Book Reviews - Comfortably Numb

Comfortably Numb

Sheila Kumar's Storehouse

Book review: Called by the Hills by Anuradha Roy

Over hill and dale First, it`s a memoir that takes us on a leisurely wander through the forests and dirt tracks of Ranikhet, where the author has lived for a quarter of a century now. Second, it has the most luscious illustrations ever, all done by the author, giving us a clear picture of just…

Book review: The Third Pole by Mark Synnott

THE THIRD POLE is Mark Synnott`s engrossing account of going up Mount Everest in search of the remains of the second of the fabled explorers of 1924, George Mallory and Sandy Irvine. For those who don`t know, the duo had attempted to summit Everest via the northern side in Tibet, had been last seen 800…

Book review: The Little Book of Goodbyes by Ravi Shankar Etteth

A wistful look back at life This slim volume of short stories delivers on the promise of its title: it really is a little book of nostalgic look-backs. The author digs deep into his personal cache of memories, mines it for sentiment and poignancy, takes us to a little town in south Malabar, then moves…

Book review: U-turn and Other Stories by Gauri Shankar Raina, trs by Pankaj Bhan

Gentle tales from the vale U-turn and Other Stories is a curation of Kashmiri tales written by Hindi/English/Kashmiri writer and filmmaker Gauri Shankar Raina and translated by Pankaj Bhan. Quite a few of the stories are situated in Jammu, which one doesn’t find too often in books on and from Kashmir, the focus usually being on…

Book review: Finding My Way by Malala Yousafzai

Taking off the halo This autobiography reads like the coming -of- age memoir of just another girl filled with self-doubt, unsure of many things, trying to find her niche in a world far from her comfort zone. It just so happens that the subject and writer is Malala Yousafzai, who was shot by a gunman…

Book review: Once Upon a Summer by Manjul Bajaj

Once Upon a Raj time In her fourth book of fiction for adults, Manjul Bajaj has once again created a delicate spindrift of forbidden love, this time in the times of the British Raj. The wonderfully descriptive story moves between New York, Rannpur, Jaunpur, Saharanpur, Nainital, flows gently over every pebble, every path, every emotion…

Book review: Kidnapped by Hezbollah

A brush with danger The tagline of the book reads: A True Story of Travel, Turmoil and Triumph, and pretty much sums up what lies at the heart of the story. This is the true-life account of an Australia-based man of Indian origin. When Kaushik Sridhar decides he needs to visit the war-torn areas of…

Book review: Railsong by Rahul Bhattacharya

Charu’s song This sweeping saga combines personal narrative, social history and a fascinating deep dive into how the Indian Railways works. The beating heart of the story, however, is its indomitable main character, Charulata Chitol. The story begins with Charu’s family moving to a railway township, Bhombalpur. Charu’s father works in the Light Machine Shop…

Book review: The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny by Kiran Desai

The Booker-25 shortlisted THE LONELINESS OF SONIA AND SUNNY by Kiran Desai, Penguin/Hamish Hamilton Books, is a veritable tome (almost 700 pages) dedicated almost single- mindedly to loneliness and its eviscerating effects, how to survive it, stay afloat, not go under… or get across if one does go under. Written in a melancholy manner, the…

Book review: Into the Heart of the Himalayas by Jono Lineen

Jono Lineen`s complete travelogue, INTO THE HEART OF THE HIMALAYAS, Speaking Tiger Books, is a lovely read. The author, a curator at the National Museum of Australia, walks across the Himalayas in a bid to come to terms with the sudden unexpected death of a younger brother. This book which was released in 2012,…