Dream lover

Imaginary Men - Anjali Banerjee (Downtown Press, 2005)

Yet another book that mysteriously made its way onto my "to read" list. But it seems right up my alley. Once upon a time I was reading a lot of South Asian-inflected fiction, and chick lit is my specialty. But to be honest, I'm still not quite sure how I felt about this one.

The premise totally works - Lina is a matchmaker (one of those professions I really only hear about in novels) and in the eyes of her Indian family, an old maid now that she's crossed 30. And to avoid a relative's meddling matchmaking, she claims to be engaged. And hijinks ensue. Mainly because she uses the name of the hot (but terribly conservative) man she just met, and because her family gets SO excited and demands to meet him, and because she's still trying to come to terms with the death of her former fiance.

The plot moves quickly, and I plowed through this book during finals week like it was candy. All good. But I found myself wondering what role Lina's fiance played in the book. People seemed blithely inconsiderate of her loss, and I couldn't quite understand why. And then we have Lina's imaginary man, who is either a)aforementioned lost love; b)her fake new lover; c)the new man she's actually falling for; d)some weird amalgamation. The answer is e)all of the above, but I somehow wanted more from him.

Am I too demanding? Is this why I'm still unmarried?

On the other hand, I really appreciated the ending, which offered a richer, more real portrait of how "happily ever after" doesn't just happen.

Sometimes you wanna go...

Lucky Girls - Nell Freudenberger (Ecco, 2003)


I'm kinda meh about short stories. I want my fiction in big epic doses, where I can fall into a world and only climb back out when I really must (the occasional New Yorker short story aside). So I put off this highly touted collection for years, delaying the actual pleasure of reading it.

225 pages, 5 stories. So if you're doing the math, these are longer than your typical short fiction. Not quite novella length, but more capable of letting me take a dip into the world, if not quite swim in it. The stories are chiefly about women, but maybe more about displacement. In three, Americans find themselves living in India, but in a way such that they don't quite belong in either land. And they are all at the mercy of relationships - their own, but also ones where they sit on the periphery, and yet still find themselves buffeted by storms.

And yet, for all these thoughtful pensive impulsive characters, I paused at a different line, attributed by the mother of the last tale's narrator: "If you're always thinking about how things are going to be in your life, you can never be happy."She then points out how her mother falls short of this recommendation for living, but the woman has a point. What would these stories be if the characters thought just a little less?

Like reading a dream

The Vine of Desire - Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
New York: Anchor Books, 2002

When I was in college, I went through a phase where it almost felt like I could get enough literature by South Asian female writers. Really this was pretty much just Divakaruni and Arundhati Roy, but in my head it was much more. Anyway, I heard both authors give readings on campus, which was lovely. And what I really liked about Divakaurni was that she was based in the East Bay, so everything had an extra tinge of familiarity. And there was a lyrical quality to both writers, where things seemed lush and rich beyond themselves. (This is also a trait I have ascribed to Canadian writers, thanks to Michael Ondaatje and Joy Kogawa.)

I digress. Vine of Desire is a follow-up to Sister of My Heart, which I read in college and do not remember AT ALL. Fortunately, the novel stands alone just fine. The main characters are friends, sisters essentially. At the opening, one has lost the baby she was carrying and is adrift. The other has lost her husband, so that she could keep her baby, and is likely drifting. Anju, the former, insists on bring Sudha and the baby out to California. This despite knowing that her husband has nurtured a desire for Sudha. So now you have three injured souls (and an adorable baby) in a single apartment. And no one is capable of communicating in any truthful fashion. And obviously things go badly.

The plot isn't much of a surprise. But the writing is simply lovely. Chapters come in different forms, different styles, and we see the perspectives of not only Anju and Sudha, but also Anju's husband Sunil, Sudha's suitor (if that's the right word) Lalit, and even the baby Dayita. Divakaruni is extremely compassionate toward her characters, and you ache for each of them, over the pain they feel and the pain they cause.

Eat Pray Love

Elizabeth Gilbert's tale of her year exploring the above verbs in Italy, India, and Indonesia has been a book club favorite and enjoying a loooooooong run on the best-seller list. I am a self-styled iconoclast. If everyone else loves it, I am emphatically not interested. Until I am.

So I put it on my library hold list, and waited and waited. And then finally read it. Including reading almost the entire Italy section in one sitting after work and before a meeting. I was set to find it shallow, or silly, or obnoxiously wise. And it was those things, but it was also witty and ridiculous and honest and real. So thumbs up to Gilbert, who starts off extremely strong, and then even as it wanes in the second half, has established enough likability for the reader to see her through.

Enough. Some passages that made me smile:

David's sudden emotional back-stepping probably would've been a catastrophe for me eve under the best of circumstances, given that I am the planet's most affectionate life-form (something like a cross between a golden retriever and a barnacle), but this was my very worst of circumstances. [...] His wishdrawal only made me more needy, and my neediness only advanced his withdrawals, until soon he was retreating under fire of my weeping pleas of "Where are you going? What happened to us?
(Dating tip: Men LOVE this.)

I have to admit, I looked around when I read this, guilty, because there was a moment where I recognized this scenario a little too much. This next one though....

So Sofie and I have come to Pizzeria da Michele, and these pies we have just ordered - one for each of us - are making us lose our minds. I love my pizza so much, in fact, that I have come to believe in my delirium that my pizza might actually love me, in return. I am having a relationship with this pizza, almost an affair. Meanwhile, Sofie is practically in tears over hers, she's having a metaphysical crisis about it, she's begging me, "Why do they even bother trying to make pizza in Stockholm? Why do we even bother eating food at all in Stockholm?"

I read that and wondered, how did Gilbert ever make it past Italy? But I guess I'm glad she did.