TSUNDOKU. Books just wanna have fun

I have lately been losing my patience with Big Literary Books. Often, I’m bored halfway through a sentence; other times I want to scream at the page, “Just get on with it already”. Save us all from metaphors stretched too far, a zillion different ways to describe the protagonist feeling sad (We get it. She’s sad), awkward political opinions stuffed into a character’s mouth. Sometimes, I wonder if we’re being too nice to literary fiction in India. Are we — book critics — just pandering out of some desire to be kind? I’m guilty of the same thing, I’m sure, and I’m going to stop. Until I find my next amazing read on the lit-fic shelf, I’m going to go fully mainstream on you guys. That’s this week — three books that are solidly mainstream, and excellent reads. Unfortunately, none of them are from India.

Water cooler

The Woman in the WindowAJ FinnHarperCollinsFiction₹399

I can’t tell you much about The Woman In The Window by AJ Finn without giving away the whole story. I can tell you how it begins — Anna Fox, former child psychologist, sits at her window with a Nikon camera and spies on her neighbours. And then, in a delicious Rear Window or 4.50 From Paddington -esque twist, she witnesses something. Like a lot of unreliable narrators in psychological crime drama these days, she’s an alcoholic. But there are nods to the references throughout — Anna is a fan of old movies, and the atmosphere builds as she watches the black-and-white crime scenes on her television. At one point, I jumped right out of my skin, even though it was the middle of the afternoon, and went to see if all my doors were securely locked. There’s one mystery which is revealed halfway through the book, which I think you will guess quite soon, I did. But once that is out of the way, the rest of the book is a long drawn-out story of suspense. Surprisingly — for me, anyhow — the author is a man, AJ Finn being a pseudonym for Daniel Mallory, a book editor, who after a tremendous bidding war, finally sold the book to his own publishing house. But that’s just the back-story. You don’t need it to read this book, which you should.

Watchlist

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie SocietyMary Ann Shaffer, Annie BarrowsBloomsburyFiction₹399

Everyone and their uncle is talking about To All The Boys I Loved Before on Netflix, which is a rare, sweet movie, but sadly, the book trilogy is somewhat disappointing. Instead, read The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer, published and polished up posthumously by her niece Annie Barrows. There’s a Guernsey movie on Netflix as well — that’s the film tie-in cover you’ll get if you buy the book — but sadly, it fell far too short of the book. The book is a charming, epistolary novel about a burnt-out writer who starts corresponding with a group of real characters from the island of Guernsey. Set right after WWII, the book, I thought, would be light and frothy, and I was amazed at how deftly it dealt with dark Nazi occupation scenes. Shaffer managed to keep an even tone as she wrote about the horrors of war. The book is never allowed to go too deep into despair; you learn through a word or tone just how much the character has suffered. There’s also an adorable child and a romance you can root for. Read it, and maybe watch the movie if you’re curious, but wait for the charm of the book to truly set in before you do.

Way back

Born ConfusedTanuja Desai HidierScholasticFiction₹495

I don’t know if you remember the controversy around Kaavya Viswanathan and her first book, How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life . Viswanathan was touted as a young literary wunderkind, until it surfaced that a large part of her book was plagiarised. Viswanathan is now on several lists of ‘Top Ten Literary Hoaxes’, and as I was reading another article that referenced her career arc the other day, it reminded me of one of her accusers, Tanuja Desai Hidier, and her book Born Confused , which I have read several times. It’s hard to say why Born Confused , the story of Dimple Lala, a New Jersey resident trying to get in touch with her Indian roots, struck me so much. Perhaps it is because as a resident Indian, my identity is one of the things I’m not confused about. Perhaps it is because I read it at a time when everyone wanted to go to America, so to see someone fetishising India so much was quite a head-scratcher. Also, Dimple Lala, who may not be the most endearing character — a lot of what she does is quite entitled — is one of the most human teenagers I’ve read. Hidier drew largely from her childhood experiences, growing up as an immigrant in America, and while some of the references might seem dated, it’s still the story of a girl who feels out of place within her own skin.

Meenakshi Reddy Madhavan

Meenakshi Reddy Madhavan is the author of six books, the latest being The One Who Swam With The Fishes

Twitter: @reddymadhavan

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