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Balloonists

Fashionably racy, it is nevertheless not superficial.

Balloonists
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Following a global trend, Indian bookshops are overflowing with chick lit and, let바카라™s say, chuck lit. Bridget Jones and budgetary bones바카라”the ailing international publishing industry바카라”seem to have left their mark on Indian writing too. If you are a young writer, you can hardly ignore these developments. You are forced to adopt a chatty, on-the-ball style, then try to do what you can with, or despite, it.

In Balloonists, Rajorshi Chakraborti does quite a bit with and despite it. Fashionably racy, it is nevertheless not superficial. Dev, a British-Asian writer in London, is informed by his (current live-in) girlfriend that she바카라™s pregnant. This launches the novel precisely, setting the context, pointing into the narrative, as is evident from the first sentence: 바카라œUpon learning of my girlfriend바카라™s missed period and the subsequent result of a home-pregnancy test, my way of absorbing the information was to leave London without warning to visit a ninety-something-year-old lady in Munich....바카라 The old lady is the feisty great-aunt of Dev바카라™s ex-girlfriend, and when the ex-girlfriend disappears, Dev has to team up with Rodrigo (the man she had left him for) to find her. The disaster-ridden search of these two incompatible men manages to keep the reader captivated. Chakraborti knows what he is doing, and escapes cliches just when he seems to be wading into them. For instance, this about a fit of temper: 바카라œIt doesn바카라™t sound very nice recollected in tranquillity, but that is frequently a problem with emotion.바카라

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