Comfortably Numb

Sheila Kumar's Storehouse

Book review: The Blue Women by Anukrti Upadhyay

Compartmentalised lives  Anukrti Upadhyay is back with a fresh cache of short stories that effectively proves her earlier acclaimed work Kintsugi was no flash in the pan. There are a dozen short stories in this volume, all of them imbued with the characteristic quietude we have come to associate with this writer. When things —…

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Book review: Spare by Prince Harry

The Spare strikes back So here are the facts as we know it: The book flew off the shelves in the prince`s home country, as fast as that other Harry`s broomstick on the Quidditch field, selling 1. 4 million copies on its launch day itself. That it`s one big whinge-fest from a seriously troubled not-so-young…

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Book review: The Body by the Shore by Tabish Khair

Terror on an oil rig Tabish Khair`s new book is a scientific thriller where the action mostly takes place on an oil rig turned dubious resort in  the North  Sea just off Denmark. Set around 2030, with frequent references to the coronavirus pandemic that hit the world a decade ago, the reader sees that the…

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Book review: Where My Feet Fall by Duncan Minshull

Paeans to the pleasures of walking This  collection of walking stories quite lives up to the book`s irresistible title. All twenty contributors, including some names familiar to readers in the sub-continent like Pico Iyer, Kamila Shamsie and Keshava Guha, write crisp pieces on where their feet fall by routine/with deliberation/some getting over a reluctance to…

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Book review: Chrysalis by Neetha Raman

CHRYSALIS by Neetha Raman (Ukiyoto Press) is the sweet coming- of- age story of an LA-based trust fund heiress, a TamBrahm girl who is compelled by circumstances to return to Chennai for a year, take over her grandfather`s media empire, come to terms with the sense of loss she still feels about her parents` death,…

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Book review: Chronicles of the Lost Daughters by Debarati Mukhopadyay

Women who wield the narach Simply put, translations of regional literature is a gift that keeps on giving. Arunava Sinha’s translation of Narach, the best-selling Bengali novel, is one such addition to the pantheon. The English title of Debarati Mukhopadhyay’s book is  Chronicle of the Lost Daughters,  and is  a story about women and everything…

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Book review: Girl A by Abigail Dean

Many years after the trauma…. Every so often a book is declared a publishing sensation. Sometimes it  is a debut novel, sometimes it is a thriller and very often, it has `girl` in its title. Like Gone girl and The Girl on the Train. The book  then sells for huge sums after multi-way auctions, film…

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Book review: Villainy by Upamanyu Chatterjee

VILLAINY by Upamanyu Chatterjee. Speaking Tiger Books, 2022. What a cracker of a murder mystery, what a cracker of a book! Chatterjee is back with all his old snark, the snark we loved in `English, August` but have only caught fleeting glimpses of in the books that followed that sparkling debut novel of Chatterjee`s. This…

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Book review: Handle with Care by Shreya Sen-Handley

Travels with the kids So, here comes a book that is something of a departure from others of its genre found on bookshelves today. This is a straight-up travelogue, one that falls back on tried and trusted tropes of travel writing: have an interesting place to go to. Tell of that visit in an interesting…

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Book review: 84, Charing Cross by Helene Hanff

84, Charing Cross by Helene Hanff. Virago Modern Classics Books. This reproduction of a most delightful correspondence between American  writer Helene Hanff who has a pronounced predilection for ye olde English books, and the seemingly stiff and starchy `FPD` Frank P Deol,  over at the antiquarian bookshop Marks and Co at 84, Charing Cross, London,…

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