Wild in the water
In 1950, Gavin Maxwell moved to a cottage on the West Coast of Scotland, into a small house standing isolated near the sea. His memoir, Ring of Bright Water, about the place and the animals he shared it with, became...
Susan
I live in Maryland, work as a scientist, was born and grew up in India, and have a house full of books. I read across categories: a lot of fiction, any good writing, novels by and about women, science fiction, fantasy, South Asian novels, and nonfiction. For about twenty years, in my spare time, I managed the now-defunct SAWNET (South Asian Women's NETwork) website. Some of the reviews from that site are republished here.
Family secrets? Sisterhood? Colonialism? All of the above?
I admit to picking up this book solely because of its quirky title, expecting something along the lines of departmental shenanigans in a university Literature or Asian Studies department, and was therefore quite surprised that this novel is actually set...
Off the Grid
Groups of people have chosen to live in communes of one kind or another for centuries. Their rationale has been diverse: discontent with governments or the ratrace, escapes from unpleasant situations, sharing to reduce the financial burdens, or shared spiritual...
Moral Ambiguity in Times of Desperation
Dystopian fiction is far from uncommon in these times, but Megha Majumdar’s second novel stands out because of its plausibility. Here are no plump suburbanites turned feral vigilantes, or fearful tribes with survivalist tyrants leading them: this novel, A Guardian...
Bad Decisions and Misery
9 months pregnant in Portland Oregon, with a low level job in tech and a husband who is an unsuccessful actor, Annie is in Ikea buying a crib when The Big One — the massive earthquake that is predicted to...
‘The sexiest flowers on earth’
The Orchid Thief of the title is John Laroche: a tall guy, skinny as a stick, pale-eyed, slouch-shouldered, and sharply handsome, in spite of the fact that he is missing all his front teeth. Susan Orlean wrote about him for...
A House of Contemplation
I don’t think there are many novels about nuns, and that too, nuns who are not out and about in schools and hospitals, but those who retire to a nunnery to pray and work in solitude and isolation. One would...
Love and reconciliation, but also bitterness and anger
There’s a small flood of books by Indian-American authors in the last few years that are specifically about the second-generation Indian-American experience. Other Indian-American novelists have spanned multiple generations (Well-Behaved Indian Women, by Saumya Dave), some simply feature Indian characters...
A small world, poorly explored
Corie Adjmi’s novel is set in the Syrian Jewish community of America. Many readers (including myself) will not be familiar with this community, or perhaps even be aware that they exist, but there are close to a million Syrian Jews...
Upward Mobility, still Tenuous
In the upscale East Hamptons of Long Island, a young man is at a party, snorts some coke, and then gets arrested for possession. This being his first offense, he eventually is required to attend addiction classes. The title gives...
“A different kind of Indian”
Two rivers and two countries are tied together in this novel by Shobha Rao, reflecting the duality of meaning in its title, Indian Country. One is India, of course, a country full of Indians. The other is the Native American...
Convoluted and chaotic
Richard Osman started off as a TV host, but is best known outside the UK for his series of detective novels. The detectives in these books, The Thursday Murder Club series, are not your usual tormented private eyes or Detective...
A history of trauma and reconciliation
May in Ayemenem is a hot, brooding month. This memorable sentence is the start of Arundhati Roy’s wonderful The God of Small Things, and anyone who has read it knows or has assumed the novel contains the broad outlines of...
An uneven slice of Memphis life
In Taft, Ann Patchett’s protagonist is about as different from herself as you can imagine. John Nickel is a middle-aged black male former blues drummer who now runs a bar. Then A girl walked into the bar. This teenager, Fay...
A dull week at the beach
A small beach town in Cape Cod. A family who has rented the same house there for decades, year after year. The middle-aged parents, daughter, son and son’s girlfriend all get along pretty well. These are the apparently peaceful circumstances...
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