A chronicle of UK diversity
452 pages after completing this read, I am still waiting for the story to start. This is a curious book, with at least a dozen protagonists – and many more secondary characters. Each segment of the novel is devoted...
Diaspora
Come for a love-up
Neither romantic love, nor love within traditional nuclear families is at the center of this novel. Set among the Indian community of Trinidad and Tobago, Ingrid Persaud’s Love after Love follows the love between and around three characters whose love...
Slices of history
Remember back when Bollywood made silent films? (If you’re reading this, probably not.) For those who do remember the pre-Independence Hindi film era, the names Sulochana, Miss Rose, Pramila and Nadira might ring bells, but even they might be surprised...
Cross-cultural Chasm
This book is about a failed cross-cultural English-Pakistani marriage, which resulted in the Pakistani father spiriting his two children off to Karachi without letting the mother know where they had gone. The reader looking for a sensitive unpacking of cross-culture,...
The Sisterhood
~ Afterlife, by Julia Alvarez ~ Julia Alvarez writes wonderfully about Dominican immigrant families, and especially about the difficult, loving, annoying, funny parts of intra-family interactions. The bickering, affectionate relationship of her four first-generation immigrant sisters in How the Garcia...
A Life in 143 pages
In spare, evocative prose, Mary Costello traces the life of her protagonist, Tess Lohan, from her childhood in Ireland through decades of her life in New York, and from a school-going child with a large clutch of siblings to a...
Culture critique without nuance
~ A Woman is no Man, by Etaf Rum ~ The title sounded promising, and so did the blurb of the storyline – about how Palestinians who had lost their homes or been driven out, and migrated to New York,...
Tall, fair and cute
The first article I read about the Netflix show Indian Matchmaking gave away the ending. I wasn’t planning to watch so it didn’t matter if Sima-from-Mumbai found her clients their perfect match. Then it started. Colleagues from work – they...
Hate-Watching
~ Indian MatchMaking, on Netflix ~ If the pandemic has already lowered your spirits, I recommend staying well away from ‘Indian MatchMaking’, streaming on Netflix. Its portrayal of the Indian and Indian-American community is thoroughly depressing. The reality TV series...
Colonial Singapore
~ Tanamera, by Noel Barber ~ When I first saw this title, I didn’t recognise it straightaway, being more accustomed to reading it as 2 separate words: ‘Tanah Merah” – Merah is red, and Tanah is soil, land, even territory....
A sassy, articulate, intelligent, flighty woman
~ Queenie, by Candice Carty-Williams ~ Queenie Jenkins is a young black woman (2nd generation Jamaican) from south London (the geography is important to her) working in journalism (The Daily Read, culture section) in London. London’s multiculturalism and segregation are...
Raw Poetry
~ On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, by Ocean Vuong ~ Gorgeous is a good description for the beautiful language in this novel. But difficult could be another word, to describe the storyline. I confess I read the novel while only...
Brown Man in a White Man’s City
~ Amnesty, by Arvind Adiga ~ Amnesty is vintage Adiga. Need I say more? After the disappointment of Selection Day (which was by no means awful, just less accessible!), it is a joy to go back to the powerful, punchy,...
Dangers of oversimplification
~ How to Fight Islamist Terror from the Missionary Position, by Tabish Khair ~ A very erudite and charming little novel from beginning to end. ,Our unnamed narrator-protagonist is not unlike the author himself, a South Asian who lives in...
A Turbulent World
~ Gun Island, by Amitav Ghosh ~ This review of Amitav Ghosh’s Gun Island will be brief, lest it turn into a rhapsody. One on hand, there is the temptation to go on at length heaping praise endlessly on the...
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