Author: Victor Rangel-Riberio
Publisher: HarperCollins
Year: 2003
Language: English
Pages: 223
ISBN/UPC (if available): 8172234465
Description
An elegantly styled and evocative collection bound together by the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself. The twelve stories in this volume transport a reader back and forth from the villages and towns of India's west coast to life in the concrete canyons of New York.
But whether a story is set on our own shores or in the Indian Diaspora in the west, the heroes and heroines are flesh-and-blood characters such as we meet in our daily lives-the odds are stacked against them as we so often find them stacked against us.
There are stories that make one laugh: Peter finds himself battling an ever-multiplying army of ants; a romantically inclined aging man plans a bizarre end-of-the-millennium party; a father tries to show his son in far-off Paris how to write a letter home when his typewriter is falling apart.
And stories that tug at the heartstrings: a widowed Indian woman in New York, forgetting her own loneliness, reaches out to a Chinese neighbor who seems even lonelier; a penniless street urchin riding a late-night tram spares more than a thought for the family with whom he shares a pavement; a college youth loses his love not once but twice to the same cause.
REVIEW
Rangel-Ribeiro never strikes a false note. These are his people, this is his land, and he knows them well.
-Outlook
Contents
Acknowledgments
Moon Dance
An Anna's Worth of Kindness
Lonely Aging Chinese- American
New York Neighbor Lady
The Miscreant
Keeping in Touch
How I Missed My Chance to
Become a Real Porno Star
Reaching Out
Peter and the Ants
The Specials of the Day
Night Encounter
Uncle Prabhu's Special Y2K Party
Loving Ayesha