Odysseus Abroad by Amit Chaudhuri

East meets West in Amit Chaudhuri’s latest, set in ‘80s London. Ananda Sen is a young graduate student of poetry hoping for small measures of success, depending on his much older uncle Ranagamama, who has parked himself in a rent-stabilized bedsit for years, for companionship. Unfolding over the course of one Sunday afternoon, the story, in typical Chaudhuri style, is not packed with external events, focusing instead on the trials of displacement and non-conformity in a strange land. Uncle and nephew’s endless reflections occasionally feel too self-absorbed; nevertheless Chaudhuri’s gorgeous writing and insightful observations ultimately deliver a soulful novel.

Review: Asunder by Chloe Aridjis

Years ago, it was suffragette Mary Richardson who took a cleaver to Velasquez's Rokeby Venus but that wound continues to haunt Marie, a guard at London's National Gallery. The cracks and tears that paintings take on over time, she realizes, are much like the strains people are subjected to as well. As Marie struggles with the weight of her past and the release that is waiting like a coiled spring to finally materialize, the reader is treated to some poetic imagery and an incisive exploration of the slow burn of life for an everywoman who is just coming into her own.

Review: NW by Zadie Smith

NW might be set in (northwest) London, but its central question, about the pathway to success, is one that is increasingly the subject of public discourse across the pond. How much does place play into the people we become? Does race matter? How complex is the web of socio-economic factors that one must negotiate to achieve success in life? What does success even mean? These are the complex questions that the talented Zadie Smith looks to explore in NW.

The setting is one that Smith, who grew up in the area, knows like the back of her hand. It is one that Smith has visited before to great success in her previous novels, especially in her spectacular debut, White Teeth. The neighborhood is itself a living breathing character in the book: “Ungentrified, ungentrifiable. Boom and bust never come here. Here bust is permanent.”

The rest of the review is here.