For decades our local Bangalore post office remained unchanged, growing more and more decrepit. By 2017 the whitewash had long since faded, there were holes in the roof, and the lighting inside was provided by a few faint bulbs. Most...
~ Netherland, by Joseph O’Neill ~ Although I was born and brought up in a cricket-mad country and have been surrounded by cricket-o-philes for much of my life, I have no particular interest in the sport and can name only...
~ Little Fires Everywhere, by Celeste Ng ~ This ambitious book tackles race, class and motherhood in an upscale Cleveland suburb. Race: Shaker Heights, the Cleveland suburb where the book is set, is depicted as largely white with a couple...
~ How Hard Can It Be? by Allison Pearson ~ Kate Reddy encapsulated the realities of life for many working women in 2002, when she appeared as the heroine of Allison Pearson’s I Don’t Know How She Does It. (The...
Pondi is full of women on scooters and cycles. In other Indian cities too there are plenty of women drivers, but in Pondi it seemed like a quarter to a third of the two-wheelers were driven by women. There are...
~ You Think It, I’ll Say It, by Curtis Sittenfeld ~ The most striking story in Curtis Sittenfeld’s short story collection is, unfortunately, not included in the American edition. It’s called The Nominee, and it can be read online. The...
~ Conversations with Friends, by Sally Rooney ~ Old-fashioned readers, beware: there are no quotation marks in Conversations with Friends, and text and dialogue flow seamlessly together. Oh, he said.Okay. Well, I’m sorry. I am trying, you know. If there are things I’m doing...
~ The Witch Elm, by Tana French ~ From the very first paragraph, Tana French’s latest novel draws you into the inner thoughts of its protagonist. I’ve always considered myself to be, basically, a lucky person. I don’t mean I’m...
~ Mulligatawny Soup, by Manorama Mathai ~ A young woman decides to discover more about the Indian father who abandoned her English mother to return to Calcutta. Superficially this might sound like a teenage finding-onself tale, but this is really...
~ The Right Side, by Spencer Quinn ~ Chet and Bernie are beloved literary characters in Spencer Quinn’s earlier books, but he has created a completely distinct, remarkable character in The Right Side. LeAnne Hogan, the protagonist of The Right...
~ The Billionaire’s Apprentice: The Rise of The Indian-American Elite and The Fall of The Galleon Hedge Fund. By Anita Raghavan ~ The billionaire of the title is Raj Rajaratnam, the charismatic, Sri-Lanka-born hedge fund CEO whose success was built...
~ Alternate Side, by Anna Quindlen ~ Is a book only interesting if the characters have problems? Or, conversely, does it make a book uninteresting if the characters live lives of extreme privilege with few crosses to bear? Anna Quindlen’s...
~ Video, by Meera Nair ~ It’s hard to browse a bookstore these days without coming across a book of short stories from India or the diaspora. Some such collections may therefore not get all the attention they deserve, and...
~ Madras on Rainy Days, by Samina Ali ~ In her first novel, Samina Ali has fallen prey to that common problem of first-time novelists: the temptation to stuff every possible ‘issue’ into a single story. Which is a pity;...
~ Atlas of Unknowns, by Tania James ~ Tania James’ first novel has a vivid and powerful beginning: two sisters, Linno and Anju, in a small town in Kerala, whose father buys them fireworks for a celebration only to see...
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