Kirthana Ramisetti’s first novel was unusual, even if it didn’t live up to its initial promise. I picked up her second at the library, in the hope that the author had developed beyond the flaws of the first.
Advika and the Hollywood Wives is set in similar territory to the first novel, that is, among the very rich, but the novel diverges from the first by having, as its protagonist, an aspiring screenwriter who is not rich herself. As the title indicates, this particular set of rich people inhabit the world of cinema.
As the bartender at an after-Oscar party, Advika Srinivasan has to serve drinks to impatient partygoers. They are rude about her ethnicity (‘these people, man’ says one customer about Advika), barely acknowledge her presence, and don’t say please or thank you. Except for one ‘silver-haired man’ with a ‘dazzling, gap-toothed smile’ who is apparently taken by Advika.
as if an Indian girl dressed in black with sweaty armpits and a half-slumped ponytail was the most invigorating sight he’d ever seen.
Puzzled? I was, too. Was Advika selling herself short (in which case, why weren’t dozens of eligible men flocking around her), or was Julian Zelding’s interest in her rather inexplicable? This question remains unanswered over the course of the book.
Events progress at speed. The same night, Julian invites her to dinner and says he’s besotted by her.
“This night didn’t become important to me until I met you.”
Advika is attracted to Julian, who is forty-one years older than her, with several ex-wives, apparently good at fixing women with a laser-like interest that puts them in his thrall. The next morning, she has lost her job (for walking off her shift) and her apartment (rent increase), but has a text and dinner invite from Julian. A month after they met, he promises he’s ‘here to stay’, and then she moves in to his ‘palatial mansion’, enjoying the luxuries of using his credit card, graduating to high-end stores, and letting him choose her ‘sleek fashions’ for a few weeks, until they marry.
Many pages later, (after the fashion and mansion have been described in tedious detail) Julian’s first ex-wife dies, and her will leaves a million dollars and a film reel to ‘Julian’s latest child-bride’ if she divorces him. This leads Advika down a rabbit-hole of secretive investigations into Julian’s past.
For the reader, Julian is a red flag from the beginning, so there is little tension in the discovery that he is controlling and manipulative. The plot is full of holes: why would Advika, a modern twenty-year-old, not Google Julian’s history before leaping into this completely dependent relationship? And when problems emerge, why does she simply not walk out? Advika’s old high-school friends are characters of convenience who are infinitely loyal to her, and will obligingly return to help her even after she has been obnoxiously rude to them. Her parents are even more peripheral.
The pacing is slow: the rationale for Advika’s behaviour is hinted at over many pages before being finally revealed: the death of her sister over which she feels agonizing guilt. That said, it hardly explains why she decides to become a novice spy and dig into Julian’s past, as opposed to walking away.
As with her first book, Ramisetti has written a novel in which the Indian ethnicity of the main character is part of the story but also incidental. The plot would have been identical had Advika been of Swiss or Puerto Rican or Zimbabwean origin. Yet in this novel, there are several snipes about Caucasians.
the smug expressions on their (almost always white) faces
twelve employees, nearly all of them attractive white women with names like Madison and Evangeline, with big toothy smiles and narrowed eyes
I’m not sure what to make of this.
In one flashback, Advika and friends are discussing #Oscarssowhite while watching the Oscars. Slumdog Millionaire has just won Best Picture.
Advika’s eyes shined. “A movie like this gives us a big platform. Dev Patel is a star now. Indian people can be movie stars.”
‘We already are movie stars”, Sunita said []. “Bollywood, remember?”
[]Anu nodded. “We don’t need white people to give us legitimacy.”
Advika stiffened. “[] I’m just saying that it’s important for Indian-Americans –“
“Dev Patel is British.”
“All I’ve seen are white men winning awards for Slumdog.”
[]”But if this is a film about Indian people, how come Dev Patel wasn’t nominated? Or Frieda Pinto?”
The conversation encapsulates several Indian-American viewpoints about Hollywood, but it is a one-off mment: there is very little else about race and ethnicity.
Is this book intended to be a thriller? An exposé is of Hollywood mores? An analysis of current Indian-American perspectives about race and ethnicity? An exploration of a protagonist’s PTSD romance? All of the above, seems to be the answer, and it’s a lot to attempt to pack in. While there are occasional passages of interest, there is little to keep a reader’s sustained attention.
The author’s first book showed promise, but unfortunately the quality has gone downhill in the second.
It is good of you to give the author a second chance, even if regretfully they clearly didn’t deserve it. The passages you quoted came across as pedestrian at best. Shall be giving wide berth!