Book Reviews - Comfortably Numb

Book review: Urnabhih by Sumedha V. Ojha

Love in the shadow of intrigue Sumedha Ojha has set this fast-paced thriller in the Mauryan age, a little after the adventurer turns king and is crowned Chandragupta Maurya. The story gets off to a somewhat stilted start and the awkward language (more about that, anon) only serves to drag it down. However, the turnabout…

Book review: Fairy Tales at Fifty by Upamanyu Chatterjee

An unspooling yarn First up, a stray thought. If this were a film, it would be what is called a ‘horrex’ film, a horror plus sex admixture. Upamanyu Chatterjee approaches the heart of his story in a roundabout manner. He introduces a character whose relevance is clearly apparent but his link to Pashupati’s family less…

Book review: A Bad Character by Deepti Kapoor

Well, comparisons are odious but 30 pages or so into this book, words float into your mind. Words like Svengali. Like Last Tango in Paris. Like Lolita. Like Caro Lamb and Lord Byron. Like 9½ Weeks. You get the drift. Deepti Kapoor`s heroine Idha, motherless, abandoned by her father, is a bit of a wraith: good-looking, intense, ripe for anything life or…

Book Review: Holistic Healing by Dr Issac Mathai

Body-mind-spirit connect The how-to book on living better. Dr. Issac Mathai has always passionately espoused a way of living that integrates various disciplines like naturopathy, yoga, acupuncture, hydropathy, Siddha and meditation. In this book, he deconstructs traditional therapies and intertwines several threads: those chronicling his personal journey as well as that of his holistic healing…

Book review: India in Love by Ira Trivedi

Wedding and bedding A close look at how young India is doing in suchlike matters. Don’t be thrown by the self-important title of the book. Ira Trivedi has chronicled the wooing/ wedding/ bedding patterns of India in systematic fashion and the result is a highly readable book. Even as I have to state that I’m…

Book review: The Way Things Were by Aatish Taseer

Aatish Taseer is at it again. Rooting in the past, referencing our shared history, seeking answers to painful questions of love, loss, alienation. In The Way Things Were, (Pan Macmillan) we meet Skanda, Sanskrit student, son of a Sanskrit scholar, collector of cognates, conveyor of his father`s dead body to its final resting place by the…

Book review: The Book of Gold Leaves by Mirza Waheed

The Painted Word The Book of Golden Leaves by Mirza Waheed. Penguin/Viking Books. In his first book, The Collaborator, Mirza Waheed spun a stunning story, thinly veiled as fiction, of the hapless Valley and its hapless residents. Here, he tells us a tender love story. The serious young man with fine features and a…

Book review: The Last Wave by Pankaj Sekhsaria

The Last Wave: An Island Novel by Pankaj Sekhsaria (HarperCollins Books). This book meticulously lists the many woes that assail the Andaman Islands, and sadly enough, the list is a long one. Harish Kumar comes to the Andaman Islands to … well, it’s not clear what his purpose is. What he sees, who he meets…

Book review: Transgressions by Vaiju Naravane

Avalanche of secrets Adultery, betrayal, loneliness, family friction… all put together with quiet assurance. Journalist and editor Vaiju Naravane’s first book is about the troubled relationships people enter into and exit from in life. Kranti Goray is a proverbial Maharashtrian girl next door who emerges rather violently from her chrysalis, becomes something of a…

Book review: The Blind Lady`s Descendants by Anees Salim

The bungalow of tales The Blind Lady’s Descendants. The title of Anees Salim’s book has a Márquez-like ring to it; what’s more, the story plays out very like a Márquez tale, slowly reeling the reader in and soon getting her/him thoroughly invested and involved in the fraught family drama being played out on the…