In the Land of No Right Angles [Paperback]

Daphne Beal (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 12, 2008

Alex , a twenty-year-old American student, is spending the year in Nepal, backpacking and photographing. As a favor to Will – her American friend – she uses one of her Himalayan treks to seek out Maya, a young Nepali woman desperate to flee her traditional family to find work in Kathmandu. But helping Maya has unforeseen implications. Soon Alex is embroiled in a strange triangle with Maya and Will, where the lines between friendship, love, and lust grow more tangled every day.

Over the course of the next eight years, Alex returns to Nepal: first to visit and to photograph, then in an attempt to help the troubled Maya. Moving between Kathmandu, New York, and the grim houses of prostitution along Falkland Road in Bombay, Alex begins to understand the pitfalls of trying to be both adventurer and savior in an unfamiliar world. In the Land of No Right Angles introduces the fiction of Daphne Beal, whose evocations of life in Nepal, and of the universal conflicts inherent to love and friendship, mark the arrival of a stunningly talented, intuitive writer.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. It starts with a standard conceit: What I saw on my semester abroad. Alex Larson, a wholesome-bordering-on-nerdy Des Moines girl, interested in photography and what lies beyond her upstate New York college, spends a year in Nepal. While she's on a trekking trip, as a favor to Will, a charismatic American expat 13 years her senior, Alex contacts his friend Maya. The two young women meet, and under the cover of night Alex delivers Maya from traditional village life to the relative metropolis of Kathmandu, and Will's bachelor pad. The triumvirate bond over elaborate meals, pilgrimages and drugs; just before the house of postcards begins to topple, Alex reluctantly returns to college. She comes back four years later to find Nepal changed, and Maya has fallen in with a questionable crowd, disappearing for days at a time. On Falkland Road, Bombay's red-light district, Alex, armed with a camera and her wits, must confront the seedy underbelly of her fantasyland to find her friend. Equal parts coming-of-age quest and travelogue, this debut novel dazzles most with its deft descriptions, which transform an unimaginably foreign land into terra cognita. (Aug.)
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From School Library Journal

Adult/High School—While spending a year in Nepal, Alex, an American college student, meets Maya, who is from the hill country. She helps Maya leave her home and begin a new life in Kathmandu, and both young women feel that there is something strong that binds them together. Alex makes two more trips to Nepal over the next eight years. She learns that Maya has gone to Bombay, where she has entered the sex trade, and Alex follows her there, hoping that their bond will allow her to find Maya and somehow help her. This is a story about a relationship that cuts across cultures, but also about a culture that severs relationships. With complex and intriguing characters and beautifully drawn settings, this compelling novel has much to offer American teen girls ready to look at the larger world.—Sarah Flowers, Santa Clara County Library, CA
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: Anchor (August 12, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0307388069
• ISBN-13: 978-0307388063
• Product Dimensions: 5.2 x 0.6 x 8.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #927,763 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Wholly unimpressive, February 16, 2009

By 

J. Fuller (Kansas City) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: In the Land of No Right Angles (Paperback)

Though she starts off strong with beautiful descriptions, Beal's character-driven travelogue peters about in the first hundred pages. The reader is left turning page after page hoping that something of interest will happen--and while much is hinted at, and promised, while revelations seem constantly to be just another few paragraphs away, nothing is ever delivered. Every time you suspect a soul-baring conversation is about to take place, one of the three ultimately unlikable characters shrugs and says "I'll tell you later."

No, no they won't.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Thin and sophomoric, November 8, 2010

By 

S. Johnson (Madison, WI) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: In the Land of No Right Angles (Paperback)

I found none of the characters in this book to be developed into anything beyond trite cliches. This leads to a second major problem - the ridiculous and unrealistic "relationships" among the characters. We're asked to believe that deep bonds exist between the narrator and Maya, Will, Nick, and Nepal. None are even remotely convincing. Love the setting, but this reads like a puffed-up undergraduate short story.

7 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars "Here I could feel the deep, silent tick of geologic time beating through me.", August 12, 2008

By 

Luan Gaines "luansos" (Dana Point, CA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: In the Land of No Right Angles (Paperback)

Beal's novel is filled with contrasts as twenty-year-old Alex Larson treks from Kathmandu to distant villages,, the stark beauty of the Nepalese countryside, the majestic Himalayas, tiny huts that dot the barren roads, bustling cities crowded with bicycles and weary travelers, Buddhist temples, a distant landscape barely touched by progress. With limited time left on her visa, Alex agrees to do a favor for her bachelor friend, Will, 32, delivering Maya, a lovely young woman seeking work in the city and a future far from the small expectations of her village home, to the bachelor waiting in Kathmandu. Will has offered to use his many connections to find appropriate employment for Maya. Delighted with her change in fortune, Maya bonds in friendship with Alex as they journey together, temperamentally sympathetic and congenial in one another's company.

The relationship alters slightly when Will enters the picture. Sensing his romantic interest in Maya, Alex feels awkward, out of place. But Will implores her to stay with them, even as he applies himself to his seduction of the girl, Maya emotionally ambivalent about leaving home and the violent death of her brother in a demonstration, given to sudden bouts of tears ("I think I might die!"). Strangely enough, the threesome settles into routine, Will early establishing his male dominance and resistance to commitment, Maya apparently unruffled by his frequent absences. The author delicately balances these pivotal characters: Alex's good intentions and generous nature, often bordering on the codependent; Will's inability to deny himself the many pleasures of the city, including an abundance of exotic women; and Maya's enigmatic response to her changed circumstances, part innocence, part wisdom, a young woman on the cusp of her life but with very limited opportunities.

Forced to leave because of the expiration of her visa, Alex must deal with her own issues back in the states, returning to Nepal in 1994 and 1998, her frayed connections to Maya ever more tentative. While Alex matures with time, she reviews her first meeting with Maya with nostalgia, her own enthusiasm and naiveté striking in retrospect. Although both women are still quite young, Maya's survival is mired in an indifferent, often dangerous world. Finally locating her young friend in Bombay, Alex is stunned by the grim realities of the city, so different from her first experience of this part of the world, Bombay "a whole self-contained subculture based on degradation". Beautifully capturing the ancient culture that first attracted Alex, cities gradually poisoned with urban sprawl, Maya epitomizes beauty and promise, the truth more difficult for Alex to digest, the worldly Will seeming to always escape unscathed. Beauty, innocence and corruption coexist in a place where Alex and Maya first came together, when the future, and Maya, shimmered with hope. Luan Gaines/2008.