Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni`s - Arranged Marriage
Genre : Short stories.
Rating : 3/5
Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni's Arranged Marriage is a collection of 11 short stories all about women, bred on Indian traditions and settled on American soil.
I am finding it difficult to categorize this book into "liked" / "not liked". I was not very much fascinated by the collection coz each and every tale was full of pathos and dolefullness. There was no happy start or happy ending or happy intermediary :) Yet there was something that kept me tied to it... was it the Indian background or was I pulled in the world of misery... is still not clear to me.
The story I liked amongst all was - Perfect life in which the gal is in good love relationship and even has a outstanding career. Her happy life is then splintered by a forsaken 7-8 yrs boy who shows up near her apartment, and to have him in her life she is willing to do everything under the sun. Even this story was depressing at times. I could not understand why protatonist was trying to take illegal steps in the process of adoption? Even when the kid was near her why was she so melancholic?
All other stories had one thing in common - they ruminated over the notion of marriage, an arranged marriage. Had I read these stories individually, not in the form of collection I might have liked them more .... but as an assemblage they were cheerless. Somehow I constantly felt author wants to say that sadness is gift-wrapped in the nuptial relation. Neither arranged marriages nor love affairs had '.... and EVERYBODY lived happily everafter' ending. And moreover this book portrays awfully wrong side of the Indian males. They are certainly not as orthodox as they are shown here.
The stories were short and quick read but some pieces had gone amiss. The flow of the stories was not very smooth. Style of writing was chopped / broken kind (or whatever the word they use in literature for not a continuos flow) . Few of the stories left me wondering - what happened to that person? What was the authors intention in detailing this situation? The thing that bothered me most was the names of the stories. In many of the them I felt the name had very least to do with the essence or pith of the story or may be I misinterpreted the gist.
I would say, if you wanna read something in short time (an hr or so), like a single short story then it is a good pick.
posted by Mrinal at
4:41 PM
4 Comments:
Woah..this book would be out of my list. I don't want to read something that would make me feel doleful and miserable. Well...it is different issue that I hardly read anything non-technical this day ;)
~Sachin - U r rt.. its not of ur type :) Its more girly-girly. Unlike this, I liked her second book - 'Sister of my heart' better... Its review is on its way..
Hmmm... I hope this book does not project the idea of an 'arranged' marriage in the wrong light! I don't know why people in the west have this conception that an 'arranged' marriage is a terrible thing, and it must be terrible to be married to a person you don't know. Movies and novels are mainly responsible for this notion. Arranged marraiges have worked, and still work for many of us. I feel extremely sorry when they are projected like this. If the author is trying to project that an 'arranged' marraige is the root of all the misery in these women's lives... then that's bad. It could be in some cases, but that cannot be generalization. I'm afraid that would give a wrong impression about such marraiges to the western world. Relationships fail owing to mutual lack of mutual trust and understanding, be it love or 'arranged'. But, I digress.
And I too hate "What happened to that character?" type loose ends in stories! :-(
Good review, BTW! :-)
~Priya: This book has already portrayed wrong side of arranged marriage.. and thats what has angered me !
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