A vivid saga of a woman who found an enthralling new home.
A Canadian doctor in India finds romance and a fraught quest for professional and personal fulfillment in this debut memoir.
The author was a young medical student when she traveled to India in 1981 and met Pradeep Kumar, a soulful pediatrician; after a four-year, long-distance courtship, she married him and returned to India to live there. The couple dreamed of practicing medicine among the impoverished villagers in the Himalayan province of Garhwal, and they did so at two ashram-run charitable health programs. But the dream became a nightmare when an autocratic ashram leader aroused local opposition—a situation that eventually resulted in someone’s death. Trollope-Kumar’s multifaceted memoir offers an adventurous fish-out-of-water narrative, showing how she struggled to learn Hindi and adjust to India’s vibrant, chaotic culture with its constant noise and bustle. She also encountered corruption—her request for a re-entry document prompted an investigation into whether she was a CIA agent, until a suitable bribe smoothed things over—as well as deformed beggars, street elephants, colorful rituals, and intrusive etiquette. She also delivers a love story, telling how she and Pradeep negotiated their evolving relationship, especially after Pradeep immersed himself in Hindu spirituality, which she sometimes found hard to fathom. In addition, the book is a fascinating anthropological study of clashing Western and Indian cultural perspectives on health and illness; for example, village midwives smiled at the author’s germ theory of neonatal tetanus, then patiently explained that it was really caused by evil spirits. Finally, it documents a journey of self-discovery as the author’s and Pradeep’s happy success at setting up rural health centers turned to dismay as they fell apart, and then to depression and a rethinking of goals. Trollope-Kumar’s prose is evocative throughout; of her deepest melancholy, she writes, “The world around me was like a black-and-white photograph—the colour had disappeared, leaving nothing but shades….This stark world of angles, planes, and lines.” In this luminous memoir, she captures both India’s charm and its deep poverty and squalor without ever succumbing to exoticism, and she renders the people she encounters with sensitivity and insight.
A vivid saga of a woman who found an enthralling new home.Pub Date: Oct. 6, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4602-8769-9
Page Count: 348
Publisher: FriesenPress
Review Posted Online: March 7, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An extravaganza in Bemelmans' inimitable vein, but written almost dead pan, with sly, amusing, sometimes biting undertones, breaking through. For Bemelmans was "the man who came to cocktails". And his hostess was Lady Mendl (Elsie de Wolfe), arbiter of American decorating taste over a generation. Lady Mendl was an incredible person,- self-made in proper American tradition on the one hand, for she had been haunted by the poverty of her childhood, and the years of struggle up from its ugliness,- until she became synonymous with the exotic, exquisite, worshipper at beauty's whrine. Bemelmans draws a portrait in extremes, through apt descriptions, through hilarious anecdote, through surprisingly sympathetic and understanding bits of appreciation. The scene shifts from Hollywood to the home she loved the best in Versailles. One meets in passing a vast roster of famous figures of the international and artistic set. And always one feels Bemelmans, slightly offstage, observing, recording, commenting, illustrated.
Pub Date: Feb. 23, 1955
ISBN: 0670717797
Page Count: -
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1955
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