BOOK NEWS
Meredith McGuire, of bollyWHAT?.com, uses her love of the Indian film industry for her novel Bollywood Becomes Her about an American girl who loves everything Indian. The summary says: "Her newly acquired Ivy League degree has taken Meg Smith straight back to where she started: her old bedroom in her parents' Bay Area house. Now - her long-cherished dreams of authorial fame buried beneath a sheaf of rejection letters - Meg spends her time watching Kuch Kuch Hota Hai over and over again. Enrolling in a beginner's class in the language she knows so well, in the hope for some kind of validation, she meets a handsome Indian Professor, Raj. Determined to impress him, Meg decides to combine attributes of Hindi actresses. Distraction lurks, however, in the persona of her Indian-American classmate, a blue-eyed six-footer named Dev, whose love beads, dreadlocks, Guatemalan ponchos and patchouli deodorant disqualify him from the ranks of 'real' Indians. As Meg veers between self-assurance and self-flagellation, she realises that the search for an identity is as difficult in a sari as in cut-offs."