Wild in the water
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...
(Auto)Biography
A history of trauma and reconciliation
May in Ayemenem is a hot, brooding month. This memorable sentence is the start of Arundhati Roy’s wonderful The God of Small Things, and anyone who has read it knows or has assumed the novel contains the broad outlines of...
Surgery under fire
Many of us have had the experience of surgery in a hospital, either for ourselves or people around us. The routine may be familiar if fraught: nurses briskly entering and leaving, vital signs checked at apparently random intervals, those bright...
Lucky Woman
This is not one of Quindlen’s lovely novels, but a non-fiction where she writes her thoughts on life and life’s lessons. It was a highly enjoyable read because I relish her writing voice, its clarity and charm, and also enjoyed...
Survivor
I could not wait to read this book. Rushdie has written 22 books in his 77 or 78 years of life, and of those, only 2 have been non-fiction – Joseph Anton, and now Knife. These are the only 2 books...
The story is the thing
Autofiction — lightly anonymized fiction based on the author’s own life experience — has been very popular lately, with a host of young writers exploring that genre. As a smattering of examples reviewed in this blog, there’s Douglas Stuart’s Shuggie...
Fine dining with an unusual chef
The National Museum of African American History and Culture opened in 2016 during President Obamas last year in office after 8 scandal-free years (we can only marvel, but sadly). To honour David Adjaye, the Ghanaian British architect who designed the...
From the trenches of minimum-wage existence
In the early 2000s, Stephanie Land found herself the single mother of a small child, out of a broken relationship with the child’s father, with a high school education, and no job skills. She needed to make a living for...
Madam Vice President
~ The Truths we Hold: An American Journey, by Kamala Harris ~ Penguin Random House, 2019 This biography was published in 2019, so this book is the story of Harris’ childhood and career till then: as district attorney for San...
Classes under a canopy of trees
~ Amader Shantiniketan, by Shivani ~ Vintage, 2023 This review was first published in Parabaas, and is reproduced here with permission. Shivani’s Amader Shantiniketan is one of those books where the foreword is almost as interesting as the book itself....
“A weird boy wonderland”
Too often, inventors are painted as heroic, with their faults glossed over in our accepted narrative. Most are damaged in a significant way, usually from early in their lives. […] By the time they grew to be adults, many were...
Redemption Song
Say the word ‘Rastafarian’, and many people will think of Bob Marley and reggae. Beyond the catchy, unmistakeable rhythm of the songs, few people in America, including myself, know much about the Rastafari religion. Safiya Sinclair’s arresting new memoir, How...
“Instead of teaching, I told stories”
Frank McCourt had been telling his stories for decades in New York bars before he wrote his first book. I imagine that his audience always egged him on, because McCourt is a natural raconteur. Born in America and brought up...
Not so Exceptional
When I was 30, a well-intentioned, non-Indian adult suggested I write a letter to my mother, let her know how she had made me feel for decades – get it all out. I smiled and said, Indian daughters don’t do...
Immigrant & Internal Pressures
The myth of the model minority has bedeviled Asian-Americans for decades: they are supposed to be the high achievers who bootstrapped themselves through American society, and are held up as role models for other immigrant groups. Prachi Gupta’s family seemed...
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