IN BEAUTIFUL DISGUISES - Softcover

Rajeev Balasubramanyam

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0747553416 ISBN 13: 9780747553410

Publisher: Rajeev Balasubramanyam, 2001

Synopsis

Life may not be easy for a sixteen-year-old girl living in small-town South India, especially when she's blessed with a family like hers: an over-dutiful sister; a brother who watches TV as an occupation; a father who drinks and bullies his family and a silent mother. When the inevitable marriage is arranged for her, fuelled by her dreams and Audrey Hepburn movies, she runs away to The City. Secretly hoping she will step right into the shoes of her favourite character, Holly Golightly, she enters the service of the benevolent Mr Aziz. Making new friends - Raju the servant with the heart of a revolutionary, Maneka the maid who disappears each night, and Armand, Mr Aziz's arrogant but seductive son - she embraces this brave new world (acquiring a taste for croissants and champagne) but soon realises she can't run forever...

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: Rajeev Balasubramanyam
• Publication date: 2001
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0747553416
• ISBN 13: 9780747553410
• Binding: Paperback