tani reviewed on
The book is interesting; I'll give it that. However, there were a few things that bothered me.
The fine print you can see at the upper left of the cover of another paperback edition has a quote from the New York Times Book Review: "...One of the most suggestive [What on earth does that mean?] novels we have about what it is to become an American."
Don't read it to find out what it is to become an American. It is more about what it means to be a slightly flaky, very aware, and very determined and tough Indian girl. From beginning to end, while she is thrown into a variety of bewilderingly different circumstances, she doesn't really change, and somehow, I did not find the story line, with all its abrupt changes, convincing. Its separate components seemed thrown together.
Language was another big problem for me. Despite frequent references to Jasmine's not knowing enough English or her getting to understand it, she is the narrator and the book barrels along with conversations packed with slang and specialized vocabulary that Jasmine apparently takes in without any trouble at all. You feel that you are getting glimpses of the author speaking, rather than the narrator.
At a stage where she is about to go live with an American family for the first time and take care of their daughter, she describes their apartment as being like a museum, containing, among other things, "...slave-auction posters from New Orleans in 1850, speaking of healthy wenches and strong bucks...a poster of a naked woman with parts of her body labeled choice, prime, or chuck, as in a butcher shop." So did she go straight to her dictionary (I don't recall one being mentioned.) and look up "wenches" and "bucks," and did she already know the names of the cuts of beef, or are we to believe that all along, she was blessed with total recall of every new word she saw so that years later she could use it in describing her American experience? Obviously, it would be very hard to write this sort of novel while restricting oneself to the vocabulary of an illegal immigrant from an Indian village; using an omniscient narrator would have solved the problem.
This I will grant. The blurb on the back cover is correct when it says that "her story depicts the shifting contours of an America being transformed by her and others like her--our new neighbors, friends, and lovers." The story does not, however, "illuminate the making of an American mind," just her native resourcefulness, toughness, and--some might say--selfishness. In the end, I confess that I didn't find her a sympathetic character, and it wasn't because she had to struggle.
What I liked about the book: Glimpses of life in India and Indian customs. The book is interesting and the dialog well-written (apart from the multitudinous cases of language incongruity that I have mentioned). Will I keep it? No. Will I urge friends to read it? No.
The fine print you can see at the upper left of the cover of another paperback edition has a quote from the New York Times Book Review: "...One of the most suggestive [What on earth does that mean?] novels we have about what it is to become an American."
Don't read it to find out what it is to become an American. It is more about what it means to be a slightly flaky, very aware, and very determined and tough Indian girl. From beginning to end, while she is thrown into a variety of bewilderingly different circumstances, she doesn't really change, and somehow, I did not find the story line, with all its abrupt changes, convincing. Its separate components seemed thrown together.
Language was another big problem for me. Despite frequent references to Jasmine's not knowing enough English or her getting to understand it, she is the narrator and the book barrels along with conversations packed with slang and specialized vocabulary that Jasmine apparently takes in without any trouble at all. You feel that you are getting glimpses of the author speaking, rather than the narrator.
At a stage where she is about to go live with an American family for the first time and take care of their daughter, she describes their apartment as being like a museum, containing, among other things, "...slave-auction posters from New Orleans in 1850, speaking of healthy wenches and strong bucks...a poster of a naked woman with parts of her body labeled choice, prime, or chuck, as in a butcher shop." So did she go straight to her dictionary (I don't recall one being mentioned.) and look up "wenches" and "bucks," and did she already know the names of the cuts of beef, or are we to believe that all along, she was blessed with total recall of every new word she saw so that years later she could use it in describing her American experience? Obviously, it would be very hard to write this sort of novel while restricting oneself to the vocabulary of an illegal immigrant from an Indian village; using an omniscient narrator would have solved the problem.
This I will grant. The blurb on the back cover is correct when it says that "her story depicts the shifting contours of an America being transformed by her and others like her--our new neighbors, friends, and lovers." The story does not, however, "illuminate the making of an American mind," just her native resourcefulness, toughness, and--some might say--selfishness. In the end, I confess that I didn't find her a sympathetic character, and it wasn't because she had to struggle.
What I liked about the book: Glimpses of life in India and Indian customs. The book is interesting and the dialog well-written (apart from the multitudinous cases of language incongruity that I have mentioned). Will I keep it? No. Will I urge friends to read it? No.
