The ‘special’ omelets are not tasty though you wouldn’t want to put down the plate until you are done. In her first attempt as a novelist, Delhi born author Kavita Khanna entertainingly, or more appropriately –efficiently, narrates a heartwarming tale about the fortunes of a modern Indian family.
This charmless insipid novel explores the centrality of family in Indian culture by narrating the tale of an Indian couple that immigrates to the US to mitigate the financial strain on their family, successfully battles gambling addiction and returns wiser and closer together to India.
Ms. Khanna does an admirable job in pacing her novel though she does so at the expense of observation. She accepts as much, saying, “When I started writing Saturday Morning Omelettes, I made one conscious decision – to portray the story through dialogue rather than too many essay-style descriptions. I am guilty of tending to skip long wordy descriptions when I come across them in most books and wanted to avoid that in my work.”
A lot of times the novel chugs through the story; we don’t get to bite into the psychology of the characters or languorously appreciate the aroma of the morning omelet. Neither does Ms. Khanna spend time describing the initially humbling experiences that generally dent a recent immigrant’s life. For example, except for describing the damning quiet of the airport and the apartment, she neither spends time noticing the well-tarred roads nor the plush charm of US or problems interacting with Americans. In all, Ms. Khanna’s fails to conjure up the experiences of first-time visitors to the US in a nuanced fashion. The novel lacks the earthiness of a true immigrant tale for it shies from the endless awkwardness to talk superficially about chipped nails and nauseous fumes of Ammonia while cleaning the bathroom for the first time. Ms. Khanna would do well to write more honestly about the challenges of immigrant’s life. More damningly, the story sometimes seems rushed and mishandled.
I can’t help but bemoan the fact that Ms. Khanna fails to deal with issues more substantively. A lot of characters in the book don’t get much attention from the writer and hence come across as standard stereotypes like the struggling black girl and the sensible black grandparent. On multiple occasions, the dramatization in the story seems a touch melodramatic or Bollywood-esque. The ‘scenes’ (and that is how the book seems to be laid out) end abruptly, characters are one-dimensional, the angles explored are clichéd and the language positively empty.
In all a stunted exploration of important issues that is not recommended for anybody over the age of 14. Actually, make it 12.
Updated 12/12/06: “In the case of fiction, I have a particular abhorrence of reviewers who tell readers what book the novelist or short-story writer should have written instead of the one under review. If a reviewer can’t accept an author’s governing premise, or donnee, in Henry James’s famous term, then he or she has no business writing about the book.”
New York Times book editor Sam Tanenhaus in response to a reader’s question. I can’t help but agree that this is what happened to me and this book by Ms. Khanna.