Settings & Atmosphere - Fiction, Women's Fiction, Indian & South Asian Fiction, Family & Friendship - Fiction, Literary Styles & Movements - Fiction, Arts & Entertainment - Fiction

Crane's Morning

Name: Crane's Morning
Author: Indrani Aikath-Gyaltsen
ISBN: 9780345383662

by Indrani Aikath-Gyaltsen

Write a review

Overview

Indrani Aikath-Gyaltsen's first novel, Daughters of the House, was a "wondrous accomplishment," in Amy Tan's words, marking a literary debut of "a major discovery in literature." The Baltimore Sun hailed her subtle tale of four women in rural India as "penetrating and beautifully written." Now, in her new novel, Aikath-Gyaltsen deepens her vision of village life in India, delving intimately into the yearnings of the human heart and the secret inner struggle between tradition and desire. Eccentric, intellectual, born to easy manners and with a taste for aesthetic pleasures, the Kushari family of the lost valley town of Mohurpukur lives on faded memories and suppressed emotions. All that remains of their wealth is the shell of the Big House, a shabbily splendid mansion overwhelmed by an unkempt rose garden; all that remains of their aristocratic heritage is an inbred sense of duty toward the townspeople. Kunal, the last male of the Kushari line and now the principal of the local college, creeps through life with the conviction of failure. Generous to a fault, Kunal is at once pampered and controlled by the women who surround him: his wife Gargi, possessed of the grace of an artist and the temper of a tigress; his smiling old aunt Vidya, keeper of all secrets of the past; his three willful daughters. Into these lives of muted desperation, a stranger arrives like a blast of damp, gritty wind. Vikran Sen, a playwright of some reputation, has just been released from a Calcutta prison. His appearance galvanizes the hermetic world of Mohurpukur, stirring up long buried emotions, revealing painful secrets, forging new alliances. Glowing with the dusty exotica of the Indian countryside - japoncia flowers and kookaburra birds - Cranes' Morning takes us deep inside a world as fascinating as it is strange. Delicately nuanced, brilliantly observed, by turns wryly comic and disturbingly sad, Cranes' Morning is an exquisite literary gem.

Synopsis

Indrani Aikath-Gyaltsen's first novel, Daughters of the House, was a "wondrous accomplishment", in Amy Tan's words, marking a literary debut of "a major discovery in literature". The Baltimore Sun hailed her subtle tale of four women in rural India as "penetrating and beautifully written". Now, in her new novel, Aikath-Gyaltsen deepens her vision of village life in India, delving intimately into the yearnings of the human heart and the secret inner struggle between tradition and desire. Eccentric, intellectual, born to easy manners and with a taste for aesthetic pleasures, the Kushari family of the lost valley town of Mohurpukur lives on faded memories and suppressed emotions. All that remains of their wealth is the shell of the Big House, a shabbily splendid mansion overwhelmed by an unkempt rose garden; all that remains of their aristocratic heritage is an inbred sense of duty toward the townspeople. Kunal, the last male of the Kushari line and now the principal of the local college, creeps through life with the conviction of failure. Generous to a fault, Kunal is at once pampered and controlled by the women who surround him: his wife Gargi, possessed of the grace of an artist and the temper of a tigress; his smiling old aunt Vidya, keeper of all secrets of the past; his three willful daughters. Into these lives of muted desperation, a stranger arrives like a blast of damp, gritty wind. Vikran Sen, a playwright of some reputation, has just been released from a Calcutta prison. His appearance galvanizes the hermetic world of Mohurpukur, stirring up long buried emotions, revealing painful secrets, forging new alliances. Glowing with the dusty exotica of the Indian countryside - japonciaflowers and kookaburra birds - Cranes' Morning takes us deep inside a world as fascinating as it is strange. Delicately nuanced, brilliantly observed, by turns wryly comic and disturbingly sad, Cranes' Morning is an exquisite literary gem.

Reviews

There are no reviews yet. Log in to write one.

