Milk Teeth

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another book about a young woman in her 20s figuring life out and being self-destructive (do i read anything else? the writing is full of sparkly words that don’t really mean anything and the same metaphors are slammed again and again. Andrews acutely honed in on the contradictory ways in which you can think (key part here being “think”) you are in control of your body, life, food etc. At no point did I see any semblance of authenticity in the character development, and it comes across as very pretentious. But it's wrapped up most adroitly- telling the tale with what needed to be told, leaving you the hint of a tease to let your imagination wander and enough to think about.

The Kamat’s and Kini’s are friends with incongruous principles living in a building whose landlord wants to oust the tenants, scrap away the building and construct in its place one of those modern apartment complexes with anglicised names that are, at best, misnomers and at worst, hollow promise of entry into the elite club for when you live in Bombay only two things matter - “dress and address”. Resigned to her fate, Skalde fills her days reading, writing and trying to live under her reclusive mother’s rules, until one day, from seemingly nowhere, a girl named Meisis arrives and Skalde decides to go against Edith’s wishes by bringing her in.Years later, living in tiny rented rooms and working in noisy bars across London and Paris, she meets someone who offers her a new way to experience the world.

In lyric dispatches, with the condensed cadences of poetry, Andrews' novel brilliantly explores the ways we grow into and beyond the limits of ourselves, and what happens in the gaps in between who we are and who we're expected to be. The streets are viscous with heat and piss, bodies spilling from doorways, wrapped in sickly tendrils of weed. Andrews alternates her narrative between past and present, delivering both in short, vivid snapshots. Mahale's true gift is to take familiar environments and people ('personas' to stretch the MBA metaphor we started in the book) and let us re-look them with a new gaze within this story, while not dissecting them dispassionately like an academic would do to a frog.

Andrews deftly covers the toxic diet and body culture of the early 2000s with our young protagonist, who, for most of her life, has been subjected to this culture from magazines, television shows, friends and family in her life etc. Andrews’s writing is transportingly voluptuous, conjuring tastes and smells and sounds like her literary godmother, Edna O’Brien. Pleasantly, this is the first Indian novel I have read that does not shy away from using Indian English phrases without translations or explanations. Not to entirely bash the book, in its late Lana Del Rey tendresse, I think the themes of language, voice, and how trapped they are in the body are compelling.

A girl grows up in the north-east of England amid scarcity, fearing her own desires and feeling undeserving of love. But at the crux of this seemingly sweet matchmaking which has potential of blooming into a possible love story are lies, deception and conflict.Det finns något där som skulle kunna vara väldigt bra tror jag men samtidigt är det väldigt mycket tjej som gått skrivarskola-vibe. HOW MANY LAVENDER SUNSETS< BURNT CITRUS CLOUDS< AVOCADO BRUISED SEAS AND VIOLET SKIES MUST WE ENDURE? I read this cover to cover - starting Saturday night after dinner and because it was so good, I kept reading till I finished into the wee hours just so the spell wouldn't be broken. Well, having a daughter who made her home in and then near Barcelona some ten years ago, I think this is a book I need to read, especially on the strength of your review: I’ve a sense that the young woman is someone I might at least to some extent recognise.

Recommended for everyone, but especially to those who've grown up in Mumbai to renew an acquaintance with pre-cell-phone city preserved now only by nostalgia and photographs. But mostly, I was mesmerised by how she could move me with her words, the poetry in her language, the beauty in her metaphors. I do find this writing incredibly meaningless and annoying - it's Instagram writing, all style (poor, superficial style) and no substance at all. This is for those with teen angst, those in first-love relationships, those surfing along the honeymoon waves, and everyone stuck in suburban sensationalism thinking they know and feel everything after watching a single Youtube video essay on internet culture.Reading this book felt like writing a letter to all the places and people I once prized (and still do).