Sri Lankan Social Satire
The title comes from a dish that the protagonist, Malik, is fond of ordering from a hole in the wall Chinese takeaway run by Mr Yun, which is the only alternative to Mrs Ha’s more upmarket Chinese restaurant, where you...
Putting on a new face
In the mirror, she sees the specter of her father, Vinod, animated in her face. Reflected at her, in her, are his heavy-lidded eyes, his crooked nose, his squarish jawline. That face that contorted in fury whenever she did the...
Too Sweet for My Taste
If writers “write what they know”, Ann Patchett must live an enviable life. Her previous novel, Tom Lake, and this one, Whistler, both describe the very comfortable lives of upscale New Yorkers. They are rarely troubled by quotidian problems, or...
At the bottom of the academic hierarchy
I always wanted to find out more about the US academic system, so this seemed a good book to read. Our protagonist, Sam, is a PhD from SHU, probably standing for Sacred Heart University – the author just uses acronyms...
Stages of Grief
That was one of the worst things about losing your wife, I found: your wife is the very person you want to discuss it all with. Not many authors can write an ironic, funny, touching and perceptive novel about the...
The reality of a tradwife influencer life
Natalie Heller Mills is our protagonist and she declares right at the opening of the book that “I am perfect at being alive” (p4). She starts out as being smug and self-congratulatory, but very quickly, the book reveals the much...
Constructing an Identity
When I reached my gate [..], I discovered there were a lot of Chinese American students boarding the United flight from Boston to Taipei [..]. They looked Chinese, but not Chinese Chinese. You could tell from the summer tans, the...
The Awkward Art of Socialising
There was a lot of discussion about white writers writing as black characters (Kathryn Stockett’s The Help, for example); this novel is about a man who writes the entire novel in the voice and first person narrator of a 57...
A Life in Letters
If you remember the days of sending and receiving physical letters in envelopes, then you are part of an ever-dwindling group, and likely to enjoy this lovely novel. It’s 2012, and seventy-three year old Sybil Van Antwerpt has a regular...
Children Die and Parents go on Living
Having just lost my own darling dad, I was looking for silver linings in the bereavement, and one such is that my father had expressed how burying one’s parents is the natural and right way, as they ‘pay their debt...
A doorstopper of a book
[1] Nebraska[2], by Monica Datta, looked intriguing and not just because (I assumed) it seemed to be an Indian immigrant story set in or related somehow to Nebraska – from a blurb about the book: Anna Chatterjee has just been...
Simplistic good people and villainous villains
I am one of those who absolutely loved Stockett’s debut novel, The Help. Yes, it was controversial – a white woman writing in the voices of black women – but I nevertheless thought The Help read very well, told a...
Race and magic in the New World
American origin novels tend to be about tough pioneers who brave nature as they head out west, or cowboys who roam the prairies with massive herds of cattle, or stern lawmen who bring order to the wild frontier. All of...
Misfits
I have liked many of Baker Kline’s novels, and I am so glad this latest is no exception. The story starts in the 1840s, in Wilkes County, North Carolina. Our protagonist, Sarah – Sallie – is a typical southern belle,...
Character-driven stories of a feudal, modern Pakistan
Daniyal Mueenuddin’s exquisite collection of short stories In Other Rooms, Other Wonders was published in 2009. A mere 17 years later, his first novel, This is Where the Serpent Lives, has come out. For non-authors like myself, the long gap...
Recent Comments