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The Red Carpet | 
 enlarge | Author: Lavanya Sankaran
Publisher: Dial Press Trade Paperback
Category: Book
List Price: $13.00
Buy Used: $0.01
You Save: $12.99 (100%)
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Rating:  14 reviews
Sales Rank: 481701
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 224
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.4
Dimensions (in): 8.2 x 5.5 x 0.6
ISBN: 0385338201
Dewey Decimal Number: 813
EAN: 9780385338202
ASIN: 0385338201
Publication Date: April 25, 2006
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Condition: no marks
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| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
Wry humor and a delicious grasp of the friction between generations in Bangalore are the hallmarks of Lavanya Sankaran’s fresh, deeply nuanced debut collection. “A potpourri of beggars and billionaires and determinedly laid-back ways,” Bangalore, India’s own Silicon Valley, is a crucible for prosperity, and at the chaotic crossroads between past and present. Here, American-trained professionals like Tara return to their old-fashioned families with heads full of Quentin Tarantino dialogue; a successful entrepreneur is shaken when his partner suddenly reneges on their plan to return to America; a traditional Indian mother slyly circumvents her Western-educated daughter’s resistance to marriage; a neighborhood gossip is determined to discover what goes on behind the closed curtains of the hip young couple across the street; a chauffeur must reconcile his more orthodox credos with his employer’s miniskirt lifestyle.
Witty, affectionate, and wonderfully wise, Lavanya Sankaran’s first collection attests to her remarkable literary talent.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 9 more reviews...
 Good book to read November 30, 2008
really good book; "Bangalore Stories" is a touching quasi-ethnographic portrait of Bangaloreans today. I came across this book by accident and was very impressed.
What a surprise! October 30, 2006
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
What a surprise! I chose this book hoping to find something that would help me better understand the other half of my IT team that resides in Bangalore. I got much more than I had hoped for. In addition to providing insight into Bangalore life I found a series of stories that had me laughing out loud at one moment and moved to tears in the next. If your intrest is in short stories, not just Bangalore or India, you might enjoy "The Hotel Eden" by Ron Carlson.
Wonderful insightful look at a culture March 4, 2006
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
A friend from India gave me this book to read. She had purchased it on her last trip home. I read it quite quickly and thoroughly enjoyed each story. I really don't know much about the real India, today's India and the book is fascinating. You get wonderful insights into this culture, the juxtaposition of old and new, traditional and modern, and not only that, the writing is beautiful. Highly recommended!
A very enjoyable and nostalgic read December 27, 2005
8 out of 8 found this review helpful
As an Indian who was raised in india and spent time in bangalore and now lives in the US, this book was a walk down memory lane for me. The characters and events portrayed were so real and the issues dealt with are so current...the clash of cultures, the bizarre blend of western lifestyles and indian society, the clash of new money and old values, the depiction of iyer brahmins etc....
I made a recent visit to Bangalore and read this book after my return and I was shocked at how closely these stories mirrored the lives and choices of many of my contemporaries back "home".
some of the writing was a little cliched and verbose but overall I enjoyed it so much that i re-read some of the stories. I honestly felt homesick when I read her stories.
Highly recommended!
 A fresh and bold first attempt that does not muster literary verve. September 20, 2005
1 out of 7 found this review helpful
Having read the book, as well as the other 9 reviews posted here, I am compelled to submit a detailed opinion because I feel the others have either misjudged the book, or lack an understanding of what counts towards literary merit.
First the good: I liked the book for its "reminiscence factor" - the nostalgia it evoked in my mind - having spent a good 6+ years of my college and post-graduate life in Bangalore's emerging tech scene. The stories, the setting and its characters are perceptively real and accurate. In particular I liked The Red Carpet, Birdie Num-Num and Two Four Six Eight (in order). And most of all, I liked these stories because Sankaran has picked up very fresh settings for the classic themes she uses in her stories.
Now the critical, and sorry to disappoint you, the not-up-to-the-mark part. On numerous occasions the writer reveals a proclivity to overuse her skill, against the needs of the short story. At times the stories appear rushed; events occur almost on cue - as if the writer makes the character ask just the right question (see Priva's questions towards the latter part of Alphabet Soup); details not material to the singular purpose of the short story are included etc. Where she is unable to reveal character by either action or dialogue, she just tells you (in Apple Pie, One By Two the seemingly unfathomable distance between Swamy's intellectual capabilities as a software developer v/s his peers is quite literally stated as-is, after numerous occasions and attempts to describe it in other ways)!
For example, in Closed Curtains we learn of the prestige of "plantation jobs" during Mr. D'Costa youth. In this, and many such situations, Sankaran goes out of her way to include vivid but irrelevant details into her stories. The vividness with which she may remember the times she writes about do not have a necessary bearing on the developments the themes of her stories demand. (This is a short story, not a novel!) Murthy, the thief who steals the show - in Bombay This - is necessarily left undisturbed so he can be sprung-up in the end. Cliches also abound: the shallow, materialistic character in Apple Pie, One By Two is named Rahul - a decidedly north-Indian name (so is the modern couple in Closed Curtains). The orthodox Iyer in Alphabet Soup must live in Malleswaram. In Bombay This, the use of uncertainty as an effect works against the story: it is self defeating. The weights of the choices present to Ramu - for and against Ashwini - are not equally well developed. Instead Ramu's conflict becomes more and more internalized and in the end the reader and writer are working against one another, trying to outguess the other in what he might choose.
In the end I was left feeling that several parts of some stories read more like movie scene plots, while other stories, for example Alphabet Soup and Apple Pie One By Two, try to tackle topics in a manner more suitable for a novel or novella. Perhaps the weight of the topics is too much for the short story to bear; perhaps the story ought to be much longer. Either way, the result is well below literary merit. Essentially, the stories fail on one central principle: various parts in them fail to contribute towards a singular and unique effect that the story aims for.
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