The Five-Dollar Smile: And Other Stories - Hardcover

Tharoor, Shashi

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1559702257 ISBN 13: 9781559702256

Publisher: Arcade Pub, 1993

Synopsis

A collection of short stories by the author of The Great Indian Novel reveals a strong sense of language and narrative development and deals with such subjects as the traumas of youth, deceit, death, and more.

About this title

About the Author

Shashi Tharoor was born in London and brought up in Bombay and Calcutta. He has written for the New York Times, the Washington Post, the International Herald Tribune, the Times of India, and Foreign Affairs. A human rights activist and winner of a Commonwealth Writers Prize, he is currently a member of the Indian Parliament and lives in New Dehli, India.

From Kirkus Reviews

A collection of early stories--most written when the Indian- born Tharoor (Show Business, etc.) was in his late teens and early 20s--that are more a foretaste of the good things to come than accomplishments in themselves. With the exception of ``The Solitude of the Short-story Writer,'' the pieces here are set in India, where cosmopolitan city-dwellers may have a lingering sentimental affection for the countryside they long ago left but are seduced by an increasingly Western culture. Two stories--``The Village Girl'' and ``City Girl''--are updated versions of the old children's tale of ``The Country Mouse and the Town Mouse'': a sophisticated male student (in the first story) and a sophisticated young woman (in the second), both reluctantly visiting their respective family's old country homes, are taught some surprising--and profound--lessons by the countryfolk they thoughtlessly seduce. The most mature piece here is that of the title, in which a lonely orphan--the ``poster- child'' of an organization raising money for the institution--is determined to visit the family in America that have ``adopted'' him and writes deliberately touching letters to them. The letters result in a ticket for a three-week visit, but on the flight, surrounded by strangers and unfamiliar objects, the boy suddenly experiences an intense loneliness: ``he was alone, lost somewhere between a crumpled magazine clipping and the glossy brightness of a color photograph.'' Other notables are: ``The Boutique'' (a son witnesses the humiliation of his mother by a group of urban sophisticates); ``Auntie Rita (a young man's affair with his aunt in the city ``becomes a ticket back home, but not just to the life he had known at home, new worlds beckoned''); and the bittersweet ``The Death of a Schoolmaster'' (a politically ambitious son causes inadvertent harm). Like most youthful forays: best forgiven and, with few exceptions, best forgotten. -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: Arcade Pub
• Publication date: 1993
• ISBN 10: 1559702257
• ISBN 13: 9781559702256
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 175