Customer Reviews

From Where The Rivers Come

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

 

 

The author transported me half way across the world to India. His descriptions of Benares and traveling by train were so vivid that I felt I was there. His characters have many facets and the tale was very engaging. Much of it is like a journey on a meandering river - just watch out for the waterfall at the end.

Quick read!
Has a little of everything, funny,romance,sadness.
While learning a thing or two about India, their people and their ways. Especially when you put an American in India, and an Indian woman who'd like to know what it's like to be an American!
I like a book that has me still thinking about the characters days after I'm done reading it. This book does that!

It's an unseasonably chilly late-winter afternoon where I am today. So instead of going outside I looked around the digs for a distraction, spotted "Rivers" on the shelf and started thumbing through again. Two hours later, I looked up. That's the kind of story we have here. There's a poignancy in this tale, as in a memory you don't want to lose. But before you think, "yuck" to that, there's a balancing dose of good old-fashioned hard-boiled storytelling. Sentences are short. Be ready to think. Good stuff.

When he began reading "From Where the Rivers Come" he wondered if it would be a good book. A good book is a rare thing; it must make you laugh, and cry. A good book, will have you brushing dust off your trousers, and will leave the taste of luke-warm Pepsi in your mouth. A good book, will remind you of Hemingway, perhaps, and certainly leave you wanting more once the final page is read. He closed the book. It was done. There was dust on his trousers. He smiled as he brushed away a bit of tear. He would wait, impatiently and expectantly, for Mr. Miller's next novel. Yes, it was a good book. A very good book.

From Where the Rivers Come was published is the story of a journalist, John Colson, living in India at the center of a clash between two cultures that occurs when an Indian woman tries to inhabit both her own world and that of her Western friends.

The book begins in Benares as a funeral procession moves down the river, follows John Colson to Dehli through the Hindi festival of Diwali and a winter holiday, and returns to Benares. Along the way the sights, tastes, smells, and sounds of life in India are infused in the scenes of a group of young, struggling men and women.

I was very impressed by this novel. It was a tragedy, and the baseness of some of its characters was disturbing, but the writing was superb. I'm trying to suppress my enthusiasm, but I can't help but compare Mr. Miller's writing to that of Ernest Hemingway. I got lost in this book the way I did in The Sun Also Rises. Miller's portrayal of Westerners abroad, and their judgments and misunderstanding of other cultures was well illustrated.

Hemingway wrote under the "iceberg principle"-only tell ten percent of what's going on. Allow the rest to loom beneath the surface. Miller follows the same principle, and does it effectively. I look forward to reading more work by him.

I read Terin Tashi Miller's book after a recent trip to Varanasi. I had hoped to read it before my journey, but in this case my timing turned out to be perfect.

From Where the Rivers Come helped me to better understand the things I saw and people I met during my brief 48-hour stay in Varanasi, a.k.a. Benares. It offered the lessons of Indian life not taught in any guidebook, shedding light on old world cultural norms that have persevered the test of time. After reading the book, I understood why I never saw locals in Western style clothing, never saw a couple out on a date and never spotted a pub in this historic city. Despite the years that passed between the author's last visit there and my first visit, there clearly had been little change in the landscape or culture of the place. The Ganges river still is this city's heartbeat, festivals, religious ceremonies and funeral pyres its most common sights.

The storyline of the book, a tale of two American friends who fall for the same married Indian woman, is love story with a twist - the kind that captures a readers' attention without letting go until the very last word.

Set in the not especially distant past, Terin Tashi Miller transports readers to India. You'll feel as if you are walking the streets of Benares or Dehli, tasting the food, experiencing the heat, brushing away the dust, inhaling smoke from the funeral pyres, experiencing the claustrophobia of jam packed train rides, and taking in the vividly detailed sights. The first person narrative comes from the perspective of a journalist who is foreign to India by birth and race, but has been immersed in the culture long enough for it to be ordinary rather than exotic to him. He is not so much stranger in a strange land as an observer who has seen what India offers, recognizes the differences and similarities between his American homeland and the country from where his paychecks are earned, and accepts them with minimal judgement as the ways of the world. Miller's novel is neither plot heavy nor a character study, but rather, a story of place and slow to change times which subtly indicates the fine line between escaping where you are and who you are.

I haven't been to India, but the detailed descriptions in this book made me feel as though I had. That's no surprise, given that the author lived there some years himself, giving the prose the authenticity of firsthand observation.

The book begins slowly, but accelerates to a startling conclusion. The story is built upon a clash of cultures and generations, between Westerners who adopt parts of Indian culture and Indians drawn into Western forms of behavior. It's both a compelling novel and a fascinating account of the lures and hazards of an intoxicating foreign country.

From Where the Rivers Come meets my criteria for "good reading". I enjoyed getting acquainted with the seemingly mysterious country of India and with its culture. Interwoven is an engaging story involving young adults of both American and Indian cultures.

The author's description of the sights, sounds, smells of Benares was so vivid - I felt transported.

I will definitely look for more books by this author and would highly recommend the works of Terin Tashi Miller to others.