Gud Mawrning to read-n-recycle. Review of ‘Just Married: Please Excuse’
Yashodhara Lal has penned a novel that is surely going to promote the habit of read-n-trash… oops! read-n-recycle sounded so much more diplomatic and mild and forgetful and so virtuous! But a novel that has Hinglish, sometimes in a rather disconcerting text full of all-caps, words like ‘gud mawrning’ an over-dose of unconvincing incidents, and...
A drill without command is an art. Review of ‘A case of exploding mangoes’
Three hundred and seventy-seven pages of perceptive brilliance cannot be easily handled by all writers. Well, most readers too would stumble and fall in their inability to get a firm hold on all the nuances that the pages overturn on you mercilessly. I loved the experience. But then I have my own reasons to love...
A chuckle of amusement. A review of ‘The Cavansite Conspiracy’
Koyal couldn’t hide her surprise. ‘As far as I remember, you had a fantastic collection of classics. When and how did popular literature replace your taste?’ ‘When I knew you, I was rather selective in my habits. Over the years, I have matured enough to understand that good fiction can come in any cover and...
Fun, but ephemeral. Review of ‘You never know when you’ll get lucky!’
Yes, reading the book was fun… but there are no lasting effects or thought hangovers from this one. Not a single memorable phrase, not a single incident that could be talked about, and not a single character that could be remembered with fondness or distaste or anger or even pity! So Priya Narendra has offered...
Immortality comes with a heavy price. Review of ‘I, Rama. Age of Seers.’
We’ve all been reading the story of Rama and there are quite a few of the tales from his life that are already known to us. Ravi Venu, however, decided to tell us the same story balancing a glass of a heady dose of Vodka in one hand and a glass of Rooh Afza in...
Never cut what you can untie. Review of ‘Sunlit Hearts’
Reading good and engrossing fiction often makes you ‘happy as a clam in high water‘ and you want to be with the book for a few more days after the last page has been read. This happened when I read ‘Sunlit Hearts’. One absolutely delightful thing about the way Meenu Mehrotra writes is her ability...
The author actually missed IIT and kissed Gurgaon – Review of ‘Zero Percentile – 2.0’ by Neeraj Chhibba
Let me begin by three quotes from the book: Quote 1 ‘Salem was a frightful dog waiting to be unleashed and the lady, a financial wizkid. One was a doer, the other a thinker.’ Quote 2 ‘It was heady. But this will be the only time,’ Nitin pushed her away, not knowing whether what they...
Revolutionary Greetings. Review of ‘The Muddy River’
SCAM. Yes, this is what I wanted to call this book. No, not because there is some writing scam that I’m trying to expose, but because there are four key words that weave this novel by P A Krishnan. The acronym SCAM, in this context, means: SENSUAL | CORRUPTION | ASSAM | MILITANCY. Though this...
I Went Out Too Far. Review of ‘The old man & the sea’
BOOK REVIEW Title of book: The Old Man And The Sea. Written by: Ernest Hemingway. 347 words. Title of Review : I Went Out Too Far. This story has simple sentences. No difficult words. No harsh judgements. No desperate attempt at trying to sound unique. The old man or Santiago, his skiff, the fish he...
Quite naïve of him. Review of ‘The death of Vishnu’
(Review of ‘The Death of Vishnu’ by Manil Suri) Michael Gorra in his review of ‘The Death of Vishnu’ on January 28, 2010, wrote: “The novel offers plenty of satire, but barely a rupee’s worth of social criticism. Politics plays no explicit role in his characters’ lives, and neither do the issues of Westernization; the...
