Atlas of Unknowns

March 2, 2009
In this perfectly adequate tale of bicontinental love, betrayal and secrets, sisters Anju and Linno Vallara live in Kerala, India, raised by their father after their mother’s apparent suicide. Crippled Linno establishes herself as a talented artist, a skill Anju ruthlessly claims as her own, passing off Linno’s paintings as hers to win a scholarship to study art in New York. When Anju’s dishonesty is eventually exposed, her future crumbles and she runs away, surviving only due to her friendship with Bird, a stranger who carries a key to their mother’s mysterious past. Meanwhile, Linno, who once resigned herself to being her family’s servant, has built a career and, despite her sister’s betrayal, resolves to find Anju and bring her home. As that reunion looms, layers of lies and secrets are exposed until the reader, if not the sisters, glimpses the tangle of honesty and loyalties underpinning the story. James paints Kerala and immigrant New York with identical depth and ease, and the story is a readable balance of well-crafted plot and artful emotion.

March 15, 2009
A student's odyssey from India to the United States and eventually back to India, a journey that raises personal and cultural questions about family, immigration and doing the right thing.

Sisters Linno and Anju Vallara have been living a quiet life in Kerala with their father Melvin and their grandmother. Despite an accident that deforms her hand, Linno is an accomplished artist, and Anju is an academician. While visiting India, Miss Schimpf, from the Sitwell School in Manhattan, interviews 17-year-old Anju for a prestigious, all-expense-paid scholarship to the school, but the interview goes badly—that is, until Anju dazzles Miss Schimpf with some of her artwork. This seals the deal, and Miss Schimpf hails Anju as"a true Renaissance woman: an excellent student, a leader, and a brilliant artist." Trouble is that it's not Anju's artwork: Anju stole Linno's oeuvre in desperation to get the scholarship. At Sitwell Anju becomes something of a loner, but eventually she's befriended by Sheldon Fischer (aka"Fish") and holds out hope that he might even become a Real American Boyfriend. Instead, he betrays her secret to Miss Schimpf, and she is suspended from school. This ignominy leads Anju to run away and get a job at a beauty salon, hiding her status as she seeks legalization through a shifty immigration attorney. Meanwhile, back in India, the family also suffers, both from shame and worry. Even as Linno makes arrangements to come to the United States to find and recover her sister, Anju makes a parallel decision to reject American life and return home, seeking forgiveness and reconciliation.

A touching debut novel with a range of tones, from the sweet to the sordid.

(COPYRIGHT (2009) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

April 15, 2009
In Kerala, India, sisters Linno and Anju are raised by their father and grandmother, their mother having suspiciously drowned when they were young. Bad luck seems to follow the family when Linno loses her right hand in a firecracker accident; however, she overcomes her disability by learning to draw, gaining fame by painting pictures on the windows of local businesses. The younger Anju excels in academics and applies for a scholarship at a prestigious high school in New York. During her all-important interview, Anju passes off Linno's artwork as her own, thereby winning the scholarship. She moves to New York to attend the school, but all unravels when Anju's deception is discovered and, in shame, she runs away. While Anju works at a hair salon in order to earn enough money to hire an immigration lawyer, Linno and her father tackle the bureaucratic red tape involved in obtaining a U.S. visa, intent on going to New York to find Anju. This debut paints amusing and disturbing pictures of both cultures, highlighting the struggles experienced by those who find themselves on foreign soil. Sensitively told and completely engrossing. [See Prepub Alert, "LJ" 12/08.]Joy Humphrey, Pepperdine Univ. Law Lib., Malibu, CA

Copyright 2009 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

April 15, 2009
Following the lives of two Indian sisters coping with the subtle shame of otherness, James' incandescent debut novel is a skillfully nuanced examination of the immigrant experience from the perspectives of those who leave and those who are left behind. Tragically disfigured as a child, Linno forsakes formal education to nurture a surprising artistic talent, while her younger sister, Anju, excels academically and competes for a scholarship to a prestigious American private school. So strong is Anju's desire to leave their repressive society that she forges her name on her sister's artwork, a daring gamble that wins her the coveted ticket to a better life. Once in New York, however, Anju foolishly divulges her lie, loses her scholarship, and lives as a runaway, ashamed of being expelled and fearful of being deported. Meanwhile, Linno's art attracts the patronage of a savvy businesswoman who catapults her to international acclaim, a hollow victory giventhe uncertainty of Anju's whereabouts. Embracing multifaceted themes of cultural dissonance within a focused contemporary worldview, James writes with a silken elegance and solid assurance that will garner inevitable comparisons to Jhumpa Lahiri, accolades that are both apt and well-deserved.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2009, American Library Association.)