A moving evocation of life before, during, and after Partition and the past's immeasurable impact on the present.
One family feels the ripple effects of Partition for generations after India and Pakistan are cleaved in 1947.
Reminiscent of Zadie Smith's White Teeth in its structure and themes, Suneja's debut novel splits its pages between two politically turbulent eras. One narrative thread follows Barre Nanu and Chhote Nanu, a pair of Hindu brothers, as they deal with the consequences of a misguided bomb plot and an illicit romance in Lahore amid the sunset of the British Empire. With World War II raging, many Indians have begun to chafe against colonial rule, Chhote Nanu among them. His revolutionary aspirations are complicated by his love for the beautiful Nigar Jaan, a Muslim sex worker of mixed Indian and English heritage, but he still follows through on an attempt to assassinate a cruel police superintendent. Backfiring, the scheme fails to kill the superintendent and sends Chhote Nanu to jail for nearly two and a half years. Following his release in 1946, Partition plunges the region into chaos and turns Lahore into a Pakistani territory, stranding Barre Nanu and Chhote Nanu on the wrong side of the border. Witnessing horrors as violence against Hindus intensifies, they fight to escape a country they can no longer call their own. Six decades after Chhote Nanu's imprisonment began in 1943, New York City graduate student Karan Khatri returns to his hometown, the Indian city of Kanpur, for the first time in six years after his sister sends word that Barre Nanu, their grandfather, has died. In the wake of 9/11, long-standing tensions between Hindus and Muslims have flared up in the United States, reminding Karan and his friends that they are welcome in some worlds but not in others. In addition to paying his respects to Barre Nanu, Karan has another reason for making the trip to Kanpur: He wants to know more about his parentage. While his mother has always told him that he and his sister were fathered by a Muslim man and a Hindu man, respectively, she has disclosed few other details, seemingly reluctant to do so. Family secrets come to the fore and old wounds reopen as Karan and his sister search for answers.
A moving evocation of life before, during, and after Partition and the past's immeasurable impact on the present.Pub Date: Sept. 19, 2023
ISBN: 9781639550142
Page Count: 328
Publisher: Milkweed
Review Posted Online: July 13, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2023
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
Uneven but fitfully amusing.
Betrayed by her husband, a severely depressed young woman gets drawn into the over-the-top festivities at a lavish wedding.
Phoebe Stone, who teaches English literature at a St. Louis college, is plotting her own demise. Her husband, Matt, has left her for another woman, and Phoebe is taking it hard. Indeed, she's determined just where and how she will end it all: at an oceanfront hotel in Newport, where she will lie on a king-sized canopy bed and take a bottle of her cat’s painkillers. At the hotel, Phoebe meets bride-to-be Lila, a headstrong rich girl presiding over her own extravagant six-day wedding celebration. Lila thought she had booked every room in the hotel, and learning of Phoebe's suicidal intentions, she forbids this stray guest from disrupting the nuptials: “No. You definitely can’t kill yourself. This is my wedding week.” After the punchy opening, a grim flashback to the meltdown of Phoebe's marriage temporarily darkens the mood, but things pick up when spoiled Lila interrupts Phoebe's preparations and sweeps her up in the wedding juggernaut. The slide from earnest drama to broad farce is somewhat jarring, but from this point on, Espach crafts an enjoyable—if overstuffed—comedy of manners. When the original maid of honor drops out, Phoebe is persuaded, against her better judgment, to take her place. There’s some fun to be had here: The wedding party—including groom-to-be Gary, a widower, and his 11-year-old daughter—takes surfing lessons; the women in the group have a session with a Sex Woman. But it all goes on too long, and the humor can seem forced, reaching a low point when someone has sex with the vintage wedding car (you don’t want to know the details). Later, when two characters have a meet-cute in a hot tub, readers will guess exactly how the marriage plot resolves.
Uneven but fitfully amusing.Pub Date: July 30, 2024
ISBN: 9781250899576
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2024
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