Fasting, Feasting by Anita Desai Summary and Reviews
|
List Price: Our Price: $2.45 You Save: $11.50 (82%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $0.01 (click here) Category: Book See more book details and other editions |
|---|
Book Reviews of Fasting, Feasting
Book Review: Same the world over?
Summary: 1 Stars
We like our stories to have tidy endings, our characters to develop and go somewhere, so the frustration some previous reviewers felt with this novel is maybe understandable. If there was a category called "fictionalised essay" this luminously observed contrast between the Eastern and the Western ways of family life would slot right into it. People don't always change or rebel against their circumstances - in fact the reverse is more typical, because we assume our way of living is the obvious and only one. It takes an outsider to shake that conviction.Uma's a hard character to keep sympathy with - her passivity, though culturally conditioned, is infuriating. But Desai builds up a compelling picture of the way that the treatment she suffers at the hands of her parents is sanctioned and backed up by an entire culture - whilst the extreme traditionalism of her parents is maybe no longer typical of Indian family life, the importance placed on extended family relationships and the submissiveness of women are still deeply ingrained.
But this book isn't just a polemic - just as we are seething with rage at the appalling fate of Desai's females and thanking our lucky stars we don't have to live in such a society, we escape with relief to the West and find the mirror turned back onto our own lifestyles. And the reflection is none too flattering. Okay, so we don't sell women in demeaning marriages or enslave our children, but is the other extreme any better? The American home where dad defines his role by cooking barbecues nobody wants and then getting mad at them, where the mother aimlessly cruises the supermarket aisles whilst her teenage daughter's bulimia goes unnoticed, and the family never eats together - as a parent I recognised much of this portrait with a squirm of unease.
Desai doesn't judge - it's an exercise in compare and contrast. We are left to draw our own conclusions. The final scene completes the circle, as we see Arun's American surrogate mother on the porch swing in a scene reminiscent of the opening of the book, flanked by the unwanted family gifts that Arun has offloaded onto her, their intended meaning lost in translation. The solutions differ - the difficulties are strikingly similar.
Book Review: Seems like it would be a great "Oprah" book
Summary: 4 Stars
Like many of Oprah's book in the book club (although this one isn't on the list), you meet extremely real people and families and you are thrown into another world...of India and their values and ways. And as the children are so horribly smothered by the parents, you next travel to Massachusetts with the son, and you see how OUR society is seen from the point of view of another culture. And that family problems are the same all over. It's so fascinating to see all this...it's a very deep and heavy book, yet easy reading, it's only 227 pages and easily understandable. Excellent insight on the author's part. Uma reminds me of the character Martha Horgan who is the extremely depressing protagonist in A Dangerous Woman by Mary McGarry Morris, also an excellent, heavy, realistic book. I gave it only 4 stars because the ending was a bit abrupt...I don't feel like I got "closure", or the full meaning of the end. If anyone out there did, please email me at Cindytam@aol.com and let me know.Book Review: Slightly Dissapointed
Summary: 3 Stars
I had read Clear Light of Day which was also written by Anita Desai. I loved that book...so I decided to read Fasting, Feasting which I thought would be equally promising.
I was wrong.
The book reads easily overall. It keeps your attention throughout every page however I feel there are some gaping mistakes in this book.
After I read the book, I was surprised. There was really little to not plot. It seemed like Desai relied on the reader to pity Uma and Arun throughout and present that as some sort of heady piece of literature. The two stories are disjointed and while yes, I did sympathize with the two characters, I found myself wanting more. There was no intertwining of the two stories...it could have almost been written about two perfect strangers and still made sense.
Desai also likes to present this really cruel vision of typical Indian parents. As a girl who is Indian and does have typical Indian parents, I found the treatment of their characters quite harsh. In both of the books I read of Desai's, both parents seem cooly detached and fail to understand (or even try to understand) their daughters. The parents in this book seemed overly cruel, treating Uma as nothing but a man-servant--this i found disturbing and a little melodramatic.
Also, what is the obsession with the state of Massachusetts in Indian lit books? I have read several books by indian authors and whenever someone goes abroad to study, it is almost always in Mass. I clearly think that Desai had some research to do as Mass. is not remniscent of Texas (what was with the language and the depictions of family life?). I thought this part of the book was ill-researched and ill-depicted.
However, I have to admit that the language that Desai uses in this book is very vivid and is easy to picture in your mind.
If you're looking for a quick and easy read this is it. However, if you're looking for some deeper insight into the world of Indian life/culture...this is NOT it.
Book Review: Soul-less
Summary: 1 Stars
The first thing about this book is you can't really can't place these characters and when exactly did this happen? The setting. Some small town, where the mother actually gets a girl to drop out from school when the baby brother is born. Sending the boy abroad for an undergrad education is not exactly a small town aspiration, and that too to MIT, no less! The boy can't even rejoice at he thought of this escape leaves the shores determined not to enjoy any of it and ,of course, he has no plans at all of changing any of this. His elder sister who looks like an old maid now. He is so dead and so are all the characters in this book. Very , very Disappointing!Book Review: The Thin Line between Feasting and Fasting
Summary: 5 Stars
This was the first book I've read by Desai, and I'm a fan! Desai demonstrates the thin line between fasting and feasting in this novel. Rather than divide the book between two "halves," she combines both and contrasts the hording mentality of Arun's host mother with the obsessive weight control programs by his host siblings. In the land of plenty, and a stocked freezer, daughter Melanie has an easily recognizable eating disorder. Her brother, however, also works out incessantly to keep himself in shape. In the first part of the book, which is set in India, food takes a back burner and emotions take the front. In the second half, it is just the opposite. Desai exposes the depth (or lack of) of Indian and American society, and does so artfully. This book is not fast-paced or plot-centered, but is rather crafty, reflective, and telling.