| ||||||||||||||||||||||||
Did you know you can trade in your old books for an Amazon.co.uk Gift Card to spend on the things you want? Visit the Amazon.co.uk Trade-In Store for more details. |
Frequently Bought Together
Product details
|
More About the Author
Product Description
Review
Scotland on Sunday
Browse and search another edition of this book.
IT WAS ONLY FIVE O'CLOCK on a July morning in Toturpuram, and already every trace of night had disappeared. Read the first page
Concordance
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
Tag this product(What's this?)Think of a tag as a keyword or label you consider is strongly related to this product.
Tags will help all customers organise and find favourite items. |
Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Customer Reviews
|
Share your thoughts with other customers:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Well-written domestic drama of small-town Indian life.,
By
This review is from: The Hero's Walk (Paperback)
The paralyzing heat at 5:00 a.m. on a July morning in Toturpuram, on the southeast coast of India, is depicted in intense, sensual imagery from the opening of the novel and becomes a metaphor for the lives of the Rao family. Three generations living together in a large and decaying house which they cannot afford to maintain, the Raos constantly carp at each other and seethe with long-standing resentments, the emotional temperature rising in concert with the heat, which "[hangs] over the town in long, wet sheets." Author Badami carefully selects her details to reveal both the realities of her characters' lives and the emotional climate they inhabit. The grande dame and grandmother of the family, Ammayya, is a slightly senile, mean-spirited, and caste-conscious woman, who controls her son Sripathi, her daughter Putti, and her long suffering daughter-in-law Nirmala. With unusual and homely similes and metaphors, Badami establishes the tone. Nirmala is "like a bar of Lifebuoy soap, functional but devoid of all imagination." Nirmala and Sripathi are "like a pair of bullock yoked together, endlessly turning the water wheel round and round, eyes bent to the earth." The cloudy sky is "curdled milk." Romance is the heart of the action. The problems in the marriage of Ammayya and her husband, and of Sripathi and Nirmala are described in detail. By contrast, Sripathi's daughter Maya has happily married an American and lives in the U.S, but she has been banished from Sripathi's life for defying his wishes. When Maya and her husband Alan are killed in an accident, leaving an 8-year-old daughter the Raos have never met, they bring this silent and traumatized orphan to India and into their uncertain lives. Predictably, the family learns from each other and begins to communicate, but the events which bring about these changes are either telegraphed early in the book (the fate of Putti, Sripathi's sister, for example) or result from external chance and not from their own actions. Additionally, the responses of the child to her strange, new environment do not ring true. Already traumatized and silent, this fragile child faces additional traumas after her arrival in Toturpuram, including some very dramatic ones at the end of the book, yet she seems to suffer no ill effects. Badami tells us the book is about "the chanciness of existence, the beauty and the hope and the loss that always accompanies life," themes she has abundantly illustrated, but the warm and fuzzy ending owes more to chance than what we or the characters would expect. Mary Whipple
4.0 out of 5 stars
Human frailty,
By Clive A. H. Still "Sela Still" (Hampshire, United Kingdom) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER) (REAL NAME)
This review is from: The Hero's Walk (Paperback)
This is a wonderful story which deserves to be widely read. Sripathi has disowned his daughter when she moved to Canada and married a European. Even when she has a child, he refuses to acknowledge her or his new grand-daughter. Tragedy strikes - his daughter and son-in-law are killed in a car crash and he travels to Canada to bring his traumatised and grieving grand-daughter back to his home in India.This is how the story of how she starts to recover while at the same time Sripathi gradually becomes a more tolerant and loving person. His household, containing a wife, terrible old mother-in-law, sad, unmarried sister and radical son, all living in the decaying family home, is beautifully brought to life in this vibrant story. Not just a well-written and compulsive read, The Hero's Walk also deals with a lot of themes such as status, religion, the power of money, the idealism of youth and the complexity of family relationships. Fabulous.
0 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Enjoyable read,
This review is from: The Hero's Walk (Paperback)
I found this book highly readable and very enjoyable: most of the characters are likeable and there is a nice element of humour to it.
Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
Would you like to see more reviews about this item?
|
|
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
Listmania!
|
|
Look for similar items by category
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
- I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
- I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.
|
