Chick-lit in the backdrop of honour killings

Beautiful From This Angle
Maha Khan Phillips
Penguin
232 pages
Rs250

The only real surprise here is that Karachi chick-lit took so long in getting here. If the Saudis could have it years ago with Girls of Riyadh, surely Pakistani women deserve their moment in the sun. So enough already with the bearded bombers in the marketplace and the turbaned warlords, Maha Khan Phillips offers a much-wanted peep into the rarefied inner-circle of Karachi partygoers. 

Beautiful From This Angle is unabashedly shallow, and its protagonist Amynah Farooqui is a “Come on Barbie let’s go party” girl. The book begins with her clutching her Prada bag, stoned at a beach rave party, and in case the point was debatable, she is quickly identified as the columnist of “Party Queen on the Scene.”

But even the social butterfly must perch somewhere in the minefield of Pakistani issues. And Khan Phillips follows the trend set by contemporary Pakistani writers when she attempts to show that no matter how removed from politics it is impossible for the citizen of Pakistan to escape the political.

Amynah’s only contribution to the world, when the novel opens, is to write a parody of the “oppressed woman’s novel,” mockingly titled “Not without my dog.” Her best friends are equally privileged but mostly disapproving of her hedonistic lifestyle. The stick-in-the-mud Mumtaz is a television producer and the unlikely daughter of a drug baron. And the dutiful Henna is her feudal father’s puppet.

Mumtaz soon ropes in her friends to cash in on the growing demand for sensational Pakistani shows, and produce a documentary about violence against women in rural areas. Amynah realises that the perfect candidate is Henna’s childhood friend Nilofer from the village Rahim Yar Khan. But the girls have bitten off more than they can chew, and soon everyone from the CNN to the ISI wants a piece of the pie.

For all the world-weary cynicism of its heroine, this is a novel about redemption and the potential for personal growth. Honour-killings and sectarian violence is a pretty grim backdrop for chick-lit, but Khan Phillips just about manages to pull it off. After all, socialites have feelings too.