Incantations and Other Stories - Softcover

Appachana, Anjana

3.87

163 ratings by Goodreads

9780140172805: Incantations and Other Stories

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0140172807 ISBN 13: 9780140172805

Publisher: South Asia Books, 1992

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This first collection of fiction by Anjana Appachana provides stories that are beautifully written, the characters in them carefully and respectfully drawn. All the stories are set in India, but the people in them seem somehow displaced within their own society—a society in transition but a transition that does not come fast enough to help them. Appachana manages to capture the pervasive humor, poignancy, and self-delusion of the lives of the people she observes, but she does so without seeming to pass judgments on them. She focuses on unexpected moments, as if catching her characters off guard, lovingly exposing the fragile surfaces of respectability and convention that are so much a part of every society, but particularly strong in India, with its caste system, gender privileges, and omnipresent bureaucracies.

All life seems to be prescribed; these characters bravely or cautiously confront the rules and regulations or finally give in to them resignedly—any small triumphs they achieve are never clear-cut. One of the most unusual aspects of many of the stories is the way in which they are informed by but never ruled by the author's feminism. She never lectures her readers but lets us see for ourselves: a bride caught in a hopeless marriage where she has given up all rights to any life of her own, a hapless college student who is confined to campus for minor infractions just at the time when she had an appointment for an abortion, a young girl who keeps the dark secret of her sister's rape, a woman executive and a digruntled male clerk both trapped in the intricate bureaucracy of their business firm and the roles they must play to survive there. By turns warm, gullible, arrogant and bigoted, all of these characters live their lives amid contradictions and double standards, superstitions and impossible dreams. Appachana's vision is unique, her writing superb. Readers will thank her for allowing them to enter territory that is at once distant and exotic but also familiar and recognizable.

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About the Author:

ANJANA APPACHANA went to school in India and graduated from Delhi University and Jawaharlal Nehru University. In 1984 she left India to live in the United States, where she graduated from Pennsylvania State University. Her stories have been widely published in journals and magazines in India and the United States. One of the stories in this collection ("Her Mother") won an O'Henry Festival prize in 1989. Anjana Appachana now lives in Tempe, Arizona, and is working on a novel.

From Publishers Weekly:

This generally engaging collection explores an India in which superstitions, secrets, warring values and family obligations enmesh the inhabitants, as their dreams and aspirations fade. The characters closely examine the tenuous threads that bind them to one another--as lovers, family, friends or co-workers--and they express their insights in vivid, often wistful, prose. The strongest stories delve into the particular difficulties of women's lives: a college student enters a loveless marriage after a failed abortion in "The Prophecy"; a worried mother writes her absent daughter, and in the process discerns the daughter's secret, in "Her Mother"; in the title story, a woman's marital tragedy forever alters her younger sister's life. "When Anklets Tinkle" is a gem: a delightfully airy story of ghosts, young lovers and farcical goings-on that provides a respite from the more somber pieces. In "Sharmaji" and "Sharmaji and the Diwali Sweets," which deal with the workplace instead of the home and family, Appachana loses her sure touch. Nevertheless, this is an usually strong first collection.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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