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Insects Are Just Like You and Me Except Some of Them Have Wings
A centipede in a shoe, revelations in a shoebox, nosebleeds, exploding women, and a dead mouse named Miraculous populate this collection of thirty-five short stories from one of India's most original young writers.
Kuzhali Manickavel was born in Winnipeg, Manitoba, lived in various places around Canada, and moved to Chidambaram, Tamil Nadu, India when she was thirteen years old. Contrary to popular belief, she is not very fond of insects.
"[This book] is just very, very beautiful. The stories it collects are by turns weird, whimsical, surreal, visceral, haunting, quirky and fantastic"--The Guardian
"Kuzhali Manickavel writes dense, dazzling prose that is thick with local grit and soars in a cosmopolitan wonderland. It’s heartbreaking and beautiful and also completely bonkers."--Africa is a Country
"...possibly the most intriguing book on the list of thrilling publications from the house of Blaft... Manickavel (who titled a section of a recent blog post on Indian writing in English 'Do not have an unnecessarily complicated name like Kuzhali Manickavel') writes in English and lives in Chidambaram. The stories in Insects are sometimes as short as half a page and occasionally as long as twelve pages. Many of them do feature insects, or at least insect imagery, and diagrams of insects with witty labels are found throughout the book, such as the one shown here of an earwig representing childhood mythology. It is difficult to think of a way to encapsulate this collection of so many unusual and imaginative other reviewers refer to them as dream-like. I think it better to call them surreal; intricate, ironic and frequently hilarious, though sometimes very, very sad."--Bookslut
"Bloody fantastic"--Sarnath Banerjee
Kuzhali Manickavel was born in Winnipeg, Manitoba, lived in various places around Canada, and moved to Chidambaram, Tamil Nadu, India when she was thirteen years old. Contrary to popular belief, she is not very fond of insects.
"[This book] is just very, very beautiful. The stories it collects are by turns weird, whimsical, surreal, visceral, haunting, quirky and fantastic"--The Guardian
"Kuzhali Manickavel writes dense, dazzling prose that is thick with local grit and soars in a cosmopolitan wonderland. It’s heartbreaking and beautiful and also completely bonkers."--Africa is a Country
"...possibly the most intriguing book on the list of thrilling publications from the house of Blaft... Manickavel (who titled a section of a recent blog post on Indian writing in English 'Do not have an unnecessarily complicated name like Kuzhali Manickavel') writes in English and lives in Chidambaram. The stories in Insects are sometimes as short as half a page and occasionally as long as twelve pages. Many of them do feature insects, or at least insect imagery, and diagrams of insects with witty labels are found throughout the book, such as the one shown here of an earwig representing childhood mythology. It is difficult to think of a way to encapsulate this collection of so many unusual and imaginative other reviewers refer to them as dream-like. I think it better to call them surreal; intricate, ironic and frequently hilarious, though sometimes very, very sad."--Bookslut
"Bloody fantastic"--Sarnath Banerjee
152 pages, Paperback
First published June 28, 2008
18 people are currently reading
687 people want to read
About the author
Kuzhali Manickavel
29books78followersKuzhali Manickavel (Tamil: குழல� மாணிக்கவேல�) is an Indian writer who writes in English. She was born in Winnipeg, Canada and moved to India when she was thirteen. She currently lives in Chidambaram, Tamil Nadu. Her first book - Insects Are Just Like You And Me Except Some Of Them Have Wings was published by Blaft Publications in 2008. Her short stories have also appeared in print magazines like Shimmer Magazine, Versal literary journal, AGNI, PANK, FRiGG and Tehelka.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 68 reviews
October 10, 2008
It's hard not to compare Kuzhali Manickavel to Miranda July, both because they seem to share a sort of "quirkiness" (yes, I hate that word too), and because Miranda herself wrote a nonblurb for this book, something along the lines of, "When I read this book I totally felt like I had once hung out with this woman at a party or something, but I hadn't. She's just that good." I hope someday I'll be able to write something that will make Miranda feel that way - or better yet, something that will make her feel as if she once stood in line behind me at McDonald's and our orders were swapped and she ended up with my Quarter Pounder and I had to eat her Snack Wrap.
But the thing is, the similarity is only on the surface. Miranda July seems to have made her characters quirky in a last-ditch effort to make them appear interesting - strip away the weird things that they do, and you're left with a bunch of empty, self-absorbed and self-destructive characters who revel in being that way. In many of Manickavel's stories, on the other hand, the characters are real, live human beings who love each other, people who are searching for something - their "humanness" comes across powerfully, even if the stories are too short to really get to know who these people are. And yes, these stories are really, really short. Some of them are conceptually related, and it's interesting to try to connect the dots (and the stories seem to be arranged in a way that encourages those kinds of associations).
A few of the stories are less satisfying than others, and I also didn't love the insect diagrams that Manickavel used as illustrations. The pictures are great, but I felt that she could have done much, much more with them (she admits in her author bio that she doesn't like insects very much, and it's clear that she's keeping them at arm's length when she tries to label their bodies with witticisms). But all in all, I'm a fan.
But the thing is, the similarity is only on the surface. Miranda July seems to have made her characters quirky in a last-ditch effort to make them appear interesting - strip away the weird things that they do, and you're left with a bunch of empty, self-absorbed and self-destructive characters who revel in being that way. In many of Manickavel's stories, on the other hand, the characters are real, live human beings who love each other, people who are searching for something - their "humanness" comes across powerfully, even if the stories are too short to really get to know who these people are. And yes, these stories are really, really short. Some of them are conceptually related, and it's interesting to try to connect the dots (and the stories seem to be arranged in a way that encourages those kinds of associations).
A few of the stories are less satisfying than others, and I also didn't love the insect diagrams that Manickavel used as illustrations. The pictures are great, but I felt that she could have done much, much more with them (she admits in her author bio that she doesn't like insects very much, and it's clear that she's keeping them at arm's length when she tries to label their bodies with witticisms). But all in all, I'm a fan.
October 28, 2008
Oh yes please. New crazy book with a new crazy title put out by a new crazy small press in India? Um, yes yes and yes.
***
This book is awesome. Despite Miranda July's silly/stupid little blurb on the back, Ms. Manickavel is freaking great. These wispy little stories are often so short that they hardly get started, but they're still whimsical and angsty and really cool. There are a lot of lazy or mean or hopeful or lovelorn girls, plenty of strange bugs and other animals, weird flashes of life in India, lots of toying with words. Other strange things that pop up: a foetal twin in a jar, a shoe that won't stay buried, ice cubes made of rainwater, a baby being thrown off a bridge. And plus, there are all these interspersed textbook-like pictures of insects, with amazing captions like "Fig 5. A Literary Appreciation of T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land Seen as a Diagram of a Mutant Fruit Fly."
***
This book is awesome. Despite Miranda July's silly/stupid little blurb on the back, Ms. Manickavel is freaking great. These wispy little stories are