Socialite Evenings

Rating:
Summary: An elegant & vivid book
Review: As a story about a young woman's life, the first half of this book is very hard to take. The main character, Karuna, from whose perspective the story is told, speaks of everything in her life with such coldness and cattiness, it's impossible to believe in the authenticity of the story. It is also a very unpleasant experience for the reader to have to share such an emotionally arid experience of such long duration. But, happily, Karuna starts to loosen up a bit and live a more connected life about half way through. And by the time the book ends, Karuna's voice has become comfortable like an old sock. And I suppose she is to be praised for never really totally letting go of her icy self possession throughout.

But the most interesting thing about this book is how much I learned from it as an, admittedly very provincial, American. The poeple of India are very poorly represented in American media, I feel. It think many people in American still think of India as mostly populated with skeletal beggars brushing flies off their eyes with one hand while holding out a begging bowl with the other. This book was a total eye-opener in that respect. Karuna is a very savvy young woman. She is, if anything, too westernized. This book shows that affluent, well educated Indians are not in the least bit shy about moving around in western dominated culture and worldly affairs.

This book was really an amazing, eye opening experience for me. But that was largely due to the fact I am an American. But I would have given this book 5 stars, except the story is fairly flat, monotonous, and as I said above, somewhat unbelievable in it's extreme coldness. It is a fact of human namure that even the most self possessed and domineering person on the planet will still have a number of soft spots for people and things in their lives. The complete absence of any such tender humanity through long stretches of this book make it hard to swallow.

Rating:
Summary: way too heavy on the Ice Queen bit
Review: As a story about a young woman's life, the first half of this book is very hard to take. The main character, Karuna, from whose perspective the story is told, speaks of everything in her life with such coldness and cattiness, it's impossible to believe in the authenticity of the story. It is also a very unpleasant experience for the reader to have to share such an emotionally arid experience of such long duration. But, happily, Karuna starts to loosen up a bit and live a more connected life about half way through. And by the time the book ends, Karuna's voice has become comfortable like an old sock. And I suppose she is to be praised for never really totally letting go of her icy self possession throughout.

But the most interesting thing about this book is how much I learned from it as an, admittedly very provincial, American. The poeple of India are very poorly represented in American media, I feel. It think many people in American still think of India as mostly populated with skeletal beggars brushing flies off their eyes with one hand while holding out a begging bowl with the other. This book was a total eye-opener in that respect. Karuna is a very savvy young woman. She is, if anything, too westernized. This book shows that affluent, well educated Indians are not in the least bit shy about moving around in western dominated culture and worldly affairs.

This book was really an amazing, eye opening experience for me. But that was largely due to the fact I am an American. But I would have given this book 5 stars, except the story is fairly flat, monotonous, and as I said above, somewhat unbelievable in it's extreme coldness. It is a fact of human namure that even the most self possessed and domineering person on the planet will still have a number of soft spots for people and things in their lives. The complete absence of any such tender humanity through long stretches of this book make it hard to swallow.

Rating:
Summary: UGH!!
Review: that's more than I can say about the book..

Rating:
Summary: An elegant & vivid book
Review: Well, maybe I'm a little abnormal to think this book is quite great. But to me, it was more interesting than or John Grisham books.
I am a Korean girl, and even to my North East-Asian eyes, India is a combination of vague & conflicting images, rather than a real country with living people.
This book is powerful to make readers to see India which we can't find in National Geographic or Lonley Planet.
Of course, the writer wrote mostly about the modern hish society of Bombay, but the variety of characters makes a certain harmony of the universe scale.
Well, I'd rather pick another Shobha De book(if she writes on) rather than