter disconnectedness of things a revelation of the secret of the universe? Or of deep structures of his own psyche? Was it some kind of suggestion implanted in his mind by the Baba?” Similar passages, unfortunately, are characteristic of the whole.

Hazy and unrewarding.

Pub Date: June 24, 2002

ISBN: 1-58567-210-6

Page Count: 251

Publisher: Overlook

Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2002

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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MAGIC HOUR

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2006

Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.

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Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.

Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.

Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.

Pub Date: March 1, 2006

ISBN: 0-345-46752-3

Page Count: 400

Publisher: Ballantine

Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
THE WOMEN
by Kristin Hannah

- BOOK REVIEW
THE FOUR WINDS
by Kristin Hannah

- BOOK REVIEW
THE GREAT ALONE
by Kristin Hannah

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THE CATCHER IN THE RYE

by J.D. Salinger ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 15, 1951

A strict report, worthy of sympathy.

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A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.

"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….

A strict report, worthy of sympathy.