Ivory Swing

by Janette Turner Hospital

Book Overview

Correlated to NCTM grade 3 curriculum standards, Mathworks! motivates students by relating math concepts and skills to real life situations. Each volume invites readers to take on a high-profile profession or an exciting sports challenge and use important facts, data gathering, and math applications to get the job done. A wealth of problem-solving activities build math skills while the colorful, high-interest approach engages students and encourages...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0525241701
• ISBN13: 9780525241706
• Release Date: May 1983
• Publisher: Dutton Books
• Length: 252 Pages

Customer Reviews

A Tale of A Clash of Cultures Beautifully Told

Sometimes if I read a writer's books out of the order in which they were written, I think that had I read the first one first, I might not have read any further. This certainly would not have been the case with this fine, beautifullly written first novel by Janette Turner Hospital. It certainly is as good as her other two later novels I have already read. David and Juliet, a young married couple from Ontario, along with their two children, travel to southern India where David, a college professor, will do research. They are not quite prepared for the India they discover. Ms. Hospital writes with the sensitivity and succinctness of a poet. The novel abounds in metaphoric language that works-- the image of Krishna and Radha on the swing of carved ivory keeps recurring. And this passage, for example: "It seemed that all understanding passed between them, the knowledge of all women who braid their own years into shackles, who weave with love and resentment the silken cages of their lives." The writer creates characters we will not soon forget: the overworldly beautiful and tragic Yashoda ". . .like a woman on an ivory swing -- translucent, a trick of the light, an artist's fantasy" and the boy Prabhakaran, whom we Westerners would love to tear away from his native land and take him home with us. This novel is all about what happens when two cultures clash, do Westerners have a right to impose their values on other cultures, and if so, how much, and are we ready to suffer the consequences? Do we from the West have all the answers or even the right ones? This would have been splendid as an only novel. How fortunate for us as readers that it was not, that Ms. Hospital continues to write one fine novel after another.

Magical Southern India

This book is good on a number of levels. It is one of Hospital's earlier books - which are better than her more recent attempts. There are plots/subplots and good descriptions. The spooky widow is a very well developed character. Excellent balance of expatriate life in India and the personal demons that haunt them from across the seas.