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The "East" of Ruth Prawer Jhabvala's
East into Upper East refers to India's sprawling metropolis, New Delhi; the "Upper East," not surprisingly, is that
other big city, New York. In this short-story collection, Jhabvala explores the nature of love on two continents. The first tales take place in India. In "Expiation," the narrator, an affluent cloth broker, must deal with a much beloved but mentally unstable younger brother. Many years of closing his eyes to the evidence of his brother's delinquency eventually puts the entire family at risk. In "Farid and Farida," a marriage that had soured when transported from India to London reanimates in an unconventional way when the two estranged spouses meet again years later under a Banyan tree in India. Jhabvala moves from the six stories set on the subcontinent to New York with "The Temptress," in which an Indian holy woman is literally imported to the States by a wealthy American. From there, the author delves into the lives of Manhattanites. In "Fidelity," for example, Dave, his wife, Sophie, and his sister, Betsy, live in a symbiotic relationship stronger than betrayal, disappointment, and even death.
The subtitle of Jhabvala's collection is Plain Tales from New York and New Delhi, and plain they are--if by that you mean stories that are straightforward in the telling. This is not to say, however, that they are not subtle. Jhabvala's characters are multifaceted and the situations in which they find themselves complex. In East into Upper East she proves once again that a complicated story can be plainly told, yet resonate all the more powerfully for its simple elegance and economy. --Margaret Prior
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From Publishers Weekly
The author is too modest. Written over a span of 20 years, the 13 stories gathered here (five of which have appeared in the New Yorker) are not "plain" at all. Rather, they're rich in character, observation and insight. The "Upper East" of the title refers to the Manhattan neighborhood; the title itself may echo Kipling's Plain Tales from the Hills. Novelist (Out of India) and screenwriter (A Room with a View) Jhabvala depicts characters struggling to reconcile dependency and accommodation in their relationships. Enmeshed by financial and emotional need, her upper class Indians and New Yorkers go to extremes to oblige companions, families and lovers. In the opening story, "Expiation," a New Delhi man reflects guiltily on his responsibility toward his youngest brother, executed for murder. In one powerful New York story, "A Summer by the Sea," a woman with inherited wealth supports her husband's family while tolerating his infidelity with young men. The New York real estate agent in "Great Expectations" allows a family of strangers to take over her life, and the wife in "Fidelity" would rather die than let her unfaithful and criminally conniving husband return to jail. Acute as the New York narratives are, the New Delhi stories are both broader and deeper, perhaps because they are set against, and in part describe, the dramatic changes that have occurred in India over the last 60 years. Jhabvala deftly captures the dilemmas of people who straddle cultural divides: occidental and oriental, colonized and "free," traditional fealties and market capitalism. Her stories are "plain" finally because they are never flashy or postmodern. Instead, they study the wellsprings of character and the pressures of society that make people behave in often self-destructive or hurtful ways.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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