- Hardcover: 515 pages
- Publisher: Random House (April 7 1998)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 067945215X
- ISBN-13: 978-0679452157
- Product Dimensions: 23.6 x 15.7 x 4.8 cm
- Shipping Weight: 885 g
- Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #2,385,698 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Amazon
India, when you first set foot from the atmospherically controlled airplane into the steamy, redolent, cacophonous whirl of the street, can be an intensely overwhelming experience. Listening Now, on the other hand, takes you on an intimate tour through India's land and culture without your ever having to sidestep a single cow pie. A novel by Anjana Appachana, Listening Now tells the story of Mallika, a romantic and passionate child who recounts and bemoans the tragic tale of her mother Padma as she believes it to be. We then hear the same history related by Padma's sister, mother, and friends, and ultimately by Padma herself. Each retelling casts a fresh view and uncovers some new secrets, guilts, angers, and hurts until the full story of Padma's love is revealed. In the process, the "ordinary" middle-class lives of these Indian women assume a powerful reality.
Appachana has a wonderful ear for dialogue, especially when capturing the back and forth between Mallika and the various adults (mother, aunts, friends) who scold, teach, and love her. Appachana does a remarkable of job weaving the details of Indian life--the smells of the kitchen, the clink of the bracelets, the rhythm of the language--into this engrossing narrative of grief and joy, lies and truth. Reading Listening Now certainly is no substitute for a visit to India, but it's a lovely, peaceful, and moving way to absorb some of the essence of India from the comfort of your living room. --Stephanie Gold
From Publishers Weekly
In India as elsewhere, the closest families often hide the most painful secrets, betrayals and hostilities. Appachana's (Incantations and Other Stories) achievement in this intensely lyrical, if overwritten, first novel is to expose and explore these darker family matters?in their peculiarly Indian incarnations?with insight and candor. A college teacher in New Delhi, careworn Padma tells her sensitive, fantasy-prone daughter, Mallika, that the girl's father died in a car accident just before her birth. The truth?that Mallika is the product of a love affair destroyed by misunderstanding and parental meddling?comes out through flashbacks and the gossip of various characters, including Padma's estranged, widowed mother and unhappily married sister. The return of Padma's lover, after 13 years, to beg forgiveness from her and from the daughter he never knew, gives the story dramatic power. Appachana, who won a NEA fellowship based on an excerpt of this novel, invests nearly all her characters with secrets?abortions, love affairs, wife-beating, sexual molestation, terminal illness, explosive resentments?that gradually come to light through roundabout conversations as believable, in their indirection, as the wounds they lay bare.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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Most helpful customer reviews
2.0 out of 5 stars
women beware women,
By A Customer
This review is from: Listening Now (Hardcover)
The essence of this book is as follows: men can never truly understand women, so women must find loving, passionate relationships with other women. This is fine, as far as it goes, but the author's treatment of this theme is heavy-handed and overwrought. The story is made up of the composite narratives of five or six women, all of whom face patriarchal oppression - mothers-in-law from hell, domineering husbands etc. Some of the characters are in truly horrible situations; for example, the sexual relationship of one of the women can best be described as marital rape. However, to a large extent, the characters engineer their own chains; they lapse into sullen servility, or behave like shrieking harpies. Even though they chafe at the preferential treatment that their mothers show to their brothers, they in turn treat their daughters in the same dismissive way. After a while, the reader forgets the names and other characteristics of the women, and simply associates them with their domestic woes. As for the female characters finding redemption in each other's company- if I were the sister or daughter of any of the women depicted in the novel, I would run away from them, rather than attempt to find any transcendent bond with them. As a South Asian woman and a feminist, I don't remember my mother and aunts being so downtrodden, even though some of them lived in very conservative households. The women in my family dealt with patriarchy with grace and dignity, not with idiotic passivity. On the purely literary side, the dialogue at times has the flavour of filmi style melodrama, which lends a ridiculous, overblown portentousness to the narrative. Also, at one point in the narrative, a curse is invoked, with dire effect. This would be ok if the author made use of the magic realism so beloved by contemporary South Asian writers, but it strikes a jarring note in what is basically a socially realistic novel.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Superb narrative,
By
This review is from: Listening Now (Hardcover)
When I picked this book (Listening Now) from the shelf, I just had the intention of reading more Indian authors after a brief introduction to Divakaruni's books; with the total idea of just picking up and discovering writers. Nobody had recommended her or prepared me. Oh! was I stunned. Anjana knows how to write a book in the truest sense of the action. Listening Now is the most intricately and beautifully written book and totally captivated me. You cannot put this book down. The story centers around a single parent and the women in her life. The story is narrated through these women's perspective of their life - childhood, motherhood and being a wife- and in relation to the main character. Superbly told. I could associate with this book and understand and empathize with the characters. It has the depth, flow and is very simply written and though the characters are familiar the narrative is amazingly unpredictable. This book has to read, savored and cherished. And the pleasure is going to be totally yours and the effort (if at all you want to call it that)totally worthwhile. With renewed appreciation and respect for women
4.0 out of 5 stars
So sad, but so moving,
By A Customer
This review is from: Listening Now (Hardcover)
It took me about 3 weeks to finish the book. I could only read it when my son took his naps in the afternoon, when I wasn't busy in the kitchen, when I wasn't entertaining guests, when I wasn't walking the dog, when I wasn't at the computer, when my son finally settled down for the night, and when I didn't fall asleep before him. Mallika's story is a little rambling and confusing. It was difficult to get through that part. Do young children, no matter how sad, think like adults? I loved Anu's, Madhu's, Shanta's and Padma's stories. Rukmini's didn't seem necessary. A thoroughly amazing book, the day-to-day descriptions are so vivid and true. I could see my mother's and aunts' lives unfold as i was reading. And if I was living in India, my life would have been the same: Arranged marriage, initial passion, indifferent husband, rapid disillusionment. Though wordy at times, it's a must-read. I highly recommend it.
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