East Into Upper East: Plain Tales from New York and New Delhi [Hardcover]

Ruth Prawer Jhabvala (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1998

Hailed as one of the best books of 1998 by the Los Angeles Times, this group of twelve short stories was written over the past twenty years. From the steamy streets of New Delhi to New Yorks tony Upper East Side, Jhabvalas characters grapple with the universal quandaries of the human experiencejealousy, passion, temptation, and deceptiontruths of life and love that follow no matter where we wander. This collection features new short fiction from Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, Booker Prizewinning author of Heat and Dust and Academy Awardwinning screenwriter of Howards End and A Room With a View . Written over the past twenty years, these engrossing stories are domestic tapestries, threaded with the emotional lives and complex psychologies of intense lovers, quarreling married couples, weary elders, and their restless adult children. Whether languishing inside their shuttered New Delhi homes or hosting dinner parties in the overfurnished apartments of their Manhattan high-rises, Jhabvalas characters grapple with the universal quandaries of the human experience--jealousy, passion, temptation, deception--and truths of life and love that follow no matter where we wander. Written over twenty years and featuring settings that range from the crowded bazaars of India to New Yorks Upper East Side, this magnificent collection brings together fourteen new stories by a writer of unparalleled grace, insight, and emotional power. Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, well-known for her Merchant-Ivory screenplays and her Booker Prize-winning novel Heat and Dust, claims unique territory in her short fiction, occupying the cusp between two worlds, India and the West. She expertly mingles the two in subject matter, perspective, and style to offer stories of universal appeal.Whether languishing inside their shuttered New Delhi homes or hosting dinner parties in their baroque Manhattan apartments, Jhabvalas characters are men and women of sensual passions and worldly ambition. They confront loneliness and neglect, struggle for independence in a world of manners and manipulations, and adjust to both welcome and unwelcome guests who stay too long and change their hosts lives in devastating ways. Hers are stories of elegance and exquisite delicacy, weaving complex domestic tapestries that range over entire lives. A proper Indian gentleman tries to help his wayward younger brother. A grand hostess on the eve of Indias independence uses her power for personal and political ends. A frail New York socialite tries to understand her daughters alternative life. And a circle of emotionally empty, upperclass New Yorkers adopts an old Indian woman as their spiritual guide.To read these stories is to succumb to the power of a true master--a writer who spans two worlds and who uses this singular perspective to illuminate hidden truths. The sensuousness of India, the neuroses of New York--both are portrayed vividly in these powerful narratives and marvelous entertainments.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

The "East" of Ruth Prawer Jhabvala's East into Upper East refers to India's sprawling metropolis, New Delhi; the "Upper East," not surprisingly, is that other big city, New York. In this short-story collection, Jhabvala explores the nature of love on two continents. The first tales take place in India. In "Expiation," the narrator, an affluent cloth broker, must deal with a much beloved but mentally unstable younger brother. Many years of closing his eyes to the evidence of his brother's delinquency eventually puts the entire family at risk. In "Farid and Farida," a marriage that had soured when transported from India to London reanimates in an unconventional way when the two estranged spouses meet again years later under a Banyan tree in India. Jhabvala moves from the six stories set on the subcontinent to New York with "The Temptress," in which an Indian holy woman is literally imported to the States by a wealthy American. From there, the author delves into the lives of Manhattanites. In "Fidelity," for example, Dave, his wife, Sophie, and his sister, Betsy, live in a symbiotic relationship stronger than betrayal, disappointment, and even death.

The subtitle of Jhabvala's collection is Plain Tales from New York and New Delhi, and plain they are--if by that you mean stories that are straightforward in the telling. This is not to say, however, that they are not subtle. Jhabvala's characters are multifaceted and the situations in which they find themselves complex. In East into Upper East she proves once again that a complicated story can be plainly told, yet resonate all the more powerfully for its simple elegance and economy. --Margaret Prior

From Publishers Weekly

The author is too modest. Written over a span of 20 years, the 13 stories gathered here (five of which have appeared in the New Yorker) are not "plain" at all. Rather, they're rich in character, observation and insight. The "Upper East" of the title refers to the Manhattan neighborhood; the title itself may echo Kipling's Plain Tales from the Hills. Novelist (Out of India) and screenwriter (A Room with a View) Jhabvala depicts characters struggling to reconcile dependency and accommodation in their relationships. Enmeshed by financial and emotional need, her upper class Indians and New Yorkers go to extremes to oblige companions, families and lovers. In the opening story, "Expiation," a New Delhi man reflects guiltily on his responsibility toward his youngest brother, executed for murder. In one powerful New York story, "A Summer by the Sea," a woman with inherited wealth supports her husband's family while tolerating his infidelity with young men. The New York real estate agent in "Great Expectations" allows a family of strangers to take over her life, and the wife in "Fidelity" would rather die than let her unfaithful and criminally conniving husband return to jail. Acute as the New York narratives are, the New Delhi stories are both broader and deeper, perhaps because they are set against, and in part describe, the dramatic changes that have occurred in India over the last 60 years. Jhabvala deftly captures the dilemmas of people who straddle cultural divides: occidental and oriental, colonized and "free," traditional fealties and market capitalism. Her stories are "plain" finally because they are never flashy or postmodern. Instead, they study the wellsprings of character and the pressures of society that make people behave in often self-destructive or hurtful ways.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 314 pages
• Publisher: Counterpoint Press; 1St Edition edition (September 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1887178503
• ISBN-13: 978-1887178501
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,923,095 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Of love and time, January 23, 2001

