Incantations

My teenage self would have loved this book. Back in my younger days I used to read exclusively Asian and Asian-American authors, and I was a connoisseur of the Indian immigrant short story tale of woe.  This is a whole collection of them!
Ok that does sell the book short a bit. This is a collection of short stories written by an Indian author, now living in the US. All of the action takes place in India involving Indian characters, though some peripheral characters are ex-pats or NRIs.  The stories are quite short, mostly 10-15 pages, but they are rich and interesting. Most are a from a woman's perspective and all involve women's experiences, with feminist principles declared subtly but firmly throughout.
I loved most of the stories and got caught up in the characters' lives.  Some of the stories were tragic, some happy, but almost all were engrossing. The only exception were two stories involving the character of Sharmaji, a middle aged man who spends his entire day avoiding work that he is being paid to do. I couldn't quite find the point of these two stories, and I gave up halfway through the second one. He interacts with a manager named Miss Das, who it turns out is married and did not take her husband's name (gasp!), and I think the stories are supposed to contrast her work with Sharmaji's lack of it. I couldn't get past my distaste for Sharmaji long enough to figure it out.

I give this 8 out of 10. If you like Jhumpa Lahiri's and Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni's short story collections, you will like this one. Honestly, I liked the writing style of Appachana a bit better than Divakaruni.

Next up: #53 Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell