Every birthday is a door. When the arbitrariness of life leaves you in front of a door each year, you are oblivious to what's behind the door. Sometimes, you say a little prayer before turning the doorknob and you step into the room with hope and determination. Sometimes, you curse under your breath, wish you …
Book Review: Hellfire by Leesa Gazi
In my last post -- a review of Ocean Vuong's On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous -- I wrote, "If the fences are eventually lifted, where will we go from there?" Strangely, Leesa Gazi's Hellfire, translated from the Bengali by Shabnam Nadiya, starts from there. Lovely gets out of the house for the first time all …
Book Review: On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous By Ocean Vuong
I am always looking for something sweet, something ugly, something that talks about what it means to be human, something that can tell me that there is meaning and that this life is not absurd, and something that can hold space for me to salvage myself. Even when I read a pop-science book on how …
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Book Review: Long Live The Post Horn by Vigdis Hjorth
Trigger Warning: This blog contains mentions of suicide and depression. There was a lid over the world. As in Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar, I thought. I wondered if I should read it again, but surely it would only intensify my sense of isolation, I punch my fists into the air as if to smash …
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Book Review: The Sound of A Wild Snail Eating by Elisabeth Tova Bailey
My mother's garden received an unusual visitor. A snail. When I had posted a picture of the snail on Twitter, my friend Caroline recommended Elisabeth Tova Bailey's The Sound of A Wild Snail Eating. I was in between quite a few books when the recommendation came my way, but it became an antidote to my …
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Book Review: The Orders Were To Rape You
Trigger Warning: Mentions of sexual violence and genocide In Purananuru, an anthology of four hundred Tamil poems written by more than 152 poets between the first and third centuries C.E., emperors were exalted. Their wisdom, and their valour in war were celebrated. But women were assigned certain roles. They were the martyrs’ mothers, widows, and …
Book Review: Red At The Bone by Jacqueline Woodson
This was their perfect moment. Another almost-erased history unaborted. And this house with its hundred-plus years. This house with its stained-glass and leaded windows. This house with its generations cheering, saying, Dance, y'all and Ashe and The ancestors are in the house, say what? I and everything and everyone around me was their dream come …
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Book Review: Bird Cottage by Eva Meijer
Bird Cottage, written by Eva Meijer, translated by Antoinette Fawcett, asks many questions. Why does one give up the comfort of a known life, and move to a cottage in the countryside, just to run a research on birds? Why does one antagonize one’s neighbour whose cats terrify the birds? Why does one choose to …
Book Review: Mermaids in The Moonlight by Sharanya Manivannan
Then there are dreamers like you and me who want to believe there can be mermaid in lagoon. Fish-tailed, with a human heart! Sharanya Manivannan’s Mermaids in The Moonlight starts from Mattakalappu in Ilankai. A note at the end of the book reads that we may know Mattakalappu as Batticaloa, and Ilankai as Sri Lanka. …
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Book Review: Mr Loverman by Bernardine Evaristo
Millennials would hate Barrington Jedidiah Walker (Barry), and the Gen Z's would call him a dinosaur like his grandson who banters with him. In Bernardine Evaristo's Mr Loverman, Barry narrates what happens in his life from May 2010 to May 2011 while also recalling his life in Antigua, how he learned to live as a …
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