Afbeelding van de auteur.

Leah Franqui

Auteur van America for Beginners

3 Werken 477 Leden 64 Besprekingen

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Fotografie: pulled from HarperCollins Publisher website

Werken van Leah Franqui

America for Beginners (2018) 333 exemplaren
Mother Land (2020) 107 exemplaren
After the Hurricane: A Novel (2022) 37 exemplaren

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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.
 
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hmonkeyreads | 51 andere besprekingen | 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.
… (meer)
 
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donwon | 51 andere besprekingen | 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.
… (meer)
 
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Sarah-Hope | 1 andere bespreking | Nov 14, 2022 |
Deze bespreking is geschreven voor LibraryThing Vroege Recensenten.
A surprisingly quirky read
 
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RealLifeReading | 51 andere besprekingen | Mar 11, 2022 |

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Statistieken

Werken
3
Leden
477
Populariteit
#51,683
Waardering
3.8
Besprekingen
64
ISBNs
33
Talen
1

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