~ Exit West, by Mohsin Hamid ~ While all four of Hamid’s novels have been well written, I thought his first (Moth Smoke) and this fourth, Exit West, were the most beautiful: moving, resigned yet optimistic, tackling complex and controversial...
~ The Indian Bride, by Karin Fossum ~ This title suggests a heart-rending Western novel involving child brides and patriarchal customs in the subcontinent, but in fact this is a Scandinavian-noir mystery in the genre made so popular by Stieg...
A romantic novel with some social commentary, Sonali Dev’s ‘Pride and Prejudice and Other Flavours’ very loosely follows the Austen original. This is all to the good, as most Austen retellings are pale shadows of the originals. (see ‘A Multitude...
~ Stealing Green Mangoes, by Sunil Dutta ~ Two brothers, of whom one grows up to be a cop and one to be a criminal. It sounds like a Hindi film script, indeed. But this dichotomy is just one of...
~ Big Sky, by Kate Atkinson ~ How thrilling it is when a new Jackson Brodie novel arrives in the post! Every one of Atkinson’s novels about Brodie, the retired military man turned cop turned private detective, has been a...
~ The Wife: Book and Movie ~ As a college student at Smith, Joan falls for her married professor, Joe Castleman, fascinated by his brilliance. It kills me to say it, but I was his student when we met. There...
~ A House for Mr Misra, by Jaishree Misra ~ Buying or building a house is a fraught exercise for any couple. Peculiar aesthetic preferences are discovered, behaviour under stress is tested, disagreements about location, style and price develop, and...
It is a truth universally acknowledged that few authors can resist the allure of Jane Austen’s deceptively simple plots. Many retellings of her books have emerged over the years, but (spoiler alert!) few of them come close to the wit,...
~ Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder, by Caroline Fraser ~ Once upon a time, sixty years ago, a little girl lived in the Big Woods of Wisconsin, in a little grey house made of logs. Many...
~ The Golden State, by Lydia Kiesling ~ Motherhood is tough when money is tight, when the parent is effectively single and has little family support. Yet, as most mothers know, there are private pleasures in a baby’s unique, special...
~ Beartown/Us Against You, by Fredrik Backman ~ Beartown is a heartbreaking novel about cruelty and sports. The eponymous town in this powerful novel by Fredrik Backman is a remote backwoods place with one focus: its ice hockey team. Boys...
The (first) No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency is probably one of the most charming detective novels ever. Set in Botswana, it featured Precious Ramotswe, 34 years old, with a small inheritance and no detective experience, but plenty of common sense....
Can there be anything more to say about Indian weddings? Hindi films have ended with happy, ornate weddings forever, and there are dozens of films which are entirely about weddings. A gazillion books have covered “arranged” and “love” marriages in...
Young parents who separated soon after her birth, a father who denied paternity and only paid child support under duress, and a mother who was barely scraping by would add a whole new level of complexity to anyone’s coming-of-age memoir....
~ A Ladder to the Sky, by John Boyne ~ Maurice Swift is an ambitious novelist with a unfortunate limitation: he is good with words, but has no ideas for plots. He is extraordinarily handsome, though, and both men and...
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