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
An enjoyable slice of 20th-century music journalism almost certain to provide something for most readers, no matter one’s...
Music journalist and musician Wald (Talking 'Bout Your Mama: The Dozens, Snaps, and the Deep Roots of Rap, 2014, etc.) focuses on one evening in music history to explain the evolution of contemporary music, especially folk, blues, and rock.
The date of that evening is July 25, 1965, at the Newport Folk Festival, where there was an unbelievably unexpected occurrence: singer/songwriter Bob Dylan, already a living legend in his early 20s, overriding the acoustic music that made him famous in favor of electronically based music, causing reactions ranging from adoration to intense resentment among other musicians, DJs, and record buyers. Dylan has told his own stories (those stories vary because that’s Dylan’s character), and plenty of other music journalists have explored the Dylan phenomenon. What sets Wald's book apart is his laser focus on that one date. The detailed recounting of what did and did not occur on stage and in the audience that night contains contradictory evidence sorted skillfully by the author. He offers a wealth of context; in fact, his account of Dylan's stage appearance does not arrive until 250 pages in. The author cites dozens of sources, well-known and otherwise, but the key storylines, other than Dylan, involve acoustic folk music guru Pete Seeger and the rich history of the Newport festival, a history that had created expectations smashed by Dylan. Furthermore, the appearances on the pages by other musicians—e.g., Joan Baez, the Weaver, Peter, Paul, and Mary, Dave Van Ronk, and Gordon Lightfoot—give the book enough of an expansive feel. Wald's personal knowledge seems encyclopedic, and his endnotes show how he ranged far beyond personal knowledge to produce the book.
An enjoyable slice of 20th-century music journalism almost certain to provide something for most readers, no matter one’s personal feelings about Dylan's music or persona.Pub Date: July 25, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-06-236668-9
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Dey Street/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 15, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2015
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BOOK TO SCREEN
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Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
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