Editorials

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Although lacking some of the impact of Gyaltsen's first novel, Daughters of the House , this finely nuanced tale of constricted lives in an isolated Indian town is marked by much of the same mixture of grace and keen observation. Ineffectual Kunal Kushari, college principal and village landlord, feels himself a failure as a teacher, a husband and a father. His proud, willful wife, Gargi, resents both her never-ending work caring for their three small daughters and her husband's elderly Aunt Kanan, whose presence in the Kushari family's dilapidated mansion prevents Kunal from selling it. The final ingredient in this concoction of clashing personalities and fading dreams is Bengali playwright Vikram Sen, Gargi's onetime suitor, who has just been released from prison after having been wrongly accused of abetting his rich wife's suicide. A subplot involves administrative infighting at the Kushari daughters' elementary school, where one of the teachers falls in love with Vikram Sen. This small gem of a book lays bare the human heart with a witty dissection of secret wishes that shape or subvert lives and destinies. (Jan.)

Library Journal

In her second novel, the author of Daughters of the House (Ballantine, 1993) deals with the problems of the Kushari family, who live in a run-down mansion in the Indian village of Mohurpukur. Oppressed by a lifelong sense of failure, Kunal, a gentle and perceptive college professor, is forced to take action when he discovers that his favorite daughter, Pia, is being mistreated at the private school she attends. His wife, Gargi, who chose the school, confronts the unhappiness of her life with Kunal after Vikram, her former lover, suddenly shows up in Mohurpukur. Aikath-Gyaltsen is a talented storyteller who creates sympathetic but very human characters. She moves her plot skillfully while painting a vivid picture of Indian village life. Recommended.-- Harriet Gottfried, NYPL

Donna Seaman

Aikath-Gyaltsen's newest novel is sunnier than her last, the tempestuous "Daughters of the House". It takes place in the tiny village of Mohurpukur and revolves around the somewhat eccentric Kushari family. Kunal is the only male. Gentle and bumbling, but intuitive and pure, he had aimed for the peaceful simplicity of bachelorhood but, ever chivalrous, married his distant cousin Gargi when her mysterious city beau broke off their engagement. Gargi and Kunal have an uneasy relationship that they neglect in favor of caring for their three young daughters. Everything is in stasis when the story begins, and everyone is short on money and dreams. Change arrives in the handsome form of a stranger named Vikram Sen, who promptly informs Kunal that he has just been released from prison. Kunal's aunt Kanan judges Vikram a good risk and allows him to move into her crumbling but grand Big House. Everyone is pleased until he and Gargi meet. As this little drama plays itself out, it becomes an almost magical tale of reconciliation. Not to say that there's anything shallow here; on the contrary, Aikath-Gyaltsen possesses a sort of X-ray vision into the heart, an unerring vividness of language, and a quietly wicked sense of humor.

Kirkus Reviews

A beautifully rendered second novel (Daughters of the House, 1993) set in a remote Indian Shangri-La that—like the best of fables—limns a time of benevolent transformation. When Vidya, a woman of great insight, wakes to see a flock of cranes "weaving their patterns" in the sky over Mohurpukur, she knows that change is on the way. As she tells her beloved nephew, the eccentric but intuitively sympathetic Kunal, whom she raised and in whose home she now lives, "the shuttle goes backwards and forwards, much the same year after year, and then the pause, like a hand wavering over a work basket looking for a new color to thread into the fabric of our days." And change begins that very morning as Kunal, the last of the great Kushari men, meets a starving and troubled stranger, Vikram Sen—a well-known playwright and the putative agent of change—who has just been released from prison after serving a brief sentence for his part in his wealthy wife's suicide. The Kushari family are also troubled: Gargi, who married Kunal on the rebound, mourns her lost love; Kunal regards himself as a failure in everything—from his work as a college principal to his role as a father; daughter Pia is terrified of Miss Bose, her bullying teacher; and old Miss Kushari worries that she will have to sell her Big House. Kunal feeds Vikram and directs him to the Big House, where Vikram finds work and unexpected happiness. Soon old secrets are revealed, the wicked routed, goodness rewarded, and true love found at last: perhaps too many easy happy endings, but then this is essentially a fable about the people who live in a wondrous place "that distilled happiness and restored souls."Wisdom gently deployed in luminous prose: a story Indian in setting but universal in its appeal to the human heart. A distinguished accomplishment.