What does not kill you…
At a quarter to eleven on August 12, 2022, on a sunny Friday morning in upstate New York, I was attacked and almost killed by a young man with a knife just after I came out on stage at the...
Books
Looking away from injustice, until it’s one of your own
Over the last few years, many damning reports and videos of police brutality and bias against African-Americans have emerged and been disseminated via the internet, sparking the Black Lives Matter movement. Some parts of the Indian-American community stayed out of...
If Intelligence and Advanced IQ are Taboo
This novel kicks off with the protagonist, Pearson, being told to take her child home from school because he used unacceptable language, namely, he said his classmate’s T-shirt was stupid – the forbidden S-word. In a dinner party that night,...
Getting to know the people next door
When I picked up this collection of short stories, Next Door by Jahnavi Barua, I was intrigued by the idea — to be invited into the homes and lives of strangers. What I didn’t expect was such darkness. Set mainly...
Drama and reflexivity
I had been eagerly awaiting Mannion’s second novel since her amazing debut, A Crooked Tree; nor have I been disappointed. This read equally well, the kind of novel that draws a reader in quickly and holds the reader’s attention effortlessly...
Just another clichéd arranged marriage
It’s not that the storyline lacks plausibility. Some of us are all too familiar with the NRI engineer, MD or MBA grad who goes to India for 3 weeks and comes back married to a virtual stranger, the so-called ‘marriage...
Her Mind Moves Upon Silence*
Books and movies about sports are abundant, and tend to follow a certain pattern: hero (or more rarely heroine) is unusually talented, faces hurdles, is set back at some point, but eventually triumphs over adversity, winning trophies and learning (and...
Breathtaking Year Abroad
Although this is a novel supposedly about an ordinary American college kid’s year abroad, this year abroad, I think I can safely say, is nothing like any year abroad I have ever heard of. Tiller Bardman begins as a very...
Lucky Girls, lucky reader
Here are five stories, set in Southeast Asia and on the Indian subcontinent-each one bearing the weight and substance of a short novella-narrated by young women who find themselves, often as expatriates, face to face with the compelling circumstances of...
Outsiders in America
Driss Guerraoui dies in a hit-and-run accident in a small California Mojave town. Driss is a Moroccan immigrant, so there are inevitable threads of racism running through his backstory and the investigation of his death, and through the reactions of...
A sedative, a stimulant and a hallucinogen
Pollan’s book seems intended to get us thinking a little differently about plants and drugs and the effects of certain chemical compounds on us and in our lives. He divides the book up into 3 sections: the first deals with...
Interior monologues in upstate New York
Richard Russo’s trilogy of books set in North Bath, upstate New York, follows the familiar themes of many of his novels: absent fathers, resentful sons, and resulting trauma that continues from generation to generation. His Empire Falls was set in...
Missing black children
Having read all of Tayari Jones’ other novels (The Untelling, Silver Sparrow, An American Marriage), I was pleased to finally come across a copy of her debut novel, Leaving Atlanta. It is told in 3 books, each from the point...
A protagonist even more dogged than her van
The Dog of the North caught my eye entirely because of its title. Was this a Jack London-ish adventure novel in the Yukon? Or was this slang for something entirely different? In fact, the title turns out to be the...
More tales of Ardnakelty
The first thing any Tana French fans would want to know is: Did you love this book?? The answer is a resounding, YES! Yes, I loved it, devoured it, enjoyed myself hugely reading it. But it is not without its...
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