Helpful Score: 1
Smug. Pompous, badly written and exploitative.
Can I start by saying that I love Vishnu Maya, the 84-year-old Nepalese woman who is the "fish out of water" in this awful saga. If someone had written an account of her honest impressions, respectfully and thoughtfully, I think this would have been an amazing reading experience.
But this is neither respectful nor thoughtful. It's self-centred and poorly organized-- both the hare-brained scheme to bring an 84-year-old lady on a "pilgrimage" to the United States, and the account of it, which is more about how clever, funny, tortured, spiritual and generally awesome the author is. Vishnu Maya's impressions are filtered through what the author thinks she is seeing and understanding -- don't ask her, or explain things properly to her, because that might undermine the hilarious misunderstandings. Let's smirk, as Vishnu Maya assumes that the plants kept by apartment-dwellers in Seattle are there to feed their livestock! Let's laugh, as Vishnu Maya doesn't understand how ice cream, or elevators work! Let's gasp, as her tiny, misshapen feet won't fit in adult-size American sneakers (and let's grab a child-size pair, as we rush her out of the store ...)
Broughton Coburn can't write to save his life. He has no idea how to move from point A to point B on Aama's journey; he's either droning on about inconsequential things (we DON'T need to know how he jump-started the old car that's going to be trading in the next day ...), or leaping from incident to incident. His writing is painfully mundane until, every few pages, he remembers that this is supposed to be a work of great spirituality and observation, and goes off the charts with the over-writing:
"A few yards downstream, the trees and pagoda-roofed temples swayed and shimmied through the flames of a funeral pyre. A charred foot and an arm reached out, starkly beckoning to its relatives tending the pyre, while starlike embers soared erratically skyward like fairy sprites, searching for the heavens."
Oh, my eyes. There's something like that, every page or so. Meanwhile, Vishnu Maya's thoughts and observations are delivered in bland, clunky monotone.
Can I start by saying that I love Vishnu Maya, the 84-year-old Nepalese woman who is the "fish out of water" in this awful saga. If someone had written an account of her honest impressions, respectfully and thoughtfully, I think this would have been an amazing reading experience.
But this is neither respectful nor thoughtful. It's self-centred and poorly organized-- both the hare-brained scheme to bring an 84-year-old lady on a "pilgrimage" to the United States, and the account of it, which is more about how clever, funny, tortured, spiritual and generally awesome the author is. Vishnu Maya's impressions are filtered through what the author thinks she is seeing and understanding -- don't ask her, or explain things properly to her, because that might undermine the hilarious misunderstandings. Let's smirk, as Vishnu Maya assumes that the plants kept by apartment-dwellers in Seattle are there to feed their livestock! Let's laugh, as Vishnu Maya doesn't understand how ice cream, or elevators work! Let's gasp, as her tiny, misshapen feet won't fit in adult-size American sneakers (and let's grab a child-size pair, as we rush her out of the store ...)
Broughton Coburn can't write to save his life. He has no idea how to move from point A to point B on Aama's journey; he's either droning on about inconsequential things (we DON'T need to know how he jump-started the old car that's going to be trading in the next day ...), or leaping from incident to incident. His writing is painfully mundane until, every few pages, he remembers that this is supposed to be a work of great spirituality and observation, and goes off the charts with the over-writing:
"A few yards downstream, the trees and pagoda-roofed temples swayed and shimmied through the flames of a funeral pyre. A charred foot and an arm reached out, starkly beckoning to its relatives tending the pyre, while starlike embers soared erratically skyward like fairy sprites, searching for the heavens."
Oh, my eyes. There's something like that, every page or so. Meanwhile, Vishnu Maya's thoughts and observations are delivered in bland, clunky monotone.
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