All posts tagged: Melissa Holbrook Pierson

Review: Happy by Celina Baljeet Basra

Book cover of happy

Everything about Happy Singh Soni, the titular hero of Celina Baljeet Basras stinging first novel, is unlikely. He is the son of Punjabi cabbage farmers, but he fancies himself a screenwriter and prospective movie actor in the mold of Nouvelle Vague darling Sami Frey. (Indeed, he has effectively memorized Godards Bande à part.) He imagines his future in a Europe of all the classic allures, living in an elegant stone house with a yellow door; he is all about the details, which are uniformly sensual and full of wonder to him. Even as a child on his parents’ modest farm, he begins practicing for the day when his public utterances will be sought after by the press, so he invents a series he titles The Loo Interviews,conducted by an eager reporter for the gossipy Jodhpur News . . . while he occupies the privy.

He is in exuberant love with all he experiences, especially his mothers adoringly proffered fried treats. Happy even appreciates the pests that afflict the surrounding farmland that is slowly being consumed by the amoeba of a badly managed Disneyland knockoff called Wonderland, where he takes a desultory job in which his nascent talents are ignored. He is the kind of imaginative soul who cant help but personify even the stars in the sky (Blinky, Pinky, Inky, and Clyde”).

Review: Happy by Celina Baljeet Basra
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Friday Reads: September 2020

Curated by ISABEL MEYERS

In this month’s Friday Reads, we’re hearing from our volunteer readers, who consider submissions for print and online publication. Their book recommendations range from poetry collections to recent novel debuts and Flannery O’Connor short stories revisited through the lens of anti-racism. Read on for new quarantine entertainment and keep an eye out for a second round of recommendations from our volunteer readers, out later this fall.

Recommendations: Thin Girls by Diana Clarke; Shiner by Maggie Nelson; Complete Stories by Flannery O’Connor; Cherry by Nico Walker, Dear Edward by Ann Napolitano.

Friday Reads: September 2020
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