Customer Reviews

In the Land of No Right Angles

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

In the Land of No Right Angles is the story of three friends, two Americans and one Nepali girl named Maya, who meet one summer and are never really able to let go of one-another. The story takes place primarily in Nepal during the narrator's three visits to the country, wherein she is witness to the numerous downturns in Maya's life. As a setting, Nepal is spectacularly described, and is the most fleshed out character in the whole novel. Beal's description of both the beauty and the disgusting of the area makes the place stand out against the boring descriptions of the two other settings - Bombay and New York City. The geography of Nepal is portrayed as a spiritual existence, and can make even the least adventurous of us want to run away and find ourselves there. And this is exactly what Beal's main character, Alex, is trying to do. She is trying to find herself there, in the way that many college students hope to when participating in study abroad programs. This is by far Beal's best attribute in the novel - her ability to describe a place and have it work as a character while heightening the motivations for her own narrators.

However, Beal's weakness arrives when the reader notices that the only descriptive part of this book is of Nepal. The characters function as white blobs on a lush background. It is not until the third act that we even realize what color hair the narrator has...not that this is the most important of descriptions, but it is an example of how little we know about these people. More often then not, the characters do not appear to change physically or mentally from the first day we meet them - which is quite startling when considering that this book takes place over eight years of time. A good writer knows how to weave in physical attributes of characters to show the passing of time, or at least in a first person piece, allow the characters voice to change. However, the character begins as a too introspective twenty year old and ends up a immature twenty-eight year old and never really definably changes.

This story would have probably been much more interesting if told from one of the two other characters perspectives. Alex is not very full of life or understanding of others. She is mostly judgmental and self-consumed, while the other characters are more adventurous and make more mistakes then she does. However, as the other characters are interesting and the mere setting of the place is remarkable, this is a worthwhile, though forgettable, read.

This is a very accurate accounting of life in Nepal. Having traveled personally to remote areas of Nepal and throughout Kathmandu, I felt a kindred spirit with the author while reading her tale.

My favorite aspect of In the Land of No Right Angles is the vivid imagery of both Nepal and India. I've never traveled to Nepal, but because of Daphne Beal's amazingly detailed descriptions, I can picture what it must be like. This must have taken an inordinate amount of research, especially considering the fact that Beal is neither Indian nor Nepali.

The book has an incredibly haunting quality that stems from the ghosts that the main character, Alex, must deal with. Her preoccupation with saving Maya from herself is an undercurrent that runs through the entire story. There is also a sense of suspense; there is much more going on behind the scenes than is apparent in the book, and Alex is aware of this. It leaves the reader with the desire to know and to understand what really is happening, what we can see glimpses of just beyond the shadows.

While I can't say I enjoyed the subject matter of the book (I'm not going to ruin it for the rest of you by telling you what it is!), it was incredibly insightful and I feel like I learned a lot about the Nepali/Indian underworld. However, as the story is told solely from Alex's point of view, the reader is only given the information she can glean from those around her.

At the end of the book, the reader is left wanting. Some of the questions posed through the book are answered, but many are not. Though this can be frustrating, the novel plays out like real life. I wish there had been a bit more of a resolution, and that some more of the earlier questions in the book had been answered, but I understand why Beal chose to end the book the way she did. It was an intriguing and mysterious book, and I definitely recommend it to anyone who has an interest in literature about the Indian subcontinent or Asia in general.