CompleteMartialArts.com - Ladies Coupe
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List Price: $14.95
Our Price: $10.17
Your Save: $ 4.78 ( 32% )
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Manufacturer: St. Martin's Griffin
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 823.92
EAN: 9780312320874
ISBN: 0312320876
Label: St. Martin's Griffin
Manufacturer: St. Martin's Griffin
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 320
Publication Date: 2004-06-01
Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin
Studio: St. Martin's Griffin
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Editorial Reviews:
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Meet Akhila: forty-five and single, an income-tax clerk, and a woman who has never been allowed to live her own life - always the daughter, the sister, the aunt, the provider - until the day she gets herself a one-way ticket to the seaside town of Kanyakumari. In the intimate atmosphere of the all-women sleeping car - the 'Ladies Coupe' - Akhila asks the five women the question that has been haunting her all her adult life: can a woman stay single and be happy, or does she need a man to feel complete?
This wonderfully atmospheric, deliciously warm novel takes the reader into the heart of women's lives in contemporary India, revealing how the dilemmas that women face in their relationships with hunsbands, mothers, friends, employers and children are the same world over.
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: Nice writing style, underlying stories sound repetitive
Comment: Anita Nair's writing style is fluid however as a vivid reader of Tamil short stories and novels, I find the plots (both the main plot and sub plots) and the various metaphors and expressions used in the book to be things I have already encountered. May be the target audience of this book (probably not tamilians like me) justifies such usage.
Also, I found this to be a loosely cobbled together collection of short stories than a coherent novel. Each woman pours her heart out and says bye-bye. A better background than a rather uneventful train travel could have better forged the characters. It is also not clear if Akila derives any thoughts about her situation from the experiences of others. Given the ambiguous ending, it is not even clear if she came to some conclusion of what her future should be.
Customer Rating:
Summary: review
Comment: It was well written and i kept my interest in the book till the end.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Does the world care because you do what you want to?
Comment: Up until a few years ago in India, the Indian Railways maintained a separate coupe -- a ladies' coupe -- on every train to allow unfettered travel across the subcontinent for women travelling alone. This coupe becomes the backdrop for Anita Nair's book. The story is told in first person by Akhila, the protagonist, who is at first presented as a sympathetic figure: she sacrificed her life's dreams to maintain a modicum of normalcy for her sister and two brothers after her father was struck by a passing commuter bus (or did he intentionally step into its path, too tired to continue with life?) Her story is contrasted with that of five other women in the coupe. Some sories are sad (especially that of the last narrator who was raped and subsequently ostracized from her community), others are rather funny (like the one where the wife figures out that the Achilles heel of her fit-and-trim husband is food, and cooks delicious food for him so he become obese because (1) he is a terribly malicious, petty, and evil person, and (2) this is the only way she knows how to get back at him.) I suppose the intent of these stories is to assuage Akhila's self-pity, but towards the end of the novel, I get the feeling that Akhila is simply one of those people who think that martyring oneslf is the only way to give pleasure to those you love (or at least are supposed to take care of). Certainly, her life would not have turned out too bad if she would have followed her heart and did what it told her to. Society, relatives, and family would have come to terms with it. But a hallmark of those who makes great sacrifices or suffers much in order to further a principle is that they think the world revolves around them, and somehow everything would stop if they did not live upto the expectations others have in them. The world will not stop.
Customer Rating:
Summary: maybe a 2.5
Comment: I had a hard time deciding whether this book deserved a 2 or a 3. I thought I'd err on the side of being more generous.
While I do agree with one reviewer that it seems like Nair took a bunch of already-done stories and rehashed them in this novel (same dog, different haircut), her writing style won her back some points. It is an immensely readable book. Well-worded. I don't usually like books that move around abruptly in time, but this was presented in a very palatable manner here.
Once again, however, I encountered the same problem that I've had with many recent novels--I just couldn't bring myself to care a whole lot about most of the characters. Perhaps the market has been saturated with tragic stories of people being mistreated (or mistreating themselves) in foreign countries (or even here in the U.S.). It's really a genre of its own. Or maybe the author didn't flesh them out enough to make us care about them.
There's nothing new here, but it is well-written and worth an afternoon. If you haven't read anything like this before, this would be a great book to introduce you to the genre.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Not a unique story
Comment: I've read a number of novels chronicaling the south asian female experience, and I didn't find this story to be original at all, save for the "5 women traveling on a train" bit. It seems like Nair took all those other stories out there, put a new bow on it and published it. Each of the women's stories follow the same tragic, sad path. I kept waiting for, hoping for, well, the hope. I also found Nair's language trite and disconnected. At one instance, the main character is incredibly self-aware, in the very next she's crippled by fear and insecurity. I'll offer that perhaps this could be a translation issue? Not sure if this was orginally published in another language...I found a number of typos too (I think the last line of the book was a major typo - how does that happen?!?)
Overall, I'd say that if you're new to this genre, you'll probably find this interesting. If you've already read others in this genre (e.g., Anita Desai's books, Clear Light of Day, etc.), I'd soooo skip this one. Lots more compelling and original stories out there (Brick Lane, White Teeth, The Namesake -- they don't take place in India, but all incredibly compelling stories about the Asian experience). Hope this helps!
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