In Beautiful Disguises - Hardcover

Balasubramanyam, Rajeev

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0747547025 ISBN 13: 9780747547020

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC, 2000

Synopsis

The story of an Indian girl who imagines herself in Audrey Hepburn movies. Life outside her fantasies is harsh. Her father is an alcoholic, who beats his all-suffering wife, and her lazy brother has given up work. Our heroine's inner world begins to crumble when a marriage is arranged for her.

About this title

Review

In Beautiful Disguises is the debut novel by Rajeev Balasubramanyam, who was born in 1974 in Lancashire but sets his charming and often very funny story in a rural village in Southern India. At first sight it seems the increasingly common tale of a rebellious young woman refusing to accept family traditions when the time comes for her to be married. Yet Balasubramanyam's witty and frank account of the heroine's escape from convention is surprisingly refreshing. The narrator knows at an early age that she is different from her silent mother, her bullying father and her compliant sister. Her only kinship is with her elder brother Ravi, an office clerk with a "bananaesque nose" who takes his frustration out on her as a way of showing familiarity. Consequently, like any outsider graced with a lively imagination, the heroine hides out in the Magick Movie House each day and dreams of becoming Holly Golightly.

Pressure mounts when her sister is forced to wed a "transatlantic demi-god" and she confesses to his grandfather that she has no intention of marrying. He advises that every actress needs a passion for cinema, "Experience of Life" and a means to acquire food, clothing and shelter--"milk, cotton, bricks". She resolves to run away and, aided by the grandfather, finds herself as a maid to a white woman who resembles "some kind of pubescent parakeet" in the city in the north, where the "air had a sootiness to it; it smelt of petrol and hard, sun-dried excrement". She cheerfully resigns herself to this being "the uninteresting period" in her life before stardom, and learns from the colourful cast of people around her that "identity is rather a matter of self-perception". Although a little over-written at times, the cheeky, determined voice of the heroine as she waits for the beautifully disguised film star in training to emerge keeps you engaged to the end.--Cherry Smyth

From the Publisher

Reviews
'Colourful, spirited and crackling with charm' GUARDIAN

'Delightful...bawdy and comic yet not without its moments of seriousness and emotional depth' DAILY TELEGRAPH

'Compelling... this novel is the threshold work of a writer of sharp vision with a moving beauty of words' TRIBUNE

'An enchanting novel... with a wonderful cast of characters... beautifully written in deceptively simple prose' SAINSBURY'S MAGAZINE

'Increadably funny... charming and delightful' EASTERN EYE

'Rajeev Balasubramanyam has created vivid, unforgettable characters... this wonderful novel is deceptively playful, its easy humour unravelling to reveal serious intentions at its heart' EMILY PERKINS

Edition details

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
• Publication date: 2000
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0747547025
• ISBN 13: 9780747547020
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 192