Rating: 
Summary: Many different themes
Review: I really liked this book because it showed so much about societal pressures in India. There were lots of situations: pregnancy, defying cultural expectations, death of a husband. For instance, can you imagine living in a world where your in-laws decide whether you should have an abortion, and you don't get a voice? While Divakaruni has incorporated some common frameworks in many of the stories, the uniqueness of the situations more than makes up for it. Each situation showed different implications and expectations of women. It also showed ways that women can and do think for themselves, when given the chance. It left me with a better understanding of the challenges faced by Indian women (actually, women in any culture with heavily proscribed roles), and feeling inspired to reach out to my sisters.
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Summary: An Indian Girls Viewpoint on Arranged Marriage
Review: For me being an Indian girl, I recently began to wonder what it might be like to have an arranged marriage. What it would be like to dwell in a loveless marriage. Reading this book about arranged marriage and it being writen by an Indian author, I was drawn into reading her book. Divakaruni had written wonderful short stories about how women lived their lives not just for themselves, but for the people around them, especially their men. While reading the stories I began to comprehend with the fact that women don't marry a "prince from a far-off magic land" but they just end up with men. The way I saw it in the story "Silver Pavements, Golden Roofs" the husband needed a victory and his only conquest was his wife. Over all I began to realize that marriage isn't going to be all that it's meant out to be.
Rating: 
Summary: So depressing
Review: Being an Indian and having married into an "Arranged marriage" myself, is why I picked up this book. I had read "Sister of my heart" which is what got me interested in Divakaruni's writing. While "Sister" is a good read, I was disappointed to see some of the same material repeated in "Arranged". The lives of Indian women in the large middle class are not so melodramatic or pathetic. In my view, the women in most Indian families are not so much at the recieving end of cruelty or so powerless as portrayed in these works. I wish Divakaruni will bring out the brighter aspects of Indian womanhood and Indian immigrants to balance out the gray picture she has painted in these works.
Rating: 
Summary: go ahead and read it
Review: I'm used to reading Salman Rushdie, Arundhati Roy, R.K. Narayan and Jhumpa Lahiri. While the writing of this author pales in comparison to the others', it is well-worth the read because of its accessibility. Its meaning is at the surface, and doesn't require a serious reading to understand. The virtue of the book is in its plots. Each of the plots is creatively told from a bicultural perspective. While I did feel at times that Divakaruna was a bit pessimistic about Indian marriages, there was definitely truth in her stories of forced abortion, caste and class relations, and in lies and exaggerations of matchmakers. I definitely would recommend this to anyone who is even mildly interested in the social issues surrounding arranged marriages, and in the problems that Indian marriages may face. Like I said, the stories are well-told, and none of the plots are forced. They flow naturally and easily, with little to no figurative language, etc. This is a very quick read, and a very entertaining read. I must admit that I have qualms about ever marrying and Indian person after reading this, but if you read with the notion that the book intends to shed light on some of the darker aspects of arranged marriage and interracial/intercultural marriage, then it's possible to come out of the experience with a still-healthy view of the Hindu sacrament. Read this book on a Sunday, then discuss it with a South Asian friend! You'll be able to recount all the stories by heart because they stick out in your mind, if not for the writing, for the plot.
Rating:
Summary: So depressing
Review: Being an Indian and having married into an "Arranged marriage" myself, is why I picked up this book. I had read "Sister of my heart" which is what got me interested in Divakaruni's writing. While "Sister" is a good read, I was disappointed to see some of the same material repeated in "Arranged". The lives of Indian women in the large middle class are not so melodramatic or pathetic. In my view, the women in most Indian families are not so much at the recieving end of cruelty or so powerless as portrayed in these works. I wish Divakaruni will bring out the brighter aspects of Indian womanhood and Indian immigrants to balance out the gray picture she has painted in these works.
Rating:
Summary: Sad Soap Operas
Review: Being a married Indian woman myself, I eagerly picked up Arranged Marriage: Stories, assuming that Divakaruni would have brought both the successful and the unsuccessful arranged marriage stories to light. After reading the first four stories, I decided to put the book down. Everyone of these stories was a real downer -- if the husband wasn't a jerk, then it was the poor wife who was left a widow, or the woman who was jerked around by the Foster Services agency. All four of the stories were depressing and read rather like tearjerking soap operas. I am not sure I would read another book by her again.
Rating:
Summary: Short story collection of Indian women in India and America
Review: Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni's award-winning books continue to stun her readers with their illumination of the lives of Indian women in both India and America. No other Indian writer has offered such an excellent perspective of life between and within these two cultures.
Whether describing the plight of a woman trapped in an abusive marriage in India or the quick adjustments required of an immigrant bride in California, she cracks open the inner lives of her characters, revealing the disappointments and dreams in a way that makes them appear universal. In language that rings with authenticity and the sounds and rhythms of the Indian people, her books are full of rich imagery. You can almost smell the tumeric, see the saffron robes, hear the finger bells, and taste the cardamom and the curry.
