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July 10, 2006
Review of Dancing with the Two-Headed Tigress, by Tina Biswas. (London, Transworld, 2006.)
The two headed tigress of the title are the rather off-putting Tuhina and Darshini, a supposedly super-chic, and super-remote mother-daughter duo. The association of this duo with the tiger imagery belongs to their somewhat intimidated husband and father, Prakesh, who is not as comfortable in his London life as the two headed tigress definitely is. Into this family comes Mousuni, daughter of Tuhina's late brother, a fat, gauche young woman fresh from India. In broad brushstrokes, this is the backbone of the novel, although Biswas does pad out the novel with a fairly large cast of related characters, located in England, Ireland and India.
The novel contains some nice comic touches, some clever flippancies, and some witty little sketches of characters' backgrounds and settings. However, although it jogs along easily enough, its structure lacks shape and direction, and the majority of its characters are a tad two-dimensional. The awkwardness of a Mousumi in an elegant, expensive London environment is amusingly and well captured, but the portrayal of the Irish hometown of Seph (Darshini's lover) is weak and unconvincing. Some of Biswas' lively exaggerations find their mark, while in other cases, her other exaggerations gloss over interesting complexities without managing to tease them out,
costing the novel in terms of strength and even personality.
One key storyline in the novel is the development of Darshini and Seph's relationship, but regrettably both these characters are self-absorbed and insipid ones, and their relationship represented quite the most uninspired and uninspiring elements of the novel. These two central characters came across quite as plasticky as a pair of Ken
and Barbie dolls, with about as much capacity for passion, and their romance is consequently about as interesting. The more minor characters are drawn more amusingly, with a warmer, fresher touch, and were far more interesting to read about. Biswas has a light hearted manner of writing that makes for fairly pleasant and definitely easy reading, but her novel would have benefited from more careful handling. As it stands, it is teetering at the edge of the ‘chick-lit’ category, when more attention to detail and more better structuring could have lent it much more depth and substance.
Posted by Lisa Lau at July 10, 2006 03:08 AM
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Posted by: Anonymous at July 10, 2006 03:08 AM
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