A Lovesong for India
Ruth Prawer Jhabvala
A Lovesong for India
Taking us from a sweltering Indian rooftop at night to the marble halls of an ageing Bollywood star's palace, this is a new collection of short stories from Ruth Prawer Jhabvala. A wedding is planned between two innocents at a crumbling mansion of a grand Hudson Valley estate, while among the white-socked convent girls of post-colonial New Delhi a mixed-race couple contemplate their son's alienation and the failure of hope. A young English girl infiltrates Fifth Avenue theatrical royalty and a lovely Broadway starlet exacts a clever, protracted revenge against her nemesis.
3.6 out of 5 based on 8 reviews
|
Omniscore:
|
| Classification |
Fiction |
| Genre |
Short Stories |
| Format |
Paperback |
| Pages |
288 |
| RRP |
£13.99 |
| Date of Publication |
October 2011 |
| ISBN |
978-1408703540 |
| Publisher |
Little, Brown |
| |
Taking us from a sweltering Indian rooftop at night to the marble halls of an ageing Bollywood star's palace, this is a new collection of short stories from Ruth Prawer Jhabvala. A wedding is planned between two innocents at a crumbling mansion of a grand Hudson Valley estate, while among the white-socked convent girls of post-colonial New Delhi a mixed-race couple contemplate their son's alienation and the failure of hope. A young English girl infiltrates Fifth Avenue theatrical royalty and a lovely Broadway starlet exacts a clever, protracted revenge against her nemesis.
Read an extract from the book on The Times website
Read The Omnivore's roundup for HOW I BECAME A HOLY MOTHER.
Reviews
The Times
Peter Parker
"This is a hugely enjoyable collection, written with sly humour in a cool prose in which genuinely striking images are all the more forceful for being sparingly used."
02/10/2011
Read Full Review
The Literary Review
Patricia Duncker
"The simplicity of her language is beguiling and treacherous. Beware the complexity and ambiguity of her meanings. Her fictions are as sinister as the original tales of the Brothers Grimm, but told with a moral delicacy, in gentle and dangerous prose."
01/10/2011
Read Full Review
The Guardian
Penelope Lively
" She is able to jump in time within a story in a way that seems both natural and essential; she can collapse months and even years without it looking forced. My only quibble would be with her endings: she likes to finish with a sort of dying fall, so the story does not so much end as evaporate, or turn in on itself, finding a resolution in what has gone before. "
26/10/2011
Read Full Review
The Times
Kate Saunders
"These stories, subtitled “Tales from East and West”, show off her extraordinary range."
12/11/2011
Read Full Review
The Daily Telegraph
Sameer Rahim
"Her stories reflect her experiences among the artistic elites of India and America. They do not emerge as an attractive bunch."
13/10/2011
Read Full Review
The Independent
William Palmer
"One or two other stories might have succeeded better as short novels; their time span is so long and the characters' affairs too complicated. But those singled out here ["Bombay (pre-Mumbai)", "School of Oriental Studies", "Critic"] are superb ..."
18/11/2011
Read Full Review
The Financial Times
Patrick French
"Although the stories have no particular link, whether geographical or cultural, they have a corresponding theme and tone, and fit well together. They meditate on themes of disconnection and illusion, and on the human tendency to imagine another person is what you want them to be, even if that leads to complication or unhappiness."
30/09/2011
Read Full Review
The Scotsman
Allan Massie
"The quality is inconsistent, the best very good, some of the others perfunctory. This is perhaps because the prose is often flat and the narrative lacking in depth and shadows: this happens and then that and then the next thing. In some too the characters are so thinly sketched that they fail to convince. Yet others are brought perfectly to life in a couple of sentences"
02/10/2011
Read Full Review