Rating: 
Summary: Holy cow! This book really bites
Review: Sarrrrraaaahhhhh MacDonald's portrayal of contemporary India is a third rate work of literature by a third rate writer (as we would say in India). Her search for spirituality and her inclination to run for the hills when she doesn't agree with a minor aspect of a faith or religion are nauseating. The unsuspecting reader is dragged through tiresome description after description of the miserable conditions in India and how the unwary and faint hearted westerner is forced to endure them. A friend of mine once said that a serious reader should be very careful about what she or he reads since there are a lot of really bad books out there and you could spend a whole lifetime reading them without ever getting around to reading the good ones. If you are on s desert island and have the misfortune to have only this book with you, then I suppose you should read it. If you are interested in learning something about India, read books like William Dalrymple's City of Djinns. There are a few laughs in this book, but the humor is not as intelligent as some other reviewers would have you believe.
Rating: 
Summary: Please stay in Oz
Review: This book seems to have caused great offence - due either to its cover or its content, or both. I'm neither a Hindu nor Indian so I've no idea whether or not the cover is offensive. However, the UK version appears different to the US one, which gives rise to the question: did anyone bother to check before it was published in the US?Skipping past the issue of the cover, what of the content? Well, I thought that there was little in the book which taught me anything more about India than I'd read elsewhere (for example by Mark Tully and William Dalrymple). Thus once again you get a description of the Kumbh Mela, a trip to Kashmir, visits to ashrams - pretty much the usual stuff. The difference is that those other writers did it better, with deeper insight, greater balance and more respect for their subject. Much of the writing and observations in this book are distinctly shallow - the trip to Mumbai to learn about the Parsis, and the ravings about Sikhs made my toes curl. In different ways, the author did a disservice to both. Apparently India is a "land of contrasts" - a stunning insight. Whether or not her descriptions of the attitudes exhibited to her by Indian men are true, I don't know. Neither do I know whether she is stunningly attractive, or whether the appearance of any white woman in India is enough to send Mr Average Indian into a sexual frenzy, but it did seem a bit far-fetched to depict every Indian as a lecher. Oh, and apparently it's OK to ogle Ms MacDonald so long as you do it in Sydney! The author goes to various ashrams and religious establishments, arrives sceptically, is moved by the experience, then shakes it all off. Or not - she blames a sadhu for her pneumonia and a Hindu saint for her expanding boobs. Large sections of the book are devoted to how she looks, how her friends look, and recounting screechy conversations between the girls. All very irritating, shallow and vain. (...)
Rating:
Summary: Outrageous
Review: This book should be boycotted and no future publishing made public. How dare you humilate someone's God with sunglass? With the current situation, the publisher should be brought with lawsuit. I'd suggest all the Hindus come together and force Mrs Macdonald to change her book cover and go back to the one that's being distributed in UK and Australia.
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