memoir - Comfortably Numb

Book review: Travels in the Other Place by Pallavi Aiyar

There`s travel and then there`s travel…. Pallavi Aiyar`s book has no ambiguity about the subject at hand. A neat meld of memoir and travelogue, she takes us aboard her personal train, opens the compartment doors to us, tells us of trips into the land of Books, into the barren wastes of Illness, shows us how…

Book review: Called by the Hills by Anuradha Roy

Over hill and dale First, it`s a memoir that takes us on a leisurely wander through the forests and dirt tracks of Ranikhet, where the author has lived for a quarter of a century now. Second, it has the most luscious illustrations ever, all done by the author, giving us a clear picture of just…

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: 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: Lifequake by Tarini Mohan

The long way back She was young, all of twenty-three, standing on the threshold of a new life in Uganda, in a new job, having made new friends. Then, one evening, she gets onto a boda, a motorcycle taxi, along with a friend. The boda is violently rear-ended by a vehicle and the driver, the…

Book review: Learning to Make Tea for One by Andaleeb Wajid

Growing with grief In the summer of 2021, as the second wave of Covid lashed the country, taking down so many people, tearing families asunder, Andaleeb Wajid, her husband Mansoor and her mother-in-law all contracted the virus. Andaleeb and her mother-in-law went into one hospital, her husband into another. Hospitalisation did not equal recovery in…

Book review: Knife by Salman Rushdie

A deconstruction of events The book`s tagline reads: meditations after an attempted murder. Which is as startling as it is dramatic. The text, though, is largely a matter-of-fact chronological record of events. While not entirely leached of emotions – this is Salman Rushdie, after all – there isn’t any maudlin self-pity in the narrative. When…

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…

Book review: The Gorakhpur Hospital Tragedy by Kafeel Khan

Lessons From a Crisis Consider this: the disbursement of funds under any budget follows a sequence. In Uttar Pradesh, it was as follows. The Finance Minister allotted the budget to the Medical Education department. The Principal Secretary of Medical Education sent it to the Director General of Medical Education. It was then sent to the…