It’s the July 4th weekend when Ali‘s wife Sam goes missing on her early morning run in their upscale Cleveland Heights neighborhood. Her disappearance sets in motion events that keep Thrity Umrigar’s new novel, Missing Sam, at a slow burn over the mystery, but ignites a blaze in the response the community has to the situation. Aliyah Mirza is a U.S. citizen, a Muslim whose ... Read More...
The Museum of Failures
It's been years since Remy Wadia has been back to Bombay, where he was born and raised. It was his father’s fervent wish that he go to America for university and then settle there, which Remy did. Now, he’s returning to adopt a baby as he and his wife have not been able to conceive. At the same time, he knows he needs to make the obligatory visit to his mother, despite the fact ... Read More...
Honor: A Novel by Thrity Umrigar
When Smita arrives in Mumbai she thinks she’s there to help a good friend undergoing surgery. Otherwise, even as a global journalist, she has never returned to the country her family left when she was a teenager. Now, in Thrity Umrigar’s new novel, Honor, she’s forced to confront her past while coming face-to-face with another young woman horribly impacted by the same forces in ... Read More...
The Secrets Between Us
By the end of Thrity Umrigar’s novel, The Space Between Us, Bhima had been fired from her job as Sera’s household servant, after being accused of stealing money from the family. For Bhima, living alone while trying to raise her granddaughter, Maya, in one of Mumbai’s many slums, this was a catastrophic event. She had worked for Sera for over two decades, relying on Sera’s ... Read More...
Everybody’s Son by Thrity Umrigar
This month Thrity Umrigar's novel, Everybody's Son, was released in paperback so I'm revisiting my review of this entertaining and thought provoking book. Even more good news: Umrigar has a new novel, The Secrets Between Us, coming out later this month. It's a sequel to her novel, The Space Between Us, which is my favorite of her novels. When a novel opens ... Read More...
Everybody’s Son: A Novel
When a novel opens during a heat wave with a ten-year-old boy breaking a window to get out of an apartment with no electricity after being left alone for a week while his mother goes out to buy drugs it doesn’t seem as if much nuance to the story can follow. Unless the author is Thrity Umrigar, one of my favorite writers for presenting human emotion at its messy, inconvenient, ... Read More...
