SOURCE: “Antique Furnishings,” in Times Literary Supplement, No. 4983, October 2, 1998, p. 26.

In the following review, Curtis offers a lukewarm assessment of Jhabvala's East into Upper East, claiming that “no new ground” is covered.

Ruth Prawer Jhabvala is one of those writers whose name immediately conjures up an image, in her case a double image. We see the heat and dust of India, particle by particle, usually through sympathetic and sometimes sentimental Western eyes. Almost simultaneously, we remember the Merchant-Ivory adaptations of E. M. Forster and the other films she has scripted with their heavy period detail. This collection of fourteen short stories, [East into Upper East] six set mostly in India, seven in wealthier enclaves of America and one in London, shows how easy it is to think the settings are the dominant feature of her work and how misleading such a judgment is. The exotic or familiar backgrounds...