5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Disappointing read, January 23, 2001
This review is from: Shiva Dancing (Paperback)
This book started out beautifully- a wedding ceremony in desert India amongst 7-year olds. The bride- kidnapped and taken away by bad guys to the big city never to see her child/husband/friend again. And then- bam! We're in San Francisco with a very American main character named Meena who we're supposed to relate to as the child bride. But of course by now, she's educated, wears jeans and jogs, and has a great job in computer software. A Quantum leap into the future. Ms. Kirshner had the right beginning but took the story in the wrong direction. I kept reading the book, mainly because I was very interested in the Indian/Bengali cultural aspects of the story. Also. the "caught between two cultures" idea seemed realistic. The rest of the story ended up being a schmaltzy love story with a predictable ending. Everyone "adjusted" way too easily to the conclusion. Disappointing at best.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
the weakest of Kirchner's novels...., December 2, 2004
This was, by far, the most disappointing novel I have read by Bharti Kirchner. It was contrived, stereotypical and sappy. Though, the plot idea was intriguing--a seven year old Indian girl is married off to her best friend, is then separated from her groom, her mother is brutally beaten and she ends up adopted by a white, America couple--it didn't hold together.
One of the biggest flaws in the book was the stereotypical depiction of the characters. The worst is of Carlos, the main character, Meena's, good friend. Though he is from Mexico, he teaches her samba (from Brazil), Kirchner misspells his hometown of Oaxaca (she spells it Oxaca). He is macho and womanizing, and seemingly mindless. Also, Bharti's writing style seems half-baked and almost condescending to her readers. Kirchner ties up the complications a little too readily and unbelievably.
If you would like to read a far superior novel by Kirchner, my reccomendation is that you read "Sharmila's Book," which is also about a young Indian woman's bicultural sense of self. Far more interesting, compelling and well written!
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6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Totally silly and unbelievable story, May 13, 2001
This review is from: Shiva Dancing (Paperback)
If you're interested in a book about Indian culture, or a woman who is torn between cultures, then don't touch this book. If you're interested in formula romance and shallow one dimensional characters that would even make Danielle Steel cringe, then this is the book for you. Contrary to the title and the jacket blurb, this book has little to with India, and even less to do with the main character, Meena, trying to sort out her roots.
The first chapter was very promising, beginning with Meena's life in a remote village of Rhajistan and her wedding at age 7 to her best friend Vishnu. Then she is kidnapped by bandits, but she escapes, only to be kidnapped again by an arrogant and snooty American couple who feel that Meena would be much better off as their adopted daughter in America. They refuse to return her to her family and her village. Then the story suddenly moves 28 years into the present, where Meena at age 35 is toying with the idea of returning to India, and finding her lost love Vishnu. Here is where the author first hits us with the first of absolutely nonsensical and unbelievable aspects of the plot. In 28 years, out of deference for her adopted parents (the last of whom, has conveniently just died) Meena has never so much as picked up a pen and tried to send a letter to her family. That stretches the imagination just too far. First, from her descriptions of her adopted family, we get the impression of two arrogant, racist and odious adults who feel that they had captured a primitive Indian and were now going to transform her into a real American. The cruelty described in Meena's flashbacks make you cringe. And certainly, you never get the impression that Meena even liked them, let alone loved them. If anything, you felt that at age 18 she would have rushed out of their house as if it was on fire. The idea that even as a teenager, or living away from her parents at college, or later as an adult, she did not make one attempt to contact her family or go to India. She certainly didn't have to tell her adoptive parents anything, if she was so afraid of "hurting" them.
Right then, I should have known the book would be downhill, but I kept reading. The story alternates between Vishnu and Meena, telling what is happening in their lives. Meena is a software whiz, and the story goes on and on about her job, silly coworkers, some idiotic company plot against her, her project COSMOS--it got so that I was wondering when the real story was going to begin--that is, her search for Vishnu and going to India. Instead, I realized that I was almost done with the book, and this really was the story. This was a book about corporate intrigue and computers, and quite honestly, if that's what I wanted, then there are certainly much better books on the market!
In between, we get a dose of stereotyped friends, and an arrogant, shallow, totally unlikely hot shot author named Antoine, who Meena fall for. I thought that he was just another obstacle in the story, to make Meena hesitate about pursuing her India dream. But then suddenly, we start getting "Antoine" chapters, as though the author thinks that we are interested enough in this character to want to know about his thoughts and life. Wrong...I skipped the Antoine chapters, hoping that eventually he would just disappear!
Then when Meena finally decides to find Vishnu (and it is very near the end of the book), it's done with one swift email to a friend in India. Bingo, Vishnu is found. Very conveniently, she loses her job right at the time she finds Vishnu, so she is free to go off to India. She goes straight to her village, and impatiently asks for her mother. What's the hurry, she's only waited 28 years. She spends about 10 minutes in her village, not even wanting to spend the night, then shoots over to Calcutta to find Vishnu. After spending 10 seconds with him, she realizes that he doesn't excite her, knows exactly what kind of wife he would want, and that India isn't for her. She's been in India all of 48 hours, and probably is exhausted and jetlagged, but yet she can see all of these things. She knows for sure she's American now, as well. And then arrives Antoine, who followed her to India, knows exactly where to find her. He has broken off his engagement, and the two of them fade into the sunset together, to explore India together as two Americans. This story is about as ad nauseum as it gets.
This book is about as silly as it gets...all I can say is I'm glad I took it out of the library!
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