Bhanoo makes her much-anticipated debut with this short story collection that gathers together intimate portrayals of South Indian immigrants grappling with what it means to leave and be left behind, particularly for women. Written with a roving curiosity, Bhanoo’s characters live and breathe like real people, their paths branching off the page and twining into your heart.
Eight distantly connected stories, mostly centering isolated women, comprise Bhanoo’s exquisite debut ... Bhanoo’s piercing stories further augment the growing shelves of spectacular first short story collections by women of color.
Reconceptualizes the great American road trip, centering Indian immigrants—particularly, Tamil women—and their children as its drivers and passengers ... The journeys...carry readers across the vast American landscape, transcending state boundaries and biomes to stitch a narrative mosaic, its patches cut from distinct corners of the country ... Bhanoo tackles complexity with a light hand. The writing is lush and sensory ... With Seeking Fortune Elsewhere and its glimpse into the lives of Tamil immigrants, Bhanoo artfully extends the burgeoning South Asian American literary canon’s trajectory
Many of the book’s themes are familiar within the robust tradition of Indian American immigrant fiction. Dislocation. Aging. Generational difference. Losses incurred in migration. Parenting across a cultural divide. Seeking Fortune Elsewhere favors the zero endings of Anton Chekhov and aims toward the emotional, if not the stylistic, lineage of Jhumpa Lahiri and Akhil Sharma. Bhanoo embraces reportorial simplicity and plainness, elevating the psychological nuances of small moments not by the use of complex language or epiphany but by a focused attention on the day-to-day ... Bhanoo’s collection gains in momentum and fluidity as it builds toward its deeply moving final story ... The appeal of Seeking Fortune Elsewhere resides in its gentle trust that culturally faithful stories can and should slip easily across borders.
...stunning ... As a collection, Seeking Fortune Elsewhere achieves a level of poignancy most writers can only dream of. A veteran journalist, Bhanoo’s handle on tight storytelling is a strength in this lean collection. Her straightforward writing style allows for a unified flow, keeping the focus squarely on the difficult questions these eight stories ask about dislocation. Through her adept storytelling, we see just how complex the immigrant experience can be and how asserting one’s individuality can grant characters a way out of the past—or lead them back to it.
... stunning ... In these and other stories, Bhanoo finds novel ways for her protagonists to cope with adversity. Growing apart from the past, rather than crushing their spirit and individuality, brings them freedom and hope for the future. This introduces a great new talent.
These are psychologically astute stories—and also riveting. By carefully withholding key details, Bhanoo transforms human drama into mystery ... Graceful stories by a writer with enormous empathy for even the most flawed and forlorn among us.