Arranged Marriage, a short story collection, is a good place for readers new to Divakaruni to begin to appreciate her; it a lovely addition to the bookshelves of those who already count her as one of our most important contemporary authors.
Rating: 
Summary: Divakaruni seems all too eager to bash her own culture
Review: Marriage is a highly complicated issue, especially in this day and age where the nuclear family is constantly engaged in a tug of war with a culture that is increasingly antagonistic towards anything marked by tradition. With a divorce rate exceeding the 50 percent mark, the issue of what a truly successful marriage entails is something that has become a consummate obsession in our pop culture. With all the successes afforded the west, the one area it has been found wanting, if not dismally failing in is in the area of matrimony. Yet given the pathetic state of marital life in this country, one would assume that Americans would be open to seeing how other systems of matrimony work, particularly from countries where the dissolution of marriage is seldom heard of. Unfortunately, the arrogance of the western mind obviates even this logical assumption. The western mind seems hell bent on marginalizing any notion that was founded earlier than the 20th century or not on western shores. It is unfortunate that the author of "Arranged Marriages", Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, seems to have also been seduced by this western predilection to vilify anything foreign to western soil. Granted Ms. Divakaruni does enumerate many problems that do indeed plague Indian marriages, and that need to be addressed, such as patriarchic exclusivity, fixation with status, misogyny, and abusiveness. However, it should be noted that western marriages are hardly free from these maladies. With all the emphasis in this country on protracted dating periods, courtship, and "getting to know the person" all these ills, that Ms. Divakaruni takes great pains to illustrate in her short stories, exist in this country as well. However, what Divakaruni does little of is accentuate the many laudable attributes of arranged marriages such as its stability, familial support, elevation of motherhood, its temperance of superficial desires in the mate selection process, and its surprising inclusiveness. She tries hard to give the appearance of being evenhanded in her short stories by sometimes showing the drawbacks of the western system of cohabitation before marriage and misery that so called "love marriages" eventually endure when it is found that it takes much more than sexual attraction that is mistaken for love and a few shallow compatible traits to make a marriage work. Yet these seem to be after thoughts on her part purely contrived to give the outward look of objectivity in her storytelling, when anyone, even those who do not read her stories incisively, can see that her biases lie clearly in opposition to the arranged marriage system as a whole. Far from just confining her critique to the various intricacies of the arranged marriage system, she seeks, in many subtle ways, to debase those mother's and fathers, sons and daughters, and aunts and uncles who abide by such as system. Fathers are either seen as detached or tyrannical. Mothers are seen as meddlesome, materialistic and overbearing. Sons who take on the role of husband are seen as deplorably pathetic; so subservient to the parent's wishes, even when those wishes are misguided, that he seeks to fulfill them at the expense of his wife's happiness. Daughters who become wives in such a system are seen as duplicitous or weak. Aunts and uncles are portrayed as cronies to mothers and fathers, when they are not present, in order sustain this seemingly oppressive system.
"Arranged Marriage" is not merely a scathing evaluation of the arranged marriage system as it exists in India, and among Indian immigrants here, it is a disparagement of Indians period. The word Indian or South Asian (lets include our Bangladesh, Sri Lankan, and Pakistani counterparts as well) almost becomes synonymous with chauvinism, narrow mindedness, frailty, and bigotry. Good examples of this type negativity are seen in short stories such as "The Bats", " The Ultrasound", and the " The Maidservant" (note these may not be the exact titles of the short stories. I do not have the book in front of me and I read it 6 months ago, so I am merely going on my shabby recollection of it). I understand that a fundamental element in all storytelling is that antagonism must exist in order for there to be a story. Yet that negative element in the story must serve as a vehicle to propel the story to illuminate some redemptive purpose. That does not necessitate that the story have a rosy conclusion, as some may conclude, thus limiting the creative range available to the author for plot development. However, to merely have a story commence with negativity, have every element of it entrenched in negativity, and then conclude in negativity makes the art of storytelling a tool to promote cynicism. If I wanted to know that life just plain sucks I don't need stories for that, I can just turn on the news. One positive thing I have to say about Divakaruni's book is that for all its lack of positive characterizations of South Asian culture, she does a good job of showing the diversity within the culture itself, showing all the economic strata that South Asians occupy and how such problems listed above plague all whether they are affluent or destitute. It's that one saving grace that allows me to afford it a three star rating.
Rating:
Summary: lovely!
Review: This book is hooking. I read the first story and immediatly knew I would read the rest, so I made sure that each day I could set aside some time to read it. Each story is so full of rich prose, no wonder that it is by a poet. These are stories about women mostly with arrainged marriages, hence the title, usually set in a new land for most Indian girls: America. In some stories, they adapt easily to this new setting, in others, it takes time, and, unfortunatly, some of the endings are sorrowful or incomplete. Some girls find where they belong, others are left lost, wanting, remembering. This is a very fast paced, detailed collection of stories, a pleasure to read. What more is there to say?
Rating:
Summary: Great collection of short stories.
Review: I love this book! The stories seems real. I wonder if they are based on true story.
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