Here’s my hypothesis: ‘normal’ life right now is so stressful, traumatic and chaotic that authors are tilting towards gentler plots that avoid dealing with current events. There was Ann Patchett’s Tom Lake: a sweetly written story with no narrative tension...
Kathryn Stockett’s first novel, The Help, set in 1950s Mississippi and focusing on the interactions between the black household help and their white employers, was a huge success. It was made into a film that was also hugely successful. The...
Taylor Jenkins Reid has both fame and fortune, as the author of the bestselling The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, and also Daisy Jones and the Six, which went on to become an Amazon Prime TV series. She is prolific,...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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 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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
Neither Slow nor fast, but has momentum and delightful writing
Politics and social oppression
Lives in Transition
Simplistic good people and villainous villains
Wild in the water
Delicious drawing-room dialogue, but lacking in charm
Redemption Song
Pilgrimage and Patriarchy
Divinity or deception?
Important theme, but unconvincing harvest
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