Review #38: Gender Talk

‘Boy or girl?’ That’s the first question that gets asked about us the moment we are born. The answer ends up dictating just about everything about our lives. Whether male or female, gender restricts us into predefined moulds. Yet most of us are unaware of these unspoken social or cultural codes that accompany our biological […]

Review #37: Dear Mrs Naidu

What does a studious little 12-year-old have in common with a well-known freedom fighter and the first woman governor of an Indian state? Little, it seems, apart from their name—Sarojini. But as young Sarojini starts writing letters to the long dead late, let’s just say ‘historical’, Sarojini Naidu, we find that this is a fairly […]

Review #36: The Whispering Skull

Our—well, certainly mine—favourite modern-day ghost hunters are back. Yep, it’s Anthony Lockwood, Lucy Carlyle and George Cubbins of Lockwood & Co. fame, and this time they are on the track of a ghostly artefact called the bone mirror. Failure will mean public humiliation at the hands of the snooty Quill Kipps of the Fittes Agency. […]

Review #35: Smitten

Ranjit Lal’s Smitten is a difficult book to talk about. On the one hand, it will leave you repulsed and enraged. On the other hand, it is a terribly important book because it throws the curtains open on a shameful reality of our world: the sexual abuse of children. Here’s an excerpt: Samir is delighted […]

Review #31: Only Ever Yours

What do you get when you take a brilliantly imagined world and stir in a somewhat disappointing plot and a completely bizarre ending? In the case of Louise O’Neill’s dystopian spec-fic novel Only Ever Yours, the answer is, a chillingly compelling tale that keeps you hooked and horrified in equal measure. The time is the […]

Review #29: Eleanor and Park

We imagine teenage love to be beautiful, fluffy, innocent and happy. We’re wrong. It’s usually messy, complicated, confusing and painful. Eleanor and Park is one such story. A couple of teenage misfits find friendship and love, first through comics and mixtapes, and then through endless conversations and each other’s company. But they are hardly the […]