By 

Manuel Haas - See all my reviews

This review is from: East Into Upper East: Plain Tales from New York and New Delhi (Paperback)

I hesitate to write about this extremely rich and powerful collection of stories, because my review cannot do justice to the book, but the other review on this page must not remain the only one. Let's get it right from the start: THIS IS A GREAT BOOK! The author of these stories obviously knows what love is and can convey it in all its horror and its glory. However, these are plain tales not only in that they are told in a completely unpretentious way; Ruth Prawer Jhabvala likes to tell stories which are not outwardly spectacular; she hardly ever mentions the word "love" - maybe the love she describes feels too contorted to call itself love, and yet it is a lot closer to true love than what we know from usual love stories.

These narratives manage to tell complete life stories, they show that time always brings pain to people who love: There is the successful Indian businessman who sees his beloved youngest brother turn into a killer; there is the New York real estate agent who never admits that she is in love with her strange flatmate who almost ruins her life; one of my favourites is the young woman in "A Summer by the Sea" whose highly ambiguous -unfulfilled?- marriage nobody understands. Most of the characters in these stories would be regarded as failures by most people, and most of them would themselves agree that they are. They are not even happy. Yet they cannot help being what they are. This is a beautiful book and a wise one. Read it!!

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Unusually Complex and Contrasting Cultures, May 17, 2004

By 

Erika Borsos "pepper flower" (Gulf Coast of FL, USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: East Into Upper East: Plain Tales from New York and New Delhi (Hardcover)

The dichotomy between two cultures and countries couldn't be revealed more subtlety than as written by this author ... Her stories have unusual themes and are written matter-of-factly .. yet they possess great depth and understanding which is camouflaged in plain words, simple rhetoric. Do *not* let the "apparent" simplicity ...fool you. As the saying goes, 'still waters run deep' ... These stories are immensely rich and deep.

The book is divided into two sections, the first, called "East" has six stories from India. The other, called, "Upper East" is devoted to stories from New York and the East coast of the USA. The following are two summaries of stories from India. In the "Expiation", the reader is introduced to a family who were poor but who lived in a developing region of India. Their standard of living improved tremendously as they prospered after starting a business. The older brother tells us his story, how he loved and cared for his younger sibling ... whose pet name is "Bablu". As the baby of the family, Bablu is spoiled and eventually becomes reckless. We find out to what depths brotherly love prevails *despite* the irresponsible behavior of the younger sibling. "Farid and Farida" is my favorite story in this section. This happily married successful young Indian couple move to the UK to fulfill their dreams. However, life in London does not meet their high expectations. After 15 years, they live in a shabby apartment and are still 'just making it'. They rely on 'loans" from a prosperous Indian friend who was from their hometown in India. Although this male friend was unpopular when growing up at 'home' ... in the UK he becomes a wealthy man. Farida can no longer tolerate their squalid living conditions, so she returns to India without her husuband. After 20 years of separation, her husband Farid searches for his wife. To his astonishment, he discovers her at an ashram, a mountain retreat, where she is receiving visitors from all over the world, providing them wisdom and peace. She accepts her husband's visit serenely ... as if they were never apart. Next, the Indian business friend from the UK discovers Farida's successful venture and tempts her with an offer -- find out what it is. The conclusion to the story is worth reading.

Section two, "Upper East" is filled with eight highly diverse human interest stories. The author tells each story simply and elegantly. After rading each story in this section, this reader felt as if struck by lightening. The message in each story leaves a huge unexpected impact. Each story has layers and layers of undiscovered meaning. There are no "warning danger ahead" signs to reveal the paths taken by the people in these stories. Just as well, the warnings would not be followed anyway ... In this section, my favorite story is "The Temptress". Briefly, two former college roommates meet an Indian lady who sees to be an ordinairy person. These two friends are seeking meaning and enlightenment in their lives. "Ma", the Indian lady, seems to possess extraordinairy powers to reveal illness, past lives, and predict the future. One of the young ladies provides Ma a room in her apartment. Ma develops a strong following as she lectures to people about "life". The neighbors flock to this 'spiritual' lady. One needs to read the story to find out how this story ends.

In summary, Ms Ruth Prawer Jhabvala possesses an unusual ability to tell highly complex stories with elegant simplicity. Her talents are dazzling. People's lives are revealed so gradually that only *after* the reader is finished does the full impact of the unique perspective strike the reader. Even then, it takes several hours to penetrate and realize how deep and penetrating the meaning is and what was actually revealed. This book receives my highest praise. Erika Borsos (erikab93)

2 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A strong start, March 14, 2000

By 

Meredith Mani (Washington, DC) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: East Into Upper East: Plain Tales from New York and New Delhi (Hardcover)

This is an enjoyable book that is easily read. You do not have to be Indian to get the symbolism or the culturalisms in this collection of stories. The second half of the book was a true let down. It centers around the lives of New Yorkers who are all seeking something and inevitably dissappointed. For some reason most of the characters in the second half were gay which had nothing to do with India or any discernible association with Indian culture. It's not a bad book its just not very good. If your looking for something to read on the way to work, or something that you will be able to walk away from for a few days without feeling like you've got to find out what happened- this is the book your looking for.