|
Marrying Anita: A Quest for Love in the New India | 
 enlarge | Author: Anita Jain
Publisher: Bloomsbury USA
Category: Book
List Price: $24.99
Buy New: $13.93
You Save: $11.06 (44%)
New (30) Used (9) from $13.89
Avg. Customer Rating:  13 reviews
Sales Rank: 49623
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1st
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 320
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.1
Dimensions (in): 8.3 x 5.5 x 1.2
ISBN: 1596911859
Dewey Decimal Number: 954.56035
EAN: 9781596911857
Publication Date: July 22, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: Brand new item. Over 3.5 million customers served. Order now. Selling online since 1995. Order with confidence. Code: B20081130225628T
|
| Also Available In:
|
| Similar Items:
|
| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
Is arranged marriage any worse than Craigslist? One smart and feisty woman’s year in India looking for a husband the old-fashioned way reveals a rapidly changing culture and a whole host of ideas about the best way to find a mate.
Anita Jain was fed up with the New York singles scene. After three years of frustration and awkward dates, and under constant pressure from her Indian parents to find someone, she started to wonder: was looking for a husband in a bar any less barbaric than traditional arranged marriage? After all this effort, there had to be something easier.
After announcing in a much-discussed New York magazine article her intention to try arranged marriage, Jain moves back to India—the impoverished, backward land her parents fled—to find a husband. At age thirty-two, and well past the cultural deadline for starting a family, Jain subjects herself to a whole new onslaught of expectations. Marrying Anita is an account of romantic chance encounters, nosy relatives, and dozens of potential husbands. Will she find a suitable man? Will he please her parents, aunts, uncles, and cousins? Is the new urban Indian culture in which she’s searching really all that different from America?
With disarming candor, Jain tells her own romantic story even as it unfolds before her, and in the process sheds new light on a country modernizing at breakneck speed. Marrying Anita is a refreshingly honest look at our own desires and the modern search for the perfect mate.
|
| Customer Reviews: Read 8 more reviews...
 Beach Read or Pulitzer Prize winner? Maybe BOTH! July 31, 2008
10 out of 15 found this review helpful
I read many novels, but I don't often take the time to write reviews of books here. Marrying Anita was so enjoyable, I am making the point to write on Ms Jain's behalf. She deserves an accolade here.
A literary koosh ball, this book is easy to read and hard to put down. I was so endeared by her trials and prevails that I really do hope a sequel is percolating in her mind. She writes with the flow of a close friend's voice, but definitely a very SMART friend. Her vocabulary is far more advanced than mine, but it never got in the way of her story.
In short, the story was a good one and very well told. Simple and sophisticated in one swift stroke. Her descriptions paint such a vivid picture, yet were never boring. And dealing with sometimes sensitive topics, she is so honest. I really respect her for voicing these thoughts we can all share, in the clear view of her Papa, who is mentioned so frequently and with such endearment.
This can be an easy finish-in-one-day beach book, or a great book club read. It has been a long time since I have been so drawn in to a book. Thank you and congratulations to Anita Jain.
I loved this book August 14, 2008
4 out of 6 found this review helpful
I really did. First of all, the story is so charming and interesting. I was her - only not Indian - I was over 30 and not married and I wanted to be married. She gave a name to many of the feelings that I had during that period of my life.
Second, I absolutely loved her description of India - I've never been there and she made it come alive for me.
Read this book.
Sex and the City goes to India November 29, 2008
When author Anita Jain mentioned "baroque absurdity" and "the tincture of caricature" in the very first sentence of the book, I braced myself for 300 pages of pomposity. Oh brother, I thought to myself, another writer trying too hard to appear intellectual and instead just being annoying.
Luckily, as the book went on, the pretentiousness decreased a bit and was accompanied by a heartfelt page-turner of a memoir recounting Jain's dating experiences in India. Her first-hand accounts of the sexual liberation among India's young people, the lingering ill-effects of the caste system, internet dating and many other topics are fascinating and often hilarious. Jain is worldly, intelligent writer. However, she does make too much of an effort to prove this. The numerous foreign phrases and multi-syllabic adjectives she sprinkles into her writing are unnecessary and distracting.
She is also brutally honest about her escapades and self-limiting behavior and at times candid to the point where you start to feel sorry for her relatives and former lovers whose dirty laundry is aired so publicly. In any case, this all makes for a very entertaining book.
As some have already pointed out here, you do shake your head in frustration at times while reading this book as you see Jain engage in the self-destructive behavior often seen among accomplished 30-something single women. She finds herself obsessed with completely inappropriate partners who treat her like crap. She drinks and smokes pot/hash with a frequency that is unbecoming someone far beyond the age of youthful experimentation (you actually start to wonder if she has a substance abuse problem). Ditto for her going out to all those trendy Delhi clubs packed with scantily-clad teens and early 20-somethings--probably not the best venue for finding true love, especially for a Harvard-educated woman in her mid-30s.
As her happily married peers can attest (fortunately, I put myself in that category), sometime in your 20s or 30s, you realize that impossible drama with good-looking but vacuous partners, getting wasted, and going out to clubs every weekend is not a long-term plan for happiness.
Five stars for your book, Anita Jain. But please, forget about that hot 20-something guy who hangs up on you and uses you for sex. Look for and allow yourself to fall in love with a grown-up who treats you with respect. I think that is what all of us ultimately want, no matter how intellectual or socially sophisticated we may consider ourselves.
A woman, a world, an endless search for romance. August 13, 2008
3 out of 5 found this review helpful
This is a ridiculously readable and endlessly entertaining story of a woman who wanders the world while both sampling its sublime physical pleasures and, even more importantly, looking for an acceptable mate. Yeah, it has India in the title and the author ping-pongs her passions between New York and New Delhi, but this breezy, sexy and stunningly insightful slice of bittersweet life isn't about culture clash, really. It's all about looking for love, and all of the wonderfully nasty stuff that comes with the hunt.
 A look at the rapidly changing social mores of big-city India September 9, 2008
3 out of 4 found this review helpful
Not to give things away, but the title of this book doesn't do justice to its content. One blog says that 'Marrying Anita' covers the "cringe-worthy aftermath of her decision to move to India and seek an arranged marriage." I like that. The 'cringe-worthy' part is a testament to the author. She goes through some painful, uncomfortable stuff, but - to her immense credit - it's all recorded here on paper. Before the halfway point, you start wondering if the title event is in the cards for Ms. Jain. As the pages quickly run out, the answer becomes more and more apparent.
No matter - 'Marrying Anita' is still a compelling read because of its very interesting look at the rapidly changing social mores of India. [Well, of the big cities at least. The author notes that to go to the country is to be hurled back in time.] Ms. Jain dives headfirst into Delhi's go-go business and after-work cultures. She's come full circle from her parents' departure some thirty-plus years ago. Her reporter's keen eye compares her present-day experiences to what her father left behind. Moreover, she points out the sizable differences of today vs. her first foray to India immediately after college. The differences in those 11 or so years are striking.
In her Acknowledgments, the author says "I am profoundly fortunate for the as-of-yet unconditional love and support of my parents." I take that as: "Some of what is written here is going to test that." And how. But the love and respect that the author has for her parents pours out through the pages of this book.
|
|
|
|
Powered by Search-Save.com
| |
