memoir Archives - Comfortably Numb

Book review: My Salinger Year by Joanna Rakoff

`We must talk about Jerry` MY SALINGER YEAR by Joanna Rakoff. Bloomsbury Books, 2014 release. Obviously, the author will have Salinger fans at the second word in the book`s title, but it really is a lovely read, all of it. The peg is irresistible: a young New Yorker freshly graduated having majored in literature, goes…

Book review: Writing the City, edited by Stuti Khanna

Depicted as experienced This slim volume contains literary essays that artfully entwine the perfectly compatible strands of travel and personal memoir to good effect. A list of known names write about the cities they have situated their works in, the cities of their imagination versus the reality, the cities that strike a creative chord in…

Book review: Four Seasons in Rome by Anthony Doerr

Four Seasons in Rome by Anthony Doerr. HarperCollins UK. 2007 release. Taking up two disparate strands, that of rearing newborn twins and of spending a year in the Eternal City, Anthony Doerr, Pulitzer-prize winning author of All The Light We Cannot See, gives us a most charming travelogue-memoir. He`s funny about his boys: The boys…

Book review: A Promised Land by Barack Obama

Barack Obama`s A PROMISED LAND is a terrific read, all 700 pages of the text, with some terrific photographs tucked away at the end of the tome. The point is, the 44th President of the United States is one heck of a writer. Written in a very reader-friendly style, the prose practically soaring when he…

Book review: It`s All In Your Head, M by Manjiri Indurkar

Managing the Black Dog A brave account of struggling with a troubled mind and body. If life sometimes looks to be all uphill, never is this more manifest than in Manjiri Indurkar`s It`s All In Your Head, M. Laid low with a bevy of stomach- related ailments, some of the trouble diagnosed to a rotavirus…

Book review: Perhaps Tomorrow by Pooranam Elayathamby with Richard Anderson

This stark tale, told absolutely without the slightest frill to embellish it, is basically a tale of triumph, of navigating one`s way through all the odds stacked in one`s path and coming through, banner held aloft. The `one` here is the co-narrator Pooranam Elayathamby alias Sandy. Born into a poor Sri Lankan Tamil household, any…

Book review: Is There Still Sex in the City by Candace Bushnell

Chick-lit for older chicks? Here, relationships and ageing are more engaging than either sex or the city. With its standout title, Candace Bushnell`s memoir Is There Still Sex In The City? sets up some major expectations, of beautifully made-up, expensively dressed young women dealing with the trials and tribulations of love, sex and everything in…

Book review: When I Hit You by Meena Kandasamy

When I Hit You by Meena Kandasamy. Juggernaut Books There`s no getting around it, this book is a wrenching read for the reader, all the more so for the female reader. The unnamed narrator, a poet flying high but yet to get to the top of her game, decides to, rather suddenly, marry a man…

Book review: The Pigeon Tunnel by John le Carre

The Pigeon Tunnel by John le Carre Reminiscences from the spy who can string a sentence or two. And how. Behind the smoke and the mirrors, this book, by this onetime MI5 agent, is a master class in the art of story-writing, because every one of these stories from his life are fascinating anecdotes. And…

Book review: Moonglow by Michael Chabon

Memory chaser Price 12.99 Pounds Sterling. Michael Chabon’s Moonglow is a feel-good story with darkness at its heart. Chabon, a novelist who has frequently moved between themes and genres, presents this as a family memoir. Then again, given the many literary flourishes contained within, the reader could be forgiven for thinking this…