Customer Reviews

Listening Now

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Once started this book is hard to put down. It is a journey through the psychological terrain of five women, who tell us their way of looking at the world. You begin to see were their pain comes from and at some point their pain became my own. This book is so many things in one or one structure with many distinct facets. It is a love story in an Indian setting; meeting of north and south. It tells you how differently men and woman think and feel. Since all the narrators are only women, you get to know how clueless men are to their feelings and how they adjust. It is the story of Padma, her daughter, sister mother and friends. A single woman with a child and how she copes. The child who senses her mother's pain and suffers with her. The mother who can't disentangle herself from the man who deserted her. The Most gripping aspect of the book is the exquisite details of capturing the most delicate feelings of pain and pleasure. You feel the ecstacy and the heart rending pain. It is truely a pleasure to read such beautiful prose. It is book worth reading and rereading to get the essence of what the writer wants to convey.

I have to admire the author's style of story-telling. The plot unfolds through the voices of 5 women and one little girl. We are told in the beginning that Padma is the widowed mother of Mallika, who is an unrealistically precocious child. We later learn the truth about what really happened which left Padma so disillusioned with life. Though, the story was beautifully told, the plot itself was too oppressive. Every woman has a sad story to tell, and the tone of the book takes its toll on the reader. Also, the ending where everything was suddenly neatly pieced together was abrupt and inconsistent with the rest of the book. Too many coincidences, too dramatic and too many stereotypes. For example, all husbands are insensitive. I would recommend this book for someone who reads for the style and language, but not the content.

The essence of this book is as follows: men can never truly understand women, so women must find loving, passionate relationships with other women. This is fine, as far as it goes, but the author's treatment of this theme is heavy-handed and overwrought. The story is made up of the composite narratives of five or six women, all of whom face patriarchal oppression - mothers-in-law from hell, domineering husbands etc. Some of the characters are in truly horrible situations; for example, the sexual relationship of one of the women can best be described as marital rape. However, to a large extent, the characters engineer their own chains; they lapse into sullen servility, or behave like shrieking harpies. Even though they chafe at the preferential treatment that their mothers show to their brothers, they in turn treat their daughters in the same dismissive way. After a while, the reader forgets the names and other characteristics of the women, and simply associates them with their domestic woes. As for the female characters finding redemption in each other's company- if I were the sister or daughter of any of the women depicted in the novel, I would run away from them, rather than attempt to find any transcendent bond with them. As a South Asian woman and a feminist, I don't remember my mother and aunts being so downtrodden, even though some of them lived in very conservative households. The women in my family dealt with patriarchy with grace and dignity, not with idiotic passivity. On the purely literary side, the dialogue at times has the flavour of filmi style melodrama, which lends a ridiculous, overblown portentousness to the narrative. Also, at one point in the narrative, a curse is invoked, with dire effect. This would be ok if the author made use of the magic realism so beloved by contemporary South Asian writers, but it strikes a jarring note in what is basically a socially realistic novel.

Anjana Appachana's novel is simply remarkable and this book is one my favorite Indian novels. Although I'm Indian I couldn't exactly identify with their individual situations but I understood it and felt empathy toward their frustrations and the issues they faced in their family life. The characters are so thoroughly developed that they felt real and parts of the novel brought tears to my eyes. I've hoped for a long time that Anjana Appachana would write another novel, I would buy it a heartbeat! Other Indian authors should read this novel and take a cue from Ms. Appachana in how to create well rounded characters.

The British rule brought us English and a generation later we are utilizing it by generating lots of well written books in the English language.
This book, though falls in the rough category of new young-Indian voice, is very unusual. It tells the untold story of lower middle class Indian women. A story that is not in keeping the liberated image of India that Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and many female freedom fighters created.
As many of the critics have noted, this book was oppressive, painful to read. Men, even the sensitive ones are portrayed badly. It seems like a very one-sided story to someone who has no experience of being a woman in India.
What I applaud about the book is the amazing way Ms Appachana has articulated the pain, the suffocation. It is very very true to life. I could see numerous women moms, aunts, grandmas lives re-told.

"you have a great husband, he does not drink or beat you up, he earns decent money and turns over every penny he makes to you-- you should be the happiest woman on the planet"-- but are they?

As a piece of contemporary fiction, it falls flat on its face, the story is not balanced, and it does not work for the general American- European milieu. They have nothing to relate to-- men are all evil?!!? No man will read the long book and call it anything but 'the worst bit of feministic propaganda', if he ever saw one.
I see this as a bold attempt of chronicling the pain of 'middle class Indian women' and very successful as far as being able to strike a chord with group it is trying to depict. It is not successful at attracting or retaining an audience who do not belong to this narrow group it describes. It just went too far in the description of the pain for that --

The important things in Listening Now are the things that are not said, or at least not said completely and in a way that the listener would understand. So many events and emotions are bottled up. An accident with a rusty nail, an assault from a man on the bus, the disappointment at giving up one's career to manage a home...the sisters and friends in the book suffer in part because they can't make themselves understood.

Appachana does a marvelous job of weaving the stories of the sisters and friends together, and in giving a marvelous insight into mid 20th-century India. Sometimes she dips too far into unreality, as when a character lands in the street, has a bus roll over her, and emerges unscathed because the wheels missed her. This Isabel Allende-ness does not detract too much from the novel. Appachana's genius is in making us wonder whether the women could have done anything to make themselves heard, or whether their stations and situations doomed them to live without complete happiness.

I found this book to be very interesting and enjoyable. It describes Indian culture, customs and habits in vivid detail all while putting together the heart warming story of the lives of a group of women all connected by one fairytale romance. I believe that the differing views shown by each one of the characters is what makes this novel interesting and unpredictable. I had originally started reading this book as just a way to pass time on the long train rides to and from work but it was so suspenseful that I got hook onto reading it even when I wasn't on the train! One thing I must say though is that some chapters of the book are definitely more interesting than others, however it is when you finally reach the end of the book that you realize that without those long somewhat less interesting chapters in between, the story would have been incomplete and incomprehendable.

I was told to read this book by a friend who found this book very anti-male. I did, and really loved it! Yes, it does portray men in a negative light...but thats the authors choice, right?
I found the concept of covering three generations fascinating. Each woman/girl had her own story, her own character...and they were all very credible. But what impressed me the most was the way the author had written some of the dialogues, as if she had simply translated sentences from hindi. Being Indian, I could just imagine what would have been said, had it been spoken in hindi. Very amusing.
'Listening Now' is one of my favorite books.

It took me about 3 weeks to finish the book. I could only read it when my son took his naps in the afternoon, when I wasn't busy in the kitchen, when I wasn't entertaining guests, when I wasn't walking the dog, when I wasn't at the computer, when my son finally settled down for the night, and when I didn't fall asleep before him. Mallika's story is a little rambling and confusing. It was difficult to get through that part. Do young children, no matter how sad, think like adults? I loved Anu's, Madhu's, Shanta's and Padma's stories. Rukmini's didn't seem necessary. A thoroughly amazing book, the day-to-day descriptions are so vivid and true. I could see my mother's and aunts' lives unfold as i was reading. And if I was living in India, my life would have been the same: Arranged marriage, initial passion, indifferent husband, rapid disillusionment. Though wordy at times, it's a must-read. I highly recommend it.

i loved shanta and mallika.although this book did have its unrealistic moments,like ajji cursing the family and all of it coming true,but anjana made up for it by the wonderful way she described each character.karan,was one person i didn't like at all.and the bookstore romance did have a slightly false ring to it.but,the book was exceptional while describing shanta and mallika.thumbs up,ms.appachana.great work.