A coming-of-age story that blends excellent prose with a downbeat plot.
An orphaned girl lives an eventful life in rural Punjab in Rana’s debut novel.
Tara lives in a Punjabi village with Bibi Saffiya and Saffiya’s servant Amman Bhaggan, who found the infant Tara abandoned on a train. The girl grows up in a position that’s part daughter and part servant, raised alongside Bhaggan’s three sons and Maria, the daughter of laborers who work for Saffiya. Tara is convinced that she deserves the best in life, like the attention of Sultan, Bhaggan’s eldest son, even though he has no interest in her. Her pursuit of him ends in tragedy—one of many in the book. In an effort to avoid becoming the second wife of an abusive man, Tara sleeps with Bhaggan’s second son, Taaj, and ends up marrying the third, Malik, but further losses await the characters, and the book’s final section is narrated by the swarms of flies that have been observing Tara and the other characters throughout their lives: “We, the flies, disentangled ourselves from the bodies and disappeared behind the bushes.” Rana is a vivid writer with a talent for evocative metaphors (“Tea stains are nothing compared with how my life has been marked”), and her prose is full of intimate, detailed descriptions that make the book’s rural setting come to life. The story isn’t a happy one, so readers should expect to encounter a constant stream of malaise throughout the book, which takes place in the somewhat recent past; there are televisions but no computers. Tara’s arrogance (“She looked old, and I felt even more beautiful. But I didn't have enough feelings to feel sorry for her”) makes her both compelling and unsympathetic as a protagonist, and her frequent complaints may wear on the reader. Still, Rana does a fine job of capturing the emotions of the characters, making it a satisfying, if bleak, read.
A coming-of-age story that blends excellent prose with a downbeat plot.Pub Date: Sept. 17, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-63152-668-8
Page Count: 238
Publisher: She Writes Press
Review Posted Online: July 23, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
These letters from some important executive Down Below, to one of the junior devils here on earth, whose job is to corrupt mortals, are witty and written in a breezy style seldom found in religious literature. The author quotes Luther, who said: "The best way to drive out the devil, if he will not yield to texts of Scripture, is to jeer and flout him, for he cannot bear scorn." This the author does most successfully, for by presenting some of our modern and not-so-modern beliefs as emanating from the devil's headquarters, he succeeds in making his reader feel like an ass for ever having believed in such ideas. This kind of presentation gives the author a tremendous advantage over the reader, however, for the more timid reader may feel a sense of guilt after putting down this book. It is a clever book, and for the clever reader, rather than the too-earnest soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1942
ISBN: 0060652934
Page Count: 53
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 17, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1943
Deep schmaltz in the Bible Belt.
Christian-fiction writer Martin (The Dead Don’t Dance, not reviewed) chronicles the personal tragedy of a Georgia heart surgeon.
Five years ago in Atlanta, Reese could not save his beloved wife Emma from heart failure, even though the Harvard-trained surgeon became a physician so that he could find a way to fix his childhood sweetheart’s congenitally faulty ticker. He renounced practicing medicine after her death and now lives in quiet anonymity as a boat mechanic on Lake Burton. Across the lake is Emma’s brother Charlie, who was rendered blind on the same desperate night that Reese fought to revive his wife on their kitchen floor. When Reese helps save the life of a seven-year-old local girl named Annie, who turns out to have irreparable heart damage, he is compassionately drawn into her case. He also grows close to Annie’s attractive Aunt Cindy and gradually comes to recognize that the family needs his expertise as a transplant surgeon. Martin displays some impressive knowledge about medical practice and the workings of the heart, but his Christian message is not exactly subtle. “If anything in this universe reflects the fingerprint of God, it is the human heart,” Reese notes of his medical studies. Emma’s letters (kept in a bank vault) quote Bible verse; Charlie elucidates stories of Jesus’ miracles for young Annie; even the napkins at the local bar, The Well, carry passages from the Gospel of John for the benefit of the biker clientele. Moreover, Martin relentlessly hammers home his sentimentality with nature-specific metaphors involving mating cardinals and crying crickets. (Annie sells crickets as well as lemonade to raise money for her heart surgery.) Reese’s habitual muttering of worldly slogans from Milton and Shakespeare (“I am ashes where once I was fire”) doesn’t much cut the cloying piety, and an over-the-top surgical save leaves the reader feeling positively bruised.
Deep schmaltz in the Bible Belt.Pub Date: April 4, 2006
ISBN: 1-5955-4054-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: WestBow/Thomas Nelson
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2006
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