Sacred Cows

The Mouseproof Kitchen, by Saira Shah, a review

Long before becoming a mother herself, filmmaker and author Saira Shah was deeply attuned to children. As a war correspondent, her unsentimental but searing films, Death in Gaza and Beneath the Veil, showed the effects of children living in extreme conflicts. 

The misplaced bravado of Palestinian boys brainwashed by ideas of matyrdom and the haunting fear in the green eyes of young girls in a distant Afghan valley brought home the tragedy of their circumstances.

Saira's delicate telling of their stories remains vivid.

Her first novel, The Mouseproof Kitchen,  blends the real life story of her own daughter, born profoundly disabled, and the story of a fictional Type A couple, Anna and Tobias, coming to terms with a life they never bargained for. 

Synopsis

Anna is a planner. So when she discovers she’s pregnant, she prepares for a perfect new life in Provence, France, with her perfect new baby-to-be. Anna’s partner, the easy-going Tobias, shouldn’t have too much difficulty tagging along;after all, he’s a musician who rarely starts his day before noon. But all that changes when their baby is born severely disabled.

Anna, Tobias, and their daughter, Freya, end up in a rickety, rodent-infested farmhouse in a remote town in France; far from the mansion in Provence they had imagined. Little do they know that this is the beginning of what will become an incredible journey of the heart; one during which they learn there really is no such thing as a mouse-proof kitchen. Life is messy, and it’s the messy bits that make it count.

Review

 I couldn't leave this book in the next room, much less stop reading it. The first chapter describes the birth of Freya, elfin, beautiful. As Anna experiences the pain and then the intense joy of meeting her new baby, reality begins to intrude on her perfect moment. Like so many mothers, Anna's new baby is the culmination of years of longing, meticulous planning that inevitably ends in failure month after wretched month... and then, finally, a longed-for conception. Freya is the collision of dreams and needs... her coming gives Anna the illusion of a perfect beginning to a perfect new life.

What 'Slumdog Millionaire' represents

~By Anu. Suddenly, western newspaper editors are trying to get their heads around what the success of a film set in Mumbai's slums, made by a white Hollywood movie director represents.

Here's what Slumdog does NOT represent: it's not a ground-breaking expose of the real India. City of Joy, Salaam Bombay, Bandit Queen and even Monsoon Wedding did that years ago. I don't think the fact that Danny Boyle is white says anything terribly significant, except that he's a brilliant director with an exceptionally sharp and honest eye for story-telling.

But here's why Slumdog Millionaire IS unique: it's the first major Hollywood production set in India which doesn't feel the need to use foreigners or the English language as a crutch to make it to the box office. Simon Beaufoy, who wrote the script and Boyle himself obviously had the courage to go with an Indian as their main character (even though, ironically, the book Q&A, by Indian author Vikas Swarup includes white protagonists). They obviously had enough faith that their audience, eastern or western, could relate to the story of a boy who turns adversity into triumph, no matter what color his skin or what his native language.