Backwards Into Delhi

An American couple travels through modern-day India, eats a lot of food and tries to find decent accommodations at reasonable rates. Bunny and Ed take in all the major attractions: temples, wildlife, markets. They even pay three visits to the Taj Mahal in one day (in order to see it in every kind of light). They're not quite as thorough as they think, however; little space is given to India's music, caste system or politics. The pair consider themselves progressive and unpampered--Knott repeatedly points out that they don't stay in the best hotels--but their self-satisfied boasts of roughing it eventually become annoying. The language is verbose, affected and lazy; adjectives such as ``delightful'' and ``lovely'' clog the text. Nor is this especially convincing: conversations between the author and her husband frequently sound as if they were contrived to inform the reader. The meandering, intrinsically flawed travelogue is freelance writer Knott's first book. (May)