Book Reviews - Comfortably Numb

Comfortably Numb

Sheila Kumar's Storehouse

Book review: A Promised Land by Barack Obama

Delivering on some promises So, there are two ways to read Barack Obama`s eagerly awaited memoir. One as a political text, detailing the journey of the 44th president of the United States, from Harvard Law School grad to Chicago lawyer to Illinois senator thrice, to POTUS twice. An account of what he wanted to do…

Book review: Prelude to a Riot by Annie Zaidi

PRELUDE TO A RIOT by Annie Zaidi, Aleph Books. Zaidi throws out a taut line which the reader grasps, holds on to, and never lets go till the last page is turned. The book is an elegy — in prose — to communal hatred, to the damage wrought by communal hatred. This…

Book review: Piranesi by Susanna Clarke

PIRANESI by Susanna Clarke. Bloomsbury Publications. If you have read Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, the author`s first — astonishing — book, then you will crack open the pages of Piranesi with much anticipation. And you will read of a House (the capital H is necessary for a place of this magnitude) made largely up…

Book review: Girl in White Cotton by Avni Doshi

Of mothers and daughters A troubled and troubling look at this primary relationship gone awry. There`s a whole pantheon of literature on the topic of troubled mother-daughter relationships which features works like Nancy Friday`s My Mother, Myself, Christina Crawford`s ` Mommie Dearest, Alice Sebold`s The Almost Moon, Sarah Haywood`s Cactus, Jodi Picoult`s Leaving Time, Maya…

Book review: Coming Out As Dalit by Yashica Dutt

COMING OUT AS DALIT by Yashica Dutt, Aleph Books. I have just one word to describe this book: eviscerating. Dutt`s account of going through her early life hiding the fact that she belonged to the Bhangi caste, adopting a non-specific surname like Dutt, learning to quickly cover any traceable trace of her origins with a…

Book review: A Promised Land by Barack Obama

Barack Obama`s A PROMISED LAND is a terrific read, all 700 pages of the text, with some terrific photographs tucked away at the end of the tome. The point is, the 44th President of the United States is one heck of a writer. Written in a very reader-friendly style, the prose practically soaring when he…

Book review: Blood Brothers by Chandini Santosh

Blood Brothers, A Story of Separation and Loss by Chandini Santosh. Dhauli Books. Chandini Santosh takes up the twin strands of a little village by a river and of the communal politics ravaging it, entwines the two, and offers up a compelling story that warms the cockles of your heart even as it fills you…

Book review: Girls and the City by Manreet Sodhi Someshwar

Revenge of the city A romance, some sleaze and a deluge impact the lives of three girls in Bangalore. Manreet Sodhi Someshwar puts her character development skills up front in this story of how three women, from Unnao/ Mumbai/Chandigarh, try to hack a living in Bangalore. By the time the racy, pacy tale winds down…

Book review: Mountains of the Mind by Robert Macfarlane

Mountains of the Mind by Robert Macfarlane. Granta Books/2003 release. A history of a fascination, the tagline reads and indeed, the redoubtable Macfarlane demystifies much of the intrinsic, intense, often fatal, fascination that mountains hold for human beings. The most poignant part of this wonderful book for me, was Macfarlane`s recounting of the legend of…

Book review: The Story of a Brief Marriage by Anuk Arudpragasam

The Story of a Brief Marriage by Anuk Arudpragasam, Fourth Estate/HarperCollins Books. 2017 release. So, this is a story you read at one sitting, with something small and hard lodged at the back of your throat, and be warned, that something never dissolves; not while you are reading the book, not for a while after…