Picture of author.

Leah Franqui

Teoksen America for Beginners tekijä

3 teosta 477 jäsentä 64 arvostelua

Tietoja tekijästä

Image credit: pulled from HarperCollins Publisher website

Tekijän teokset

America for Beginners (2018) 334 kappaletta
Mother Land (2020) 106 kappaletta
After the Hurricane: A Novel (2022) 37 kappaletta

Merkitty avainsanalla

Yleistieto

Jäseniä

Kirja-arvosteluja

Sad, funny, charming.

This book is about an aging Indian widow, estranged from her gay son, who decides to travel America to find out the true story of his life. Along the way she hires a quirky Bangladeshi tour guide and a young American actress to be her travel companion. The story follows this odd trip, as well peeking into the life of the widow’s son in California.

I really enjoyed spending a few days with these people.
 
Merkitty asiattomaksi
hmonkeyreads | 51 muuta kirja-arvostelua | Jan 25, 2024 |
Read for my book club. I enjoyed the book overall.

I particularly enjoyed how puzzled each person was over the actions of other people. The people were puzzled by their own actions frequently which was also amusing and kind of made me think of myself because I am regularly puzzled by my own actions as well as other peoples and this is not something that you frequently finding in writing - except I suppose for philosophy texts.

I also found interesting the prejudices of Satya and Pival, counterbalanced by Rebecca‘s near-complete lack of prejudices. Of course, identifying more with Rebecca, I see no prejudices in her :-)

There were so many scenes that I thought were quite well done. Examples: the meal with Rebecca's parents, New Orleans, tipping, cleanliness, Satya constantly calling people perverts while he was he clearly obsessed with sex.

One surprising feature of the author's style: Sometimes she went on and on about things such as Jake’s feelings about Bhim (way too long!) and then other times the author stated things so tersely ("I went to America to find my son and kill myself" and "discussion was going well until Bhim dropped dead"). That just seemed inappropriate and a cop-out every time she did it.

One question I was left with: Ok, I get why Pival returned to India. I get why she fired her old servants. But why hire new servants? I thought she no longer needed or wanted servants.
… (lisätietoja)
 
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donwon | 51 muuta kirja-arvostelua | Jan 22, 2024 |
Leah Franqui is a remarkably versatile writer with an ability to give life to a variety of settings and cultures. When I see she has a book coming out, it's on my radar. Big time.

After the Hurricane is no exception. The setting in Puerto Rico is one she hasn't written about before, but the detail of her observations and her feel for interactive styles among the characters are spot-on.

There's a mystery at the heart of this novel that makes it hard to put down. The central character, Elena, is searching for her father in the aftermath of hurricane Maria—though he's been absent from her life since long before that disaster. But the Hurricane gives her reasons to seek him out, despite never having done so before.

Franqui doles out revelations about the novel's characters carefully. We get to know them slowly, and a new piece of information can shift one's perspective of them. But even with the shifts, the characters are convincing with their own internal coherence.

I received a free electronic review copy of this title from the publisher via NetGalley; the opinions are my own.
… (lisätietoja)
 
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Sarah-Hope | 1 muu arvostelu | Nov 14, 2022 |
Tämä arvostelu kirjoitettiin LibraryThingin Varhaisia arvostelijoita varten.
A surprisingly quirky read
 
Merkitty asiattomaksi
RealLifeReading | 51 muuta kirja-arvostelua | Mar 11, 2022 |

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Tilastot

Teokset
3
Jäseniä
477
Suosituimmuussija
#51,683
Arvio (tähdet)
3.8
Kirja-arvosteluja
64
ISBN:t
33
Kielet
1

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