America for Beginners: 09/13/20

I read America for Beginners by Leah Franqui for the road narrative spectrum project but found that it doesn't qualify despite the blurb and the cover art. The description says that a widow travels from India to California to find the truth of how her son died. While that is the basic narrative (plot) it's a misrepresentation of the narration (story telling).

Pival Sengupta, widow, has let her servants go, and spent her savings on a custom package tour from New York to California. She knows her son is dead and that he had been in a relationship with an American man. She has decided to go to where her son died and kill herself.

The reason this book doesn't qualify for the road narrative spectrum project is that Mrs. Sengupta's road trip is really an after thought to the rest of the narration. Her point of view is diluted by numerous other point of view chapters. Time is given to the man who runs the package tour, to her son and his lover, to the woman is serves as her guide. So much time is given to these other minor characters that Mrs. Sengupta's last days on earth are really more of a footnote to this book. Take everything else out of the novel and you're left with a terse and dispassionate novella.

Two stars

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