Customer Reviews:
Floating Petals is a collection of short stories by Leela Devi Panikar. Leela is the winner of BBC World's 200-word short-story competition, "My Hometown." The entry is included in Floating Petals. She is also the winner of Turner Maxwell Short Story competition.
Reviews
Floating Petals
The fourteen stories that comprise Floating Petals are small gems – lovingly crafted, shaped and polished. Ms Panikar deals with subjects, locations and protagonists that in the wrong hands could have ended up being maudlin and overwritten. The author has, however, through an economy of words, experience of life and love of the language created a collection of stories some of which you will want to read again as soon as you finish the book.
Ms Panikar has mastered the art of the opening line. Her first story starts out with the brief statement: Í am tall. The next story begins: When did they break your toes? My favourite is from the story Running Away: I am ten and my friends smell of fish. How can you not read on with opening lines like that?
The subjects and stories are timeless in their appeal; the locations – whether in Hong Kong or elsewhere in Asia – are largely irrelevant. It requires inordinate skill to draw the reader in and empathize with a story about a shadow or a common sparrow. But Ms Panikar succeeds in doing just that.
The difficulty in writing short stories is to get the reader to empathize with the protagonists in just a few pages. It is a challenge at the best of times, made more difficult if your main characters are animals, ghosts or even inanimate objects.
Many writers opt for the slice-of-life approach to short fiction, a cop-out allowing them to ignore the structure and discipline of a complete and rounded story. One of the pleasures of reading Floating Petals is that each story has a beginning, a middle and an end.
There is a wistful, evocative charm to many of the tales. Nostalgia plays a role too, but Ms Panikar never descends into sugar-coated memories. Her writing skills are such that you taste, smell and see things through her senses. Ms Panikar guides the reader, gently but with great confidence and sensitivity, through time, space, events and places. The stories for the most part are luscious, rich and surprisingly compelling.
David Barlow, Photojournalist and Travel Writer
2 December 2007
South China Morning Post – Hong Kong
Leela Devi Panikar’s Penang won BBC World’s “My Hometown” writing competition in 2006 for good reason. In 200 words the piece not only captured the Malaysian island’s diversity (colours, flavours, ethnic mixture) but also nailed the familiarity particular to small communities that rarely forget their own. Penang – which fronts her collection Floating Petals – prepares readers for the 14 short stories that follow, many of which espouse the format’s golden rule of making every word count. The Shadow is one. A surreal yet touching tale, it is narrated by a woman’s constant companion who comes into being only when there is light. This entity, who observes her life up close yet never stands in judgment, sees her agonizing over a married lover and tries to save for lonely nights the joy she feels during their secret meetings. [...] The stories are set in Hong Kong and other parts of Asia, which gives them geographical coherence but only as a slight binding thread. As Panikar says about her tales: “All they have in common is me.”
Charmaine Chan
2 December 2007
Leela’s stories are gems—tiny, polished and precious. No need to skim through the opening in anticipation of the good parts. It’s all good. Slow down and savour every sentence.
Marjorie Sullivan, Writer
Leela writes women’s emotions more delicately than anyone I know, and she uncovers lush details from bygone times. Her stories are memorable, softly paced and laced with authentic feeling.
Dania Shawwa, Publisher, Haven Books
The solitary flower of the lotus has come to represent the beauty of Asia—but behind this beauty lies a history of conflict and change. Leela has used her own experience of Asia to succinctly capture brief moments in other people’s lives.
Jennifer Eagleton, President
Hong Kong Women in Publishing Society
£7.99