short stories Archives - Comfortably Numb

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 —…

Book review: A Case of Indian Marvels edited by David Davidar

A Case of Indian Marvels, edited by David Davidar. Aleph Books. Forty short stories from writers aged forty and under, says the blurb on the back jacket of the book. The stories have been handpicked by David Davidar, arguably one of the best connoisseurs of stories short and long, and the result is an anthology…

Book review: The Greatest Enemy of Rain by Manu Bhattathiri

Flaunting their foibles Over the course of the three books he has written, this one being the fourth, Manu Bhattathiri has become the Small Town Adept. He creates interesting characters who invariably live in picturesque hamlets in Kerala, at the edge of which a river runs, meanders or flows sluggishly. Not all these characters are…

Books: Learning to Talk by Hilary Mantel

LEARNING TO TALK, Henry Holt Books, is the just released US edition of a set of short stories Hilary Mantel wrote in 2003. There are just seven short stories in this slim volume but let me tell you something: it takes a long time to traverse the worlds in those stories, to digest the emotions…

Book review: Kintsugi by Anukrti Upadhyay

The gleam of a repaired heart Kintsugi is a collection of six short stories, all the characters linked to each other, some tenuously, some strongly. We meet Haruko, a jewellery apprentice of Japanese-Korean extraction in a jeweller`s lane in Jaipur, after which we go over to Tokyo, then Kyoto, to meet Meena, Yuri and Hajime….

Book review: The Women who Forgot to Invent Facebook and Other Stories by Nisha Susan

Snark Attack In her debut collection of short stories, Nisha Susan oscillates between the savage and the gentle, but never lets go of her trademark sarcasm It`s that expectations thing. It can`t be easy to be Nisha Susan debuting her book of short stories. That’s because Susan, co-founder of The Ladies Finger and Grist Media,…

Book review: Left From the Nameless Shop by Adithi Rao

Heart-warming tales of small-town life These are stories suffused with nostalgia for a quieter way of life. Lives intersect in manifold ways in Adithi Rao’s debut book of short stories, lives lived in the fictional small town of Rudrapura in Karnataka. And a leitmotif runs all through the narrative: a sense of nostalgia for a…

Book review: A Faceless Evening by Gangadhar Gadgil

Of the human condition… Fourteen evocative short stories by the Marathi master. Gangadhar Gadgil carved a niche for himself in Marathi literature decades ago, and is a known name to those who read translations but alas, not to scores of other readers. Now, Ratna Books and translator Keerti Ramachandra have rectified that omission with this…

Book review: Loyal Stalkers by Chhimi Tenduf-La

Observing the undertow These stories zoom in on what lurks just beneath; sometimes it`s sweet, sometimes it`s seedy. Chhimi Tenduf-La follows his well-received books, The Amazing Racist and Panther, with this collection of short stories that strap you into the carousel seat, then takes you on a rapid-paced ride through the suburbs of…

Book review: Turtle Dove by Divya Dubey

Turtle Dove, A collection of Bizarre tales by Divya Dubey, Readomania Publications It is indeed a rare soul who does not pick up a book that promises to explore bizarre matters between its pages. Turtle Dove, Divya Dubey`s slim but interesting offering, takes us on a walk alongside the undertow of life, lets us…