Volume 48, Number 5 · March 29, 2001
The Monster We Know
By Hilary Mantel
A New World
Amit Chaudhuri
Knopf, 192 pp., $22.00
An Obedient Father
Akhil Sharma
Farrar, Straus and Giroux,282 pp., $23.00
Interpreter of Maladies
Jhumpa Lahiri
Houghton Mifflin, 198 pp., $12.00 (paper)
In the heat of April, a new homeland forms about Bonny, a boy of seven or so: 'Outside, birds cried continuously, sharp, clear, obstinate cries. Shadows of windows and façades had settled everywhere on parapets and bannisters.' On the balcony of his grandparents' flat, the potted plants are half sunlit, half in shadow: 'geometric shadows from the grille fell on the wall and floor.' The shadows are a net to catch his first fleeting impressions of his ancestral city, Calcutta. The apartment is small, in a crowded district. As he falls asleep that night, the sound of the neighbors' TV sets penetrates the walls 'like a form of public dreaming.'
Review, 3066 words
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