Eight Arms and Loads of Charm
As soon as I realised an octopus was a narrator of this novel, I simply had to read it. However, it needs to be noted that the octopus is only one of several narrators, and has the least amount of...
A Year in the Lives … at an American mall
That quintessentially American icon, the suburban shopping mall, is at the center of this quiet and pleasing debut novel. This particular mall, in a small town in Pennsylvania, is dying, and only a few shops are still open, with the...
Speaking troubles
Angie Kim’s second novel, after her first, Miracle Creek, follows much the same format, style, and even texture, as her first. This is not a criticism, however, because both novels are well done, well written, well planned. Her second, Happiness Falls,...
Singapore Ma’ams and Filipino Maids
The blurb intrigued me, being the story of 3 Filipino domestic workers in Singapore, part of the almost 40% strong migrant workforce in Singapore. Angel, Cora, and Donita become friends, and we are give their very different backgrounds and stories,...
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...
Crazy Rich Nigerians
Among the flurry of novels set in Nigeria of late is The Nigerwife. It stands out because the author is neither Nigerian nor Caucasian, but is a Black English writer, Vanessa Walter. Based on her own experience living in Lagos,...
Translation – facilitor of peace? And/or an act of betrayal?
Amusingly, Kuang feels the need to begin this 540+ page novel with an author’s note on her representation of Oxford university. Accurately, she says, The trouble with writing an Oxford novel is that anyone who has spent time at Oxford...
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...
Treaties made “for as long as the grasses shall grow, and the rivers run”. And then abrogated.
I have read a couple of other Erdrich novels, and so far, this one was the most accessible to me. Not that any of the others were less well written, but this one made access easiest for the non-initiated American...
Santiniketan, pre-Independence
This review was first published in Parabaas, and is reproduced here with permission. A memoir with a conspicuously literary slant is Buddhadeva Bose’s The Land Where I Found it All. Translated from Bengali to English by Nandini Gupta, the translator...
Grief, loss and squash
It is always a pleasure to make the acquaintance of a debut South Asian woman writer, so I was very pleased to give this novel, which had been shortlisted for the 2023 Booker, a try. It begins with 11 year...
Jaffna Eyes
Let me tell you about dark men with white smiles, these Tamil men I loved and who belonged with me. In my house there were four of them. Each of my brothers resembled my father in a different way. All...
Parallel Threads
This is one of those novels that are told in parallel timelines, with one in the mid 1850s, of the potato famine in Ireland, and the other is the current day timeline in New York. The protagonist of the mid-1850s...
Swimming in fraught waters
Set as it is in an upscale American suburb and focusing on the few nonwhite residents, this first novel may remind readers of Celeste Ng’s Little Flowers Everywhere, but to my mind, Vibhuti Jain’s Our Best Intentions tackles a complex...
Murder noir, by the Tiger Mother
Amy Chua burst into popular public consciousness with her third book, The Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother. An memoir about her strict Chinese-parenting approach, the book was both wildly entertaining and wildly controversial. Her next book also created controversy:...
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