 The lives of the "page 3" class, the agony and frustration, the tears and cattiness are ideally depicted in this marvelous novel, "Socialite evenings". The hollowness and emptiness of the life of the upper middleclass are ideally illustrated.
Shobha De was born in Maharashtra and graduated from St Xavier's college, Bombay. She had Psychology in her degree course. She began a career in journalism in 1970 in the course of which she founded and edited three popular magazine namely Stardust, Society, and Celebrity. At present, she is a freelance writer and columnist for several newspapers and magazines. She started her career in writing in 1988 with Socialite Evenings. Her first venture was a best seller. Presently she lives with her second husband Dilip De and six children in Mumbai.Shobha De tried many aspects in life as career e.g. model, copywriter, and the first editor of Stardust and Society. She has published seven novels, all of which have been extremely successful. The erotic content of her novels has been somewhat controversial. She is always at the top of discussion in critic's world. Some are in favour of her writing while some are dead against to her. Shobha De, who writes six to eight hours a day on an average, thinks 'chaos of domesticity' as the trigger for her writing process. Synopsis:  'Socialite Evenings' by Shobha De is set at the backdrop of Mumbai high society. This is all about the lives of bored housewives of rich families whose husbands remain busy with their work and wives choose the option of extra marital affair. Their marriages are often seen as loveless one. Their husbands are often seeing their wives as matter of respectability rather than their life partners. Karuna, the central character of this story is bored with her life with husband and now she want to get rid of her boredom by writing a memoir. Her memoirs become successful and she achieves a lot of fame and pride in her new venture. She become a socialite and uses this prominence to get a job of advertising copywriter or a creator of a television channel. This novel was critically acclaimed but truly a masterpiece. Many women of this society can feel accustomed with the story. This story can be called as the partial autobiographical story of the author. There are some funny parts in the story when Karuna is bitchy to her friend Anjali.
Being published by the Penguin books, new edition on 30th March 2005. 'Socialite Evenings' by Shobha De is a controversial book raising different aspects of modern high society life. 'Socialite Evenings' by Shobha De may seem abnormal to some persons. But as a matter of fact this is an interesting book with a combination of vague and conflicting images. This enables its readers to see India in a clearer way. The characters of the novel have some unique fashion, which is the character of Shobha De's style of writing. |
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