Book Reviews - Comfortably Numb

Comfortably Numb

Sheila Kumar's Storehouse

Book review: The Amur River by Colin Thubron

The Amur River by Colin Thubron. Penguin Random House Books. Yet another wonderful travelogue by veteran travel writer Colin Thubron, the wow factor in this work is two-pronged. One of course, is his travel trajectory, the long and winding River Amur that flows between China and Russia. The other is the jaw-dropping fact that…

Book review: The Old Ways by Robert Macfarlane

The Old Ways by Robert Macfarlane. Penguin Books. Yet another classic I have come late to, this part travelogue, part meditation on life is a classic from a master writer. The book celebrates the act of walking down old paths, tracks, holloways, drove roads, water paths, across the British Isles, with detours in Ramallah and…

Book review: The Last Courtesan by Manish Gaekwad

This woman`s life It cannot be the easiest of things, to write your mother`s memoir. All the more when your mother happened to be India`s last tawaif or courtesan. Manish Gaekwad, though, has turned a steady gaze on his mother`s colourful life and written up the account with unflinching honesty. Ultimately, what comes through is…

Book review: The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese

Breaking the curse Best-selling author Dr Abraham Verghese has delivered an epic work of fiction spanning several generations, with his new book The Covenant of Water. The book is a veritable tome spanning 724 pages, the act of reading which is quite an immersive experience. Readers are pulled into the liquid depths of the tale…

Book review: The Laughter by Sonora Jha

That savage chortle Sonora Jha`s book has a definitive personality; it is someone standing in the shadows of an ancient arch looking out at a decidedly un-ancient campus square with a sardonic half-smile on their lips and savage murder in their heart. On the surface of it, The Laughter is about Oliver Harding, an old-school…

Book review: The Retreat by Zara Raheem

Healing after heartbreak Zara Raheem`s The Retreat is a nice light read. The style is a chatty one, the topic takes up the difficulty in sustaining, managing a marriage of some years, in this case ten, the location is the West Coast of America, and the protagonist, a Muslim working professional woman. Nadia Abbasi is…

Book review: The Golden Years by Ruskin Bond

A wonderful life The dispassionate reviewer frequently marvels at how this veteran writer continues to hold sway over readers, churning out book after book like some kind of conveyer belt. That speculation usually lasts only till the aforementioned individual starts to read Ruskin Bond`s latest book; in no time, they will have succumbed to the…

Book review: Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus

LESSONS IN CHEMISTRY by Bonnie Garmus. Penguin Books. This delightful book is actually a fierce feminist manifesto masquerading as a heartwarming domestic life story. The basketful of prizes it has won – Best Debut Fiction of 2022, Goodreads Choice Best Debut Novel Award, NYT No 1 bestseller, Book of the Year for The Times, Sunday…

Book review: Night Train by Martin Amis

NIGHT TRAIN by Martin Amis. Vintage UK Books. At first, the story seems a straight send-up of American police stories. The narrator here is a policewoman who goes by the name of Mike Hoolihan; quite apart from the masculine-sounding moniker, she has the voice and the general build of a man, so gets frequently mistaken…

Book review: The Woman Who Climbed Trees

The Woman Who Climbed Trees In this sprawling multi-generational saga of a family based in Nepal, it is Meena the child-bride who is clearly the protagonist. Smriti Ravindra deftly combines the personal with the political in her debut novel; the main concern of this book, however, is women, and the love, loss and pain they…