Though less expansive than her last novel, Umrigar’s intimate portrayal of a mother and son divided by culture is a...
Umrigar’s latest (The Space Between Us, 2006, etc.) offers a tender portrait of a Bombay widow and her Americanized son, and the culture clash that ensues.
Tehmina Sethna has been emotionally adrift since her beloved, charismatic husband Rustom died. She was hoping to find some solace with her only child Sorab in Cleveland, but the long bleak winter and Sorab’s disapproving wife Susan has made the stay awkward at best. Sorab and Susan have invited Tehmina to leave Bombay for good, move in with them and start life anew, but there seems little on offer in America but bland opulence. Though her family is in America (including seven-year-old grandson Cavas) and Tehmina has a good friend in the spirited Eva Metzembaum, the lure of India and the memories she shared there with Rustom may prove more powerful than the ties of family. Umrigar shifts nicely between Tehmina and her son Sorab, who’s having problems of his own: In India there would be little question about Tehmina moving in with the family, but can the same deference be expected of an American wife? Acutely aware of Susan’s subtle complaints about Tehmina (she doesn’t rinse out the tub after each use, she’s too emotional about her dead husband), Sorab finds he’s becoming slightly afraid of his wife’s thin-lipped grimace. Furthermore, while his wife is suggesting they buy a larger house if Tehmina decides to stay, Sorab’s awful new boss is hinting his position is in jeopardy. Though Sorab and his Indian friends make for a vivid picture of assimilated life in the American Midwest, the story belongs to Tehmina, who must very soon make a decision about returning to Bombay (and all the vibrancy it represents) or staying with her remaining family. Though the ghost of Rustom is advising her, it is Sorab’s next-door neighbor who inadvertently helps Tehmina with her decision—a mother who is abusing her two young sons spurs Tehmina into action, helping her become the robust, independent woman she was before her husband’s death.
Though less expansive than her last novel, Umrigar’s intimate portrayal of a mother and son divided by culture is a convincing testament to the enduring power of place.Pub Date: June 1, 2007
ISBN: 978-0-06-124023-2
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2007
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.
Coelho is a Brazilian writer with four books to his credit. Following Diary of a Magus (1992—not reviewed) came this book, published in Brazil in 1988: it's an interdenominational, transcendental, inspirational fable—in other words, a bag of wind.
The story is about a youth empowered to follow his dream. Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who learns through a dream of a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. An old man, the king of Salem, the first of various spiritual guides, tells the boy that he has discovered his destiny: "to realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation." So Santiago sells his sheep, sails to Tangier, is tricked out of his money, regains it through hard work, crosses the desert with a caravan, stops at an oasis long enough to fall in love, escapes from warring tribesmen by performing a miracle, reaches the pyramids, and eventually gets both the gold and the girl. Along the way he meets an Englishman who describes the Soul of the World; the desert woman Fatima, who teaches him the Language of the World; and an alchemist who says, "Listen to your heart" A message clings like ivy to every encounter; everyone, but everyone, has to put in their two cents' worth, from the crystal merchant to the camel driver ("concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man"). The absence of characterization and overall blandness suggest authorship by a committee of self-improvement pundits—a far cry from Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince: that flagship of the genre was a genuine charmer because it clearly derived from a quirky, individual sensibility.
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.Pub Date: July 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-250217-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1993
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
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