Book: The Red Carpet
Author: Lavanya Sankaran
Pages: 224
Read On: Paperback
How Long It Took Me Read: 3 days.
Plot Summary: Wry humor and a delicious grasp of the friction between generations in Bangalore are the hallmarks of Lavanya Sankaran’s fresh, deeply nuanced debut collection. “A potpourri of beggars and billionaires and determinedly laid-back ways,” Bangalore, India’s own Silicon Valley, is a crucible for prosperity, and at the chaotic crossroads between past and present. Here, American-trained professionals like Tara return to their old-fashioned families with heads full of Quentin Tarantino dialogue; a successful entrepreneur is shaken when his partner suddenly reneges on their plan to return to America; a traditional Indian mother slyly circumvents her Western-educated daughter’s resistance to marriage; a neighborhood gossip is determined to discover what goes on behind the closed curtains of the hip young couple across the street; a chauffeur must reconcile his more orthodox credos with his employer’s miniskirt lifestyle.
General Thoughts: I picked this book up during a massive sale. I love me some short-stories. And I want to read more of this genre. I brought this book along with me on holiday because short-stories are perfect reads during travel. You can dip in and out and read it in your own sweet time.
I had no expectations going into this book. I want expecting just pleasing stories and easy reads. I enjoyed this book. It was a fun read.
Things I Liked:
1. I love the length of these stories. They are short and crisp.
2. I enjoyed the writing.
3. I liked that some characters re-occurred in other stories, meaning you saw the same characters in minor roles in other stories. I like when stories in a short-story collection have some ties that bind them. So I enjoyed this aspect of this book.
4. I loved the setting of this book- Bangalore, Bangalore is a city I love and spent 5 years of my life in. All of these stories are set in Bangalore, so I loved re-visiting a city love through the stories in this book.
5. I also loved the themes in this book- family, identity, love, relationships and change.
Things I Didn't Like:
1. Some of these stories just end abruptly. Without closure and at times without any proper ending. So if that sort of thing doesn't sit well with you, this is not a story collection you'll enjoy. Some of these endings irked me quite a bit.
Rating: 3.5/5
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