has anyone else read it?
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i started reading it lastnight.. sounds like most other desi books ive read on 30 something desi girls living in the west not being able to find a guy… nehows.. i should read it… it supposed to be funny though… but after reading “life aint all about ha ha hee hee..” nothing really sounds as good..
Re: Goddess for Hire
i mite write a book one day about being paki in New yOrk…
Re: Goddess for Hire
is sey yaad aaya ke sadzzz kay apnay saga ka kya hua ? 
Re: Goddess for Hire
It is a long time ago that i read a good book. I really love to read books.
Uhmm.. Sadz do you know if this book is also in Europe /Holland?
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Coz this book sounds very intresting to me :)
Re: Goddess for Hire
Goddess for Hire -Skip the book and go to a temple instead
http://reeta.sawf.org/Prose/205.aspx
Maya Mehra is a 30-year old, unemployed, spoiled brat still living at home with her parents. She hasn’t quite figured out what she wants to do with her life yet except drive around the Los Angeles metropolitan area in her Hummer H2 and shop.
There’s a commercial on TV these days for a solution that unclogs sink drains. Bear with me, there is a connection between clogged drains and this review. What I remember of the commercial is its closing line. An exasperated homeowner exclaims “Why do we EVEN bother?!” Apparently, despite the claims on the drain-opener’s label, the stuff inside is the same old crap—it just doesn’t work. That’s how I felt about Goddess for Hire, the “fresh and very funny” book by Sonia Singh. A ‘hoot’ says the cover, but after reading the book, I was left thinking that NRI or American-born Indians may not be able to produce a work of fiction that really is different and funny. It’s just more of the same.
The publishers did provide a clue that should have tipped me off. The brief bio of Sonia Singh states that “Unlike the heroine of her debut novel, Goddess for Hire, Sonia loves India and travels there once a year.” It sounds too defensive, in retrospect. Had I paid more attention to this instead of the chick-lit book cover - think Jennifer Crusie or Marian Keyes meets temple art – I might have been prepared for the cliché themes of misunderstood ABCDs and their backward desi parents.
Maya Mehra is a 30-year old, unemployed, spoiled brat still living at home with her parents. She hasn’t quite figured out what she wants to do with her life yet except drive around the Los Angeles metropolitan area in her Hummer H2 and shop. She knows she isn’t going to follow any advice or edict her Indian parents hand down or succumb to the matchmaking efforts of the numerous relatives that live in town. She is destined for better things…and she’ll know what it is after the next Frappuccino. Despite her “I’ll be who I want to be” convictions Maya can’t stand up to her Indian family members, desperate for their approval like all good Indian girls. When it’s announced that a suitor from India is arriving in LA to meet her and Maya will cooperate, Maya decides to take matters into her own hands. Unfortunately, she isn’t prepared for the hunky Wharton MBA grad who isn’t interested in her or the two strangers who abduct her, claiming she is the goddess Kali reborn. So begins Maya’s adventure in ridding Orange County of all evil, preventing gas station robberies and socialite murders by stopping bullets in their path and creating windstorms with sheer willpower. Yes, really.
Predictably, the Indian guy Maya is prepared to ditch turns out to be the tall, dark and handsome stranger of her dreams, more hip than anyone in Maya’s hip LA world. Go figure, an Indian man who doesn’t make disgusting noises or wear plaid with stripes.
Perhaps this is the stuff teens and 20-somethings love to read or maybe it’s the kind of book the Sex in the City crowd seeks out, full of ‘intelligent’ dialogue (usually taking place in the heroine’s head) and bed-hopping, alcohol-guzzling females who want it all (but only if the rich guy pays for it). For them, Singh has come up with a 300-page caricature of NRI and ABCD life - the sit-com version. The novel is even full of commercials for practically every commodity available on the market. This may have made sense if Goddess for Hire actually were a television show in which characters conspicuously work in sponsors’ products, a Coke here, a BMW there or a bag of Doritos lying on the table. But, why is this necessary in a book? Take the publisher’s blurb on the back cover - Starbucks, Taco Bell and Coca-Cola mentioned in just one sentence alone. Read the book and it’s hard to find a page that doesn’t sound like a commercial - Carl’s Jr., Budweiser, Tommy Bahama, IKEA, California Pizza Kitchen, Manolo, Pashmina, Dolce Gabbana, TiVo and Pepsi. To name just a few. It doesn’t stop with products- if an item has a earned a spot in the American popular culture hall of fame, it’s mentioned, from movie stars (of course, Julia Roberts) and famous LA streets to Hollywood blockbusters and syndicated TV shows. One can only guess at the purpose of this name-dropping or why it’s essential to the plot. Maybe Singh was so keen to show that Maya (or Singh herself) is just like any other American hip chick growing up in Newport Beach that every sentence has to include the evidence? “I grew up in LA, just like any other American, I watched Bewitched as a kid and read Joy of Sex in college!”
Equally annoying are the worn out depictions of Indian parents and the lifestyle of NRIs. Fretting, clueless mothers that spend half of their life in the kitchen and the other half in a temple, disapproving but oddly silent and distant fathers, meddling aunties and deceitful cousins whose only purpose in life, it seems, is to destroy our heroine.
Perhaps it’s inevitable that the children of Indian immigrants who write fiction will follow in the footsteps of NRI authors for whom the immigrant experience is the be-all and end-all of their existence. The earlier group – women writers - continues to perpetuate the stereotype of the weak, tragic, oppressed Indian woman in the land of opportunity. I hoped that Indian-American authors, women who have been born or raised in the US, might break the mold, creating female characters who aren’t ditzy or, dare I say it, confused.
Why do I even bother?
Goddess for Hire
Sonia Singh
HarperCollins, 2004
Re: Goddess for Hire
and ive only read 3 pages... and already figured it out.... why did i waste $US4.57 on this!!!
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I know that feeling sadzz when you end up feeling like you wasted your money on a bad book!!! ARghhh that sucks...
Have you read A Heros Walk by Anita Baudami.. its a really great book that just really struck a chord with me...
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na i havent read that one GummyBear.. okies.. im gonna put that on my list of books to read...
yeah i feel cheated... this book is inbetween "For Matrimonial Purposes" & "Born Confused" (this one i liked)..
i think im bit tired of hearing the same sorta stories... but then again it was my fault for getting it..
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dat is y 'libraries' were invented sadzzz.
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^ i dont get time to go anywhere afterwork LUC... but yeap, good advice
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You know i'm having fun with the book but that's b/c i'm also reading the known world (about life in pre-civil war south and slaves and free-black who own slaves) and this was a nice easy light read...quick too.
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How was this book - "life aint all about ha ha hee hee"? I just ordered it.
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^ really good book mehnaz... u'll love it!
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MQ, I really enjoyed that book.... it doesnt fall into the trap that alot of desi books written by Western Desis falls into... staying on the surface and never exploring whats inside...but this book does..
S.