A heart-wrenching family drama, as powerful as it is delicate.
In this novel, an impoverished Indian girl of the Muslim faith is forced to become a maid for a well-to-do Hindu family, a predicament that challenges her identity.
When Parul is only 6 years old, her father, Ahmed, decides to leave her with the Sens, a Hindu family of considerably superior financial means. Parul and her family had become so poor that they were on the brink of starvation. Parul is taken in as a maid, but her status in the wealthy family is discomfortingly ambiguous, a lack of clarity highlighted by her relationship with Mohini Sen. As Parul grows up, Mohini becomes a close friend and a kind of sister but also an object of great envy, a situation sensitively portrayed by Roychowdhury: “How much she tried to belong in Mohini’s world, and how unsuitable and poorly matched she was.” Moreover, since the Sen family is Hindu, Parul is forced to conceal her Muslim faith. Parul’s estrangement from her own family members, who increasingly treats her as no more than a source of income, exacts a terrible emotional toll on her. She seeks solace in her Muslim spirituality, a clandestine attachment encouraged by her secret boyfriend, Rahim. With impressive nuance, the author chronicles Parul’s growing emotional crisis, one that crescendos with a terrible choice. Rahim, out of an angry, radical rejection of all infidels, asks Parul to commit an act of violence that would count as a betrayal of her host family. Roychowdhury’s prose is deceptively simple and straightforward, but her story is deeply complex—Parul’s life touches on the alienation experienced as a result of religious identity, gender, and socio-economic class. While this is fairly well-traveled literary ground, the author’s treatment has a dramatic authenticity that makes it seem like a fresh rendering rather than the rehash of a formula.
A heart-wrenching family drama, as powerful as it is delicate.Pub Date: June 9, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-68433-959-4
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Black Rose Writing
Review Posted Online: May 6, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.
A young woman’s experience as a nurse in Vietnam casts a deep shadow over her life.
When we learn that the farewell party in the opening scene is for Frances “Frankie” McGrath’s older brother—“a golden boy, a wild child who could make the hardest heart soften”—who is leaving to serve in Vietnam in 1966, we feel pretty certain that poor Finley McGrath is marked for death. Still, it’s a surprise when the fateful doorbell rings less than 20 pages later. His death inspires his sister to enlist as an Army nurse, and this turn of events is just the beginning of a roller coaster of a plot that’s impressive and engrossing if at times a bit formulaic. Hannah renders the experiences of the young women who served in Vietnam in all-encompassing detail. The first half of the book, set in gore-drenched hospital wards, mildewed dorm rooms, and boozy officers’ clubs, is an exciting read, tracking the transformation of virginal, uptight Frankie into a crack surgical nurse and woman of the world. Her tensely platonic romance with a married surgeon ends when his broken, unbreathing body is airlifted out by helicopter; she throws her pent-up passion into a wild affair with a soldier who happens to be her dead brother’s best friend. In the second part of the book, after the war, Frankie seems to experience every possible bad break. A drawback of the story is that none of the secondary characters in her life are fully three-dimensional: Her dismissive, chauvinistic father and tight-lipped, pill-popping mother, her fellow nurses, and her various love interests are more plot devices than people. You’ll wish you could have gone to Vegas and placed a bet on the ending—while it’s against all the odds, you’ll see it coming from a mile away.
A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2024
ISBN: 9781250178633
Page Count: 480
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 4, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2023
PERSPECTIVES
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
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