Book Reviews - Comfortably Numb

Comfortably Numb

Sheila Kumar's Storehouse

Book review: The Scratch and Sniff Chronicles by Hemangini Dutt Majumder

A delicious twist of Bangla Goth This debut novel takes the old trope of Bengali Gothic literature, contemporizes it deftly, and serves up a whodunnit that is some parts funny, some parts macabre, all parts engaging. We are dropped without ceremony into the lives of the Chaterges (yes, you read that spelling right) a woman…

Book review: Nautch Boy by Manish Gaekwad

Bittersweet memories Nautch Boy is a companion piece to the author`s affecting 2023 memoir of his mother, The Last Courtesan. Here, while still training focus on the formidable Rekhabai and her life after retiring/giving up the career of a tawaif, he opens a door into his own life and growing up feeling unloved and unwanted…

Book review: Saraswati by Gurnaik Johal

A river runs through it all Simply put, this book is audacious in scope and epic in scale. The resurgence of that ancient mythical river, the Saraswati, is braided here with the individual stories of characters, all of whom are part of one extended family. Multiple narratives across different continents deal with varied themes ranging…

All the Way to the River by Elizabeth Gilbert

Love, actually, frankly, devastatingly This is a tribute, a memoir, a self-help manual all rolled into one. It`s written with the blazing honesty and startling vulnerability Elizabeth Gilbert, the bestselling author of Eat Pray Love is known and loved for by millions of fan. Gilbert, in this reviewer`s opinion is going for a Love Story…

Book review: Mother Mary Comes To Me by Arundhati Roy

MOTHER MARY COMES TO ME by Arundhati Roy, Penguin Books. Roy`s memoir is an artful blend of a tribute to her mother, a slow deep nod to the turbulent relationship she had with `Mrs Roy,` and a walkthrough of her own life and times till date, giving us an understanding of just who Mrs Roy`s…

Book review: Fundamentally by Nussaibah Younis

Between a rock and a hard place Let`s talk about the author first. Dr Nussaibah Younis who studied at Oxford, Durham and Harvard, and has a PhD in International Affairs, is a peacebuilding practitioner and an Iraq expert. At one time, she advised the Iraqi government on programmes to deradicalize women affiliated with the ISIS….

Book review: The Elsewhereans by Jeet Thayil

Tracing life`s trajectories Jeet Thayil`s new book begins and ends by the Muvattupuzha river. And so, let us go then, you and I, to that riverside, to meet Ammu who has an ancestral home there, Anniethottam. Let us meet George, the man Ammu weds, let us attend their hesitant courtship, their wedding where Gramsci`s theory…

Book review: Return to Sri Lanka by Razeen Sally

Razeen Sally`s RETURN TO SRI LANKA was first published in India by Juggernaut Books; this edition is published by Simon and Schuster Books in 2025. Packed with information delivered in the most dispassionate manner as befits an academic, the book is such a good read. The product of a Welsh mother and a Lankan Muslim…

Book review: Water Days by Sundar Sarukkai

Sundar Sarukkai`s WATER DAYS, Tranquebar Books. The story is set in the 1990s, just when the IT headwinds had begun to blow across Bangalore, turning the Garden City into a `compooter city,` bringing waves of people from across India looking to ride the boom, forever changing the climate, the traffic, the very vibes of a…

Careless People by Sarah Wynn-Williams

Sarah Wynn-Williams, the former Global Political Policy Head of Facebook now Meta, spills a whole stall of tea, and boy, how precisely and clearly she does the job. Loved the title and its genesis. It derives meaning from a splendid epigram from The Great Gatsby. “They were careless people, Tom and Daisy—they smashed up things…