Happy Diwali!

Imaginary Men - Anjali Banerjee a Review

I bought Imaginary Men for some light reading for my trip to Vegas. Oh now you are laughing at me and saying "Book to Vegas... haha." Whatever. So I bought this book for my trip to Vegas in case I did not want to go clubbing and wanted to stay in and read. I was looking for a light (read trashy) book. After some preliminary Amazon.com book searches, I came across this one. The synopsis read like a frothy romantic comedy so I figured let me give it a shot (after all I did enjoy the movie "The Wedding Date", oh stop judging!)

All I have to say for this book... UGH UGH.. who in their right minds is giving this book 5 stars.
In a nutshell, the book is about 30 something Indian American Lina Ray who makes up a fiance at her sister's Indian wedding to get an Indian Aunt off her back. She subconsciously (or not) models the fake man after this guy, Raja, she had run into at the wedding. What follows is the story, no... soap opera of her lies and the real Raja coming to her in San Francisco. Blah di blah di blah. I think everyone and their mother can guess what happens.

Now one would say, "hey what did you expect? War and Peace? The synopsis should have told you what to expect" Yeah Yeah, but what I am taking offense to is, the whole exoticization of INDIA. Its like the hot commodity that everyone is cashing in on. This story could have been set in San Francisco and have had nothing to do with India and it would not have pissed me off as it did. Its the new model for success for writing, take some soap operaesque story, set it in India, throw some saris, bindis and arranged marriage and voila you get people calling this borefest "Bridget Jones meets Monsoon Wedding"!! UGHHHH!!