Comfortably Numb

Sheila Kumar's Storehouse

Book review: Leaving Home with Half a Fridge

Life after divorce Part primer, part memoir, this book takes readers down the post-breakup road. Memoirs are tricky to write. Beyond a certain point, your memories might just not be the stuff of interest, leave alone inspiration to readers. What you reveal, what you veil, what you gloss over, what you decide to delve deep…

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Book review: If It`s Monday, It Must Be Madurai by Srinath Perur

If It`s Monday It must Be Madurai,  Srinath Perur’s account of conducted tours he has taken hither and thither, is a neat meld of insights and spot-on snarkisms about fellow Indian journey men and women. The humour is kept gentle for the most part though the digs are pointed and strike an immediate chord with…

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Book review: This Is How You Lose Her by Junot Diaz

This is more a brief take than review.   I had been wanting to get my hands on this book for a while now, especially after hearing Junot Diaz at the Jaipur Lit Festival in 2011. And when I finally picked up This Is How You Lose Her, I was not disappointed. Playing to the theme referred to…

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Book review: Family Life by Akhil Sharma

Akhil Sharma’s Family Life is so direct, so honest, it takes the reader aback. Straddling the thin line between fiction and memoir, Sharma gives us an unflinching account of how the Mishras, an ordinary family, migrate to the United States and even as things begin to look up for them, catastrophe strikes. The narrator’s older brother Birju…

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Book review: The Sleepwalker`s Guide to Dancing by Mira Jacob

Family matters The Indian reader should be forgiven for rolling her eyes soon after she starts to read The Sleepwalker`s Guide to Dancing by Mira Jacob (Bloomsbury India). Because the story seems to faithfully check all the little boxes that serve as bullet points for the Diaspora novel. Immigrants transitioning awkwardly, check. Father, white collar…

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Book review: Noon Tide Toll by Romesh Gunasekera

Noon Tide Toll by Romesh Gunasekera (Penguin Books). If it`s Romesh Gunasekera, you know you are in for a dashed good read, a moving read, and this book is no exception. Using the driver of an old Toyota vanVasantha as his mouthpiece, Gunasekera crafts 14 short stories of Sri Lanka as it is today. Vasantha…

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Book review: The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher by Hilary Mantel

Hilary Mantel`s new collection of shorts is provocatively titled The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher, (HarperCollins UK) and arguably the story by that name is the best read. There are ten stories, all of them full of what we know as Mantelisms…furniture is described as wilful, someone`s virginity is a wan one, someone leaving Jeddah is…

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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…

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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…

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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…

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