Pondicherry Bikers
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...
Susan
Political Women
~ 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...
Millenial Angst
~ 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...
Memory Leaks
~ 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...
Anglo-Indians and ‘Home’
~ 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...
A scarred, compelling heroine
~ 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...
Greed? Envy?
~ 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...
Parking Race
~ 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...
Ten elegant pieces
~ 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...
Surfeit of melodrama
~ 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;...
Malayalis at home and abroad
~ 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...
Opinionated Pakistani women
~ No Shame for the Sun: Lives of Professional Pakistani Women. By Shahla Haeri ~ Disconcerted by the invisibility of Muslim professional women in academic and cultural literature, Shahla Haeri decided to fill this gap. As she says, they may...
Identity Crisis
~ Eat, Pray, Love, by Elizabeth Gilbert ~ Emotional tourism has its allure; who among us does not find it fascinating to get a peek into another person’s soul? Emotional tourism by Westerners in the third world is less appealing,...
Flimsy personalities and plot
~ The Village Bride of Beverley Hills, by Kavita Daswani ~ The Village Bride of Beverly Hills operates on the pleasant conceit that in the cut-throat world of Hollywood journalism, nice girls finish first. And more, even a girl whose...
Identity, Choices and Friendship
~ Life Isn’t All Ha Ha Hee Hee, by Meera Syal ~ Is there anything Meera Syal can’t do? She wrote and starred in a phenomenally successful TV serial. She writes screenplays for plays and film. She acts and sings....
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