Tuesday 27 January 2015

Review: The Red Carpet by Lavanya Sankaran.


Book: The Red Carpet 

Author: Lavanya Sankaran 

Pages: 224

Read On: Paperback 

How Long It Took Me Read: 3 days. 

Plot Summary: Wry humor and a delicious grasp of the friction between generations in Bangalore are the hallmarks of Lavanya Sankaran’s fresh, deeply nuanced debut collection. “A potpourri of beggars and billionaires and determinedly laid-back ways,” Bangalore, India’s own Silicon Valley, is a crucible for prosperity, and at the chaotic crossroads between past and present. Here, American-trained professionals like Tara return to their old-fashioned families with heads full of Quentin Tarantino dialogue; a successful entrepreneur is shaken when his partner suddenly reneges on their plan to return to America; a traditional Indian mother slyly circumvents her Western-educated daughter’s resistance to marriage; a neighborhood gossip is determined to discover what goes on behind the closed curtains of the hip young couple across the street; a chauffeur must reconcile his more orthodox credos with his employer’s miniskirt lifestyle.

General Thoughts: I picked this book up during a massive sale. I love me some short-stories. And I want to read more of this genre. I brought this book along with me on holiday because short-stories are perfect reads during travel. You can dip in and out and read it in your own sweet time. 

I had no expectations going into this book. I want expecting just pleasing stories and easy reads. I enjoyed this book. It was a fun read. 

Things I Liked: 

1. I love the length of these stories. They are short and crisp. 

2. I enjoyed the writing. 

3. I liked that some characters re-occurred in other stories, meaning you saw the same characters in minor roles in other stories.  I like when stories in a short-story collection have some ties that bind them. So I enjoyed this aspect of this book. 

4. I loved the setting of this book- Bangalore, Bangalore is a city I love and spent 5 years of my life in. All of these stories are set in Bangalore, so I loved re-visiting a city love through the stories in this book. 

5. I also loved the themes in this book- family, identity, love, relationships and change. 

Things I Didn't Like: 

1. Some of these stories just end abruptly. Without closure and at times without any proper ending. So if that sort of thing doesn't sit well with you, this is not a story collection you'll enjoy. Some of these endings irked me quite a bit. 

Rating: 3.5/5


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