Lindsey Collen

Jumila muss ihre Fehlgeburt loswerden, die Freundinnen Sadna und Goldilox wollen ihr dabei helfen. Das ist gefährlich, denn wenn sie erwischt werden, droht eine lange Gefängnisstrafe - denn die Polizei würde eine Abtreibung vermuten. Doch das ist nicht alles, was diese Frauen bewegt...

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Eigentlich sind es nicht 3 Lebensgeschichten, die erzählt werden, sondern 6 - denn auch die Geschichten der "verlorenen" Cheffinnen dieser Frauen erhalten Raum in dieser faszinierenden und furchtbaren Erzählung darüber, wie mit den Frauen auf Mauritius umgegangen wird, was sie erdulden müssen. Erschreckend, das so etwas immer noch geschieht.… (meer)

This book initially held my attention. The descriptions were clear, the character was like able and the setting of India was interested. After the first few chapters my mind wandered and I no longer wondered what was going to happen to the "boy".

Krish Burton feels smothered by his mother. He feels a great deal of anger and hostility toward his overbearing parents. Unable to separate the Indian culture from the obsessiveness of his parents, he longs to break free.

Early in the story we realize that Krish is grieving the loss of his beloved brother and he has no where to express his feelings. Resentful that his parents continue to call him "BOY" instead of his name, he stews.

Failing his exams is a turning point in his life wherein things come crashing down.

When his mother sets him on a trip to visit his Uncle and bring home a "package", soon Krish realizes the package contains drugs.

This is a coming of age tale that fell flat for me.

Not recommended.… (meer)

The story takes place, in real time, over a single day, as three young women (all of them marginalized, poor, homeless, the cast-offs of Mauritian society) try to find a way to dispose of the corpse of a dead baby. They didn't kill the baby -- it was a late miscarriage -- but they are quite justly afraid they will be accused of illegal abortion if they take it to the authorities. So they are trying to get rid of this tiny, sad package wrapped in plastic bags, so no one will ever know.

It would have been a good story but it seems Lindsey Collen was more interested in putting forth statements about the problems and inequalities in Mauritian society, particularly for the women, and she did this at the expense of a believable plotline. For example, each of the women had female employers who committed suicide due to repression by men, a coincidence which severely strains the reader's ability to suspend disbelief. And one of the women managed to get pregnant twice before she even had her first period, and it never says how -- one minute she was washing off her brother's pet dog, and the next she was delivering a stillborn baby, which left me wondering if the word "dog" was actually a euphemism for something else. (I still can't figure that one out.) Then she went to live in the woods and soon had another baby, without any man being mentioned in the story.

I really didn't like this very much. The writing style was very confusing and there was too much going on.… (meer)

I'll start off by saying there were a lot of things I didn't like about this book. I didn't like the literary style. The narrator, Iqbal, has a habit of addressing the reader directly. He even says, "My publisher told me not to do this, but I feel like I must." And he addresses the reader at the most exasperating times: "So before we get to this next part, I'm going to leave you hanging over the edge of a cliff for five pages while I tell you the life story of a particular character you've seen mentioned several times already." I felt like in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, at Scene 24: "GET ON WITH IT!!!!"

I also thought the author's use of symbolism - constantly comparing the rape of Sita, and rape in general, to the institution of colonization -- was really heavy-handed. After awhile I was like, "Yes, Lindsey Collen, I get the metaphor. It's very nice. Now...GET ON WITH IT!!!"

Iqbal is a very unusual choice for a narrator: a friend of Sita's, not involved in the rape, didn't find out about it for years, plays basically no role in the story except as an observer. I'm not sure how I feel about that, though it was interesting to read about rape from the perspective of a man.

The book redeemed itself in the last quarter, however, when we finally get to the part where Sita is raped. The rape scene was arrestingly authentic. The description of Sita's thoughts going everywhere at once: what is he going to do, is he going to kill me, how can I survive this, can I get away, the doors are locked, I haven't got good shoes, what will happen if I hit him, what will happen if I somehow get outside, can I talk him down, why is he doing this, I must minimize the damage, think of stories I've heard in the past about these situations, okay, I have to do something, let's try this..." All in about two seconds she is thinking this, while still half-disbelieving: this is stupid, this is ridiculous, how could this be happening? And then afterwards the superficial calm, cold rational thinking, the cleaning up, the deliberate donning of a "normal" mask to go out and face your obligations in the world. It looks like you, but it's a mask, and if you look closely you can see that it doesn't quite fit. And here Iqbal's addressing the reader again, second-guessing all of Sita's decisions and actions, speculating as to what the outcome might have been if this or that had happened differently -- not judging her, not even judging the rapist, only mulling over the entire episode. Much the way the rape victim does in the hours and days and weeks and the rest of her life after the attack. I know it all too well. Never before have I seen a rape portrayed in such detail, and every detail perfect.

I was left feeling conflicted and not a little uneasy. I think this will be a hard book to forget.… (meer)