Diamond Dust & Other Stories - Softcover

Desai, Anita

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0099289644 ISBN 13: 9780099289647

Publisher: Vintage, 2001

Synopsis

Paperback. Pub Date: 2001 Pages: 224 in Publisher: VINTAGE Whole lives come into focus in this rich and diverse collection as Desai. trains her luminous spotlight on private universes from India to Canada and New England from Cornwall. to Mexico. Her protagonists set forth on journeys and find themselves suddenly beyond the pale. or surprisingly back where they started from. Caught up in the cycles of hope and disappointment. their lives are ruled by the seasons. at the mercy of heat and dust. or straitjacketed by the conventions of hospitality. friendship and family. In the title story. a beloved dog. black as Satan. ings nothing but disaster; in another. a businessman away from home sees his own death; and elsewhere. old relationships stir up buried resentments. issues demand commitment - or escape. And in the final quiet masterpiece. one of Delhi's girls of slender means ...

About this title

Product Description

Whole lives come into focus in this rich and diverse collection, as Desai trains her luminous spotlight on private universes from India to Canada and New England, from Cornwall to Mexico. Her protagonists set out on journeys and find themselves suddenly beyond the pale, or surprisingly back where they started from. Caught up in cycles of hope and disappointment, their lives are ruled by the seasons, or straitjacketed by the conventions of hospitality, friendship and family. In the title story, a beloved dog, black as Satan, brings nothing but disaster; in another, a business man away from home sees his own death; and elsewhere, old relationships stir up buried resentments, issues demand commitment - or escape. And in the final quiet masterpiece, one of Delhi's girls of slender means finds a kind of joy and freedom in a strange rooftop community.

Review

Anita Desai, in a succession of fine novels and short story collections written over almost 40 years, was one of the first writers from the sub-continent to introduce Western readers to post-Independence India. In Diamond Dust, her latest collection of stories, she expands her geographical and cultural terrain and, with her customary skill and an often sly but tender wit, homes in on the little and larger pinpricks of daily life.

In "Winterscape", a quietly haunting tale, two Punjabi village women try to make sense of the chilly world inside and outside a snowy Toronto window; in several other stories it is summer heat that becomes the catalyst. An ageing couple are stuck in a stultifying Delhi by the visit of an old Oxford friend, who trades on his charm; the family in "Five Hours to Simla", caught up in a road-raging traffic jam, are distracted by a perambulating Universe of hawkers, beggars and hungry curs; a scorcher of an evening on the Cornish coast causes a young couple nothing but misery; young Polly at summer camp in Massachusetts, has fallen under the thrall of Art in the form of her art teacher, until her Miss Jean Brodie enthusiasm takes on the disturbing shape of Miss Mabel Dodd.

Desai's wonderfully deft characterisation and telling dialogue, and the visual precision of her small-scale worlds--little absurdities of manner and mood, small acts of cruelty, intentionally crossed lines, the unheard of cries for attention--are what give her work such pleasure and humane significance. If occasionally the plot lines become too strained, this weakness is more than compensated for by the sheer affectionate regard in which she defines the frailties and expectations of her characters. --Ruth Petrie

About this edition

• Publisher: Vintage
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0099289644
• ISBN 13: 9780099289647
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 224