[rec] The Anuja Chauhan Reading Club: Those Pricey Thakur Girls

[kaberett]

Like The Zoya Factor, I read this in one sitting; and it's still about journalists and journalism, but this one is also about freedom of the press and about families and so on and so forth.

I will get the one thing that had me pulling the D:-face continuously out of the way first: "chinkie" was used repeatedly throughout the book - five or six times - in a completely non-problematised way that was super-exoticising and othering. It was... a bit grim.

-- the big thing I noticed during this one is that actually these books (perhaps unsurprisingly, given that they're rom-coms) hit a lot of the same narrative buttons as Regency romances, except they're set in 1980s India.

So! Yes. I enjoyed this. I enjoyed this a lot. There was some absolutely fantastic uncle- and aunty-ing, that had me burying my face in my hands and laughing pretty heartfelt groans: it was affectionately skewered, and it was spot-on, and it was great.

There was a paragraph I was obliged to copy out and send to That One Lady:

"I'm sorry about that crack too," she says. "And for holding up a this-is-not-a-date flag. I realize it was presumptuous. I mean, obviously you have a girlfriend."

Dylan, trained journalist that he is, knows that statements are questions. But he doesn't want to answer this one.

"What a big word," he says lightly. "Presumptuous. I bet you go around saying presumptuous things just so you can use presumptuous when you apologize and impress the other person with your usage of presumptuous."

"Oh, please," Debjani dismisses this with unconscious snobbery. "I know much bigger words than that."

This wasn't about cricket so it's perhaps less surprising that I enjoyed it (because, really, when am I not going to enjoy a book about press freedom and families found-and-made and The Difficulty Of Siblings and lots of women interacting), but -- I did, it was good, I liked it, maybe you will too.

(There is currently no-one else in the UK on deepad's list, so if you'd like me to sort out getting these to you once my housemate is done with them -- per Deepa's post, the deal is that it'd be nice if you wrote a review of them but the main thing is sending them on to someone else -- give us a shout and I will Arrange Matters.)

Comments

[thefairymelusine]

I... would really like to read these at some point. Should I DM you?

[kaberett]

Yep! Deepa's given me permission to circulate UK copies as I see fit, and they were actually purchased by rmc28 who likewise Wants Them Read and is probably fine not doing the work of Finding People To Read Them herself ;)

[thefairymelusine]

Cool- will IM you address/to arrange stuff. (Might, depending on stuff, be able to get them a Review In Print, though it depends on how little news we have over the silly season.)

[tamouse]

Statements are questionss, and questions are assertions, mostly, though I still have a hard time remembering that. I tend to answer the questions and take the statements as assertions.