America for Beginners in Pelion Branch Library

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May 19, 2020 Dan rated it really liked it

Shelves: mainstream-fiction, contemporary-classic

This powerful book is an amazing achievement by such a young first-time author. Its strength is in the depth of the characterizations. Most authors are happy to really nail one or maybe a couple characters, showing readers what makes them tick, and using them to drive a main theme home.

Franqui treaded where angels would fear to go. Rather than use a few characters to provide us insights into human nature and the human condition, she does this for no less than six characters. At the end of the bo This powerful book is an amazing achievement by such a young first-time author. Its strength is in the depth of the characterizations. Most authors are happy to really nail one or maybe a couple characters, showing readers what makes them tick, and using them to drive a main theme home.

Franqui treaded where angels would fear to go. Rather than use a few characters to provide us insights into human nature and the human condition, she does this for no less than six characters. At the end of the book, we feel we know and have made six new friends. I consider Pival, a recently widowed Bengali woman the primary protagonist. Yet, Rebecca, her American guide, has a plight we come to know all too well. Pival's son, Bhim, and his lover, Jake, are completely drawn characters with their own stories. Satya, the young guide from Bangladesh, is fully drawn and so believable. Then, there's his antacid chewing boss, Ronnie Munshi, in a marriage with his awful mail-order wife, Anita. Each of these six fully drawn characters have unique and interesting struggles they are contending with. In portraying them, Franqui amazes us with her understanding of diverse people, their struggles, and the depth relationships can achieve as people struggle to overcome differences, personal and cultural, in outlook.

While the book has a rich plot--an Indian widow wants to renew her relationship with her possibly dead gay son, but has a personal journey to undergo before she can be ready to do this--it is the power of the relationships she learns to develop and personal growth she undergoes that makes this story so unforgettable. We the reader feel we undergo it as well, and that the pain is worth the journey.

Franqui's detractors, and there are few, rabidly want to chew and spit her out for her political or historical inaccuracies in perspective on the Bengali Indian - Bangladesh thing, the religion, the skin colors, the food, like it matters either to the world or her story. These critics, because they won't look past their narrow political agendas, miss the entire point of the novel, that its strength is in its characters and their growths, not its historical information or cultural geopolitics.

I hope Leah Franqui has a long and prosperous career. I'll certainly follow it if she does. ...more

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May 12, 2020 Karyn Myers rated it really liked it

This book starts with a journey that begins in India. Pival Sangupta books a very expensive trip through a agency that caters to Indians but is ran by a Bangladeshi man. She begins her tour in New York, joined by Satya, her guide and Rebecca an american companion hired by the agency. As they travel there are culture clashes along the way as each of the main characters interacts with each other and the places that they travel.
My first reactions of this book was really good. I enjoyed the descript ...more

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May 30, 2020 Deane Louise rated it really liked it

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