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Ladies in the driving seat
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My Sainted Aunts (Penguin, Rs 200)
by Bulbul Sharma could easily be one of the best books to come out of India
this year. For those brought up on the tales of formidable Bengali women by Lila
Majumdar and Ashapurna Devi, Bulbul Sharma?s aunts bring back the world of Cantheridine
oil, starched, white cotton saris and obsession with hygiene. The opening story,
?Mayadevi?s London Yatra?, chronicles the saga of the matriarch?s visit to her
eldest son in London. (The son had sailed there to study forty years ago, but
a fear of flying had prevented him from making a trip back home.) Another aunt
wasted no time in deciding to go to Nagpur and find a job as soon as her husband
left home to become a holy man. Yet another had the course of life altered when
her husband?s family came to fetch her from her parent?s home once she reached
puberty: the child bride had grown ?a clear six inches taller? than her husband
in the intervening period. Sharma?s narration is simple, lucid and full of the
old-world charm that is hard to find in new-age Indian writing.
A Woman of Cairo (Hodder, ? 3.50) by Noel Barber was first
published in 1984 and has been reprinted now as part of the Hodder Great Reads
series, which celebrates ?the best and most-loved popular classics of the 20th
century?. Serena Pasha is the daughter of a diplomat in Cairo in the Twenties
and Thirties, the last days of the Empire in Egypt. Mark and Greg Holt are sons
of the Egyptian adviser, a throwback to the times when Britain believed ?that
Egypt was incapable of governing itself?. Mark and Serena grow up together and
fall in love, but it is Mark?s brother who has been promised Serena?s hand. The
approach to the Second World War and the armed attempts by the Egyptian nationalist
forces to overthrow the British rulers make the novel a pacy and engrossing read.
Not to be forgotten are the beautifully-woven-in characters of King Farouk, Anwar
Sadat and Nasser ? the result of the author?s own interactions with them.
Clueless and co. (Rupa, Rs 195) by
Pratik Basu adds one more to the corpus of forgettable Indian English novels,
primarily written by people taking sabbaticals from successful careers in industry
or media. Pratik Basu, an IIM Calcutta alumnus ?from a time when batch numbers
were still in single digits?, is contemplating extending his sabbatical indefinitely.
His novel is set in corporate Calcutta of the Eighties, and written in the jocular,
irreverent mode that has become a trademark of almost all ?first? novels today.
No prizes for guessing that the author?s corporate, B-school experience becomes
fodder for his debut novel.
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Smoked (Review, ? 6.00) by Patrick
Quinlan begins with two con men trying to overpower and rape Lola. She is
25 and has already been gangraped at 16. This time, however, she gets the better
of Mr Shaggy and Mr Blue Eyes, and the episode portends more violence, Tarantino
style. The hero, Smoke Dugan, is a bomb-maker, and Lola Bell turns out to be his
girlfriend. But Denny Cruz, the hitman, is out to get Smoke, and decides to use
Lola for the purpose. What follows is a breathless sequence of abduction, car
chases and con jobs. Just what the doctor ordered for a Hollywood flick.
Maximum Ride: The Angel Experiment (Headline,
? 2.99) by James Patterson takes you on a ride from Death Valley, California,
to the bowels of the New York subway system, with Max, Fang, Iggy, Nudge, the
Gasman and Angel. A fantasy ? Angel and co. are 98 per cent human and 2 per cent
bird ? with plenty of resonances from urban neighbourhoods.
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