I doubt I can do justice to this very original, remarkable book. But here goes anyway. Described on its cover as a novel, but somewhere between a memoir and an essay, Homeland Elegies is a scorching examination of the author’s...
At its outset, Dava Shastri’s Last Day seems pleasantly nonconformist. The eponymous central figure is a self-made billionaire. Despite having been brought up in the US as an Indian-American, she does not suffer from ethnic existential angst. She marries a...
Thrity Umrigar wrote a nuanced and sensitive exploration of the Indian employer-servant relationship in The Space Between Us, but sad to say, her latest novel Honor displays little of that nuance or sensitivity. There are two women at the center...
At times of tension one returns to the old, familiar, and comforting, and so it was that I spent the early part of 2022 re-reading Terry Pratchett and Dorothy Sayers. Sayers was born in 1897, and her first detective novel...
Set largely in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, and following a protagonist through some formative years, The Paper Palace is far from an idyllic coming-of-age tale. The title is the affectionate nickname for a beat-up old house in the Cape woods, where...
It is such a pleasure to be in the hands of a master craftsman, and John Le Carré is one indeed. Sure, a few of his novels from the past decade or two have been less exciting, perhaps even pedestrian,...
Mental illness is a difficult topic around which to center a novel. It would be all too easy to end up with a one-note portrayal of the sufferer which simply evokes sympathy, or leaves the reader relieved that they themselves...
Several people are enclosed in a manor house, or on an island, or in a train. The weather worsens, and they are trapped for a few days. And then a body is discovered. Over the course of the next few...
British WWII novels often have an oldfashioned charm with their dashing doomed fighter pilots or sturdily phlegmatic women keeping up the home front. On the surface, The Kitchen Front would appear to be a pleasant addition to the collection, but...
Most spy stories and thrillers involve men, so Flynn Berry’s Northern Spy is immediately a welcome addition to the genre. The protagonist is Tessa, a Belfast native with a beloved sister called Marian, and the men in this novel appear...
The Irish Magdalene laundries are now infamous: they were run to house unmarried pregnant (‘fallen’) women, who laboured in unpaid servitude for years or decades. Their babies were taken away from them and adopted out. The women were indefinitely incarcerated,...
‘I have all kinds of medical problems’, said the middle-aged lady. ‘Swollen foot, bad knees, stomach problems… and the doctors said there was nothing they can do!’ She was pleased to find a copy of Home Remedies by TV Sairam...
April in Spain refers to the month as well as a person. It’s not a particularly clever pun, and to me, this was reflective of the novel as well. Is it a mystery? Not a very successful one, as the...
Indra Nooyi’s memoir opens with a charming anecdote. In 2009 she was invited to the White House to meet India’s Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh. When Obama introduced her, Manmohan Singh exclaimed, “Oh! But she is one of us!” And the...
Ballet is a notoriously brutal profession. From early childhood through their teens, dancers must train and practice relentlessly, until they make it to a professional dance company with the hope of eventually attaining principal dancer status. An injury can derail...
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