Socialite Evenings - Softcover

De, Shobhaa

2.6

348 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0143032755 ISBN 13: 9780143032755

Publisher: Penguin India, 2007

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Karuna, a prominent Bombay socialite, is trying to flee the nightmare of the present by escaping into the past. An unhappy divorce and a succession of sordid affairs have left her bruised and battered and, in an effort to forget, Karuna begins writing her memoirs. As the story of her life unfolds we see how the gauche middle-class girl metamorphoses into a star--and we also meet her friends and enemies: neurotic, man-hungry Anjali; gorgeous, vivacious Ritu; trampy, outrageous Si; Abe, who prefers young girls; Varun, a high-profile editor with a penchant for young boys; Krish, the pretentious adman, whose wife actively helps him in his extra-marital affairs; Girish, the art-film maker in search of the perfect 'Shakuntala'...All of these characters and more play out their lives against the backdrop of Bombay--a city unique unto itself...An accomplished first novel by a remarkable writer.

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About the Author:

Shobha De has founded and edited three popular magazines: Stardust, Society and Celebrity. She is presently a freelance columnist for several newspapers and magazines, as writing subsequent novels.

From Publishers Weekly:

Indian journalist De's distasteful portrait of Bombay high society regales the reader with rich, bored women seeking amorous adventures (usually leading to their own humiliation), self-absorbed (sometimes gay) men who offer their wives material comfort in exchange for an appearance of propriety, false gurus and glamorous parties that end in violence. Narrator Karuna succeeds in escaping from her drab middle-class life into the upper reaches of wealth and celebrity, passing along the way through a loveless marriage, a disastrous extramarital affair, and courtship by a leading Indian film director, and achieving eventual success and a sense of pride as an advertising copywriter and creator of a TV serial. The wealthy woman burdened with a loveless marriage and an empty life who goes out to discover herself may seem cliched to the West, but perhaps not in India. Yet this first novel, with its flat characterizations and graceless prose, fails either to pointedly depict the social dilemma of women like Karuna, or to effectively satirize the vulgarity of Bombay's nouveau Western aspirations and the cultural and moral dislocation that underlie it.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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