How Did We Spend Our Weekend, Girls?

Did we create something? A red velvet cake? A puff pastry? Did we shop for shoes at Neiman Marcus? I mean, what else is a bad weather weekend for.

Over such weekend I finished "The Inheritance of Loss" by Kiran Desai. Let me tell you that for all the attendant hoopla--the front page of the New York Times Book Review, the 2006 Man Booker Prize--I found it 357 pages of skillful writing that should have emerged as a transporting reading experience, but did not. Why? Because the author is painting a large canvass on too small a palette. The novel is about conflicts and coutner conflicts--among the nation, among the characters--with very few plot threads satisfactorily resolved. Desai goes so far as to reference M.M. Kaye's "The Far Pavillions," and while she aims substanially higher for literary content than that massive tome, Kaye's book, for all its grandiosity is in the end more satisfying. Not to mention Desai's book is relentelessly downbeat, so that the quasi affirmative ending falls flat in comparison with the rest of the book. Nonetheless Desai's writing talent and emotional truthfulness is unmistakable; if she can overcome her flawed techniques she may produce a book worthy of all the awards this one has been given.

Have a good day, girls!