Amazon.com Review
Although 9 of the 10 stories in this debut collection are set in the author's native India, it is Meera Nair's great achievement that all the characters in
Video are as recognizable as next-door neighbors. From the hilariously impatient villagers in Bangladesh waiting for a visit from Bill Clinton in "A Warm Welcome to the President, Insh'Allah!" to the nasally gifted computer programmer who hails from Mangalore in "The Curry Leaf Tree," we feel we know these people. Even the ambiguous ménage at a colonial resort in "A Certain Sense of Place" and the obnoxious yet bewildered husband from "Vishnukumar's Valentine's Day" are so finely drawn that we understand them. Family life with this extended cast of characters from
Video is lovingly and humorously depicted, from the children's squabbles (one brother "hoarded complaints like sweets") to the family's favorite TV programs (the kids like
Baywatch; the aged grandmother watches
Understanding the Koran). The title story, in which a married man asks his wife to duplicate a sexual act he glimpsed in a pornographic video (and thus sets off a domestic uproar), is the collection's real standout. With this debut collection of short stories, a wonderful new writer is born.
--Susan Biskeborn
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
*Starred Review* Nair's vibrant stories examine the ways contact with the West has affected the culture of India. Set both in and outside of India, the 10 lush tales depict the confluence of Eastern and Western cultures being played out in the lives of people struggling to make sense of the changes in their world. Naseer's marriage is ruined after he sees a foreign pornographic movie and introduces the idea of oral sex to his wife. Young Satish is torn between his modern conception of equality and the cruel treatment of the workers on his grandfather's lands. Dilip, an American citizen, agrees to an arranged marriage and brings his new wife back to the U.S., only to discover that she does not share the traditional values that he had assumed she would adhere to. Amidst the chaos of rioting and violent fighting between Muslim and Hindu factions, Kala's father dies, and she struggles to make sense of the abstract traditional funerary rites of his religion. Glorifying neither the East or the West, Nair searches for cross-cultural influences at the personal level and shows how individuals reconcile the conflicting demands that such influences place upon them.
Bonnie JohnstonCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
