- Paperback: 336 pages
- Publisher: Plume (April 12 1999)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0452278821
- ISBN-13: 978-0452278820
- Product Dimensions: 20.1 x 13 x 2.5 cm
- Shipping Weight: 272 g
- Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (46 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #1,035,372 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Booklist
Successful software analyst Meena Gossett is on the fast track at work, but the recent death of her adoptive mother has resurrected some old issues. Kidnapped by bandits from a rural village in India at the age of seven, Meena managed to escape slavery and was later adopted by a wealthy San Francisco couple. Now memories of village life and of Vishnu, her best friend and the boy she wed in an arranged marriage, have come back in full force. She becomes sidetracked by an increasing infatuation with a sexy novelist but finally embarks on her much-anticipated trip to her old village in Rajasthan, where, ironically, she realizes just what it means to be an American. Shiva Dancing echoes, in some ways, the work of Alice Adams by employing San Francisco as the setting and peopling it with interesting, cosmopolitan characters. With its trendy multicultural themes and its busy plot, this first novel should have no trouble finding an audience. Joanne Wilkinson
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Kirkus Reviews
A disappointing first novel by cookbook author Kirchner (The Healthy Cuisine of India, 1992) begins promisingly, but quickly reduces its portrayal of an Indian woman unhappy in America and drawn back toward her native land to melodrama and sentimentality. Kirchner hooks us early with a beautifully detailed description of the arranged marriage of two seven-year-olds in a village in Rajasthan. The plot quickly thickens when the girl, Meena Kumari, is kidnapped by bandits, escapes from them at a train station, and is ``rescued'' by a wealthy American couple, the Gossetts, who soon thereafter adopt her and return to live in California. Twenty-eight years later (as she begins the sixth of her ``seven-year cycles''), Meena Gossett is a successful software expert at a San Francisco computer firm and living in a vulnerably solitary state (her adoptive family are all dead, there's no man in her life). A chance meeting with Antoine Peterson, a novelist to whom she's immediately attracted, disturbs Meena's recurring thoughts of returning to India to locate her ``husband'' Vishnu Chauhan--whose career as a journalist working for a (Moxan) separatist tribe's newspaper in Calcutta is followed in a parallel narrative. A crisis at work, and the news that Antoine has decided after all to marry his disagreeable fianc‚e (as well as an e-mail reunion with Vishnu accomplished by a mutual friend) sends Meena back to India--and Kirchner's novel into romance-fiction overdrive. Meena goes back to her village, only ``to realize how little Indian she was,'' and finds Vishnu shortly before a terrorist bomb explodes, sending them all (for Antoine too has arrived in Calcutta, having seen the error of his ways and forsworn marriage) to the hospital, and Meena and Antoine finally into each other's arms. Good material, and some initially gritty characterizations, are wasted on a trivial story undone by clich‚s and coincidences. Danielle Steel does India. -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Most helpful customer reviews
2.0 out of 5 stars
Needed a better editor as well as a plot,
By A Customer
This review is from: Shiva Dancing (Paperback)
Not worth reading. The ending was very rushed, as well as the computer plot all of a sudden went nowhere. Everything was very convienient-Mom dying, Meena & Vishnu losing jobs, Vishnu found instantaneously. Throughout the book, time moves unevenly. You'll read the next paragraph and then realize that weeks or months went by. Character development is poor, and Meena is just "too perfect". Great at running, her job, gardening. Also, a poetry expert and volunteer with a close group of friends (whom with you only see Meena receive friendship, not give) as well as is physically beautiful. There are some lovely descriptions as well as a wonderful first chapter. This is why I gave the book 2 stars.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Very touching,
By A. Perry (Eugene, Or) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Shiva Dancing (Paperback)
The story rings true. It pulls you in and you enter the lives of Meena and Antoine. The novel is much more than I expected.I gained some insight. It made me recapture the pleasures of traveling though India some years back.
4.0 out of 5 stars
well worth reading,
By A Customer
This review is from: Shiva Dancing (Paperback)
An insightful book, very readable, sensitive, and real. It has a charm of its own. I look forward to reading more of Ms. Kirchner's work. It was time enjoyably spent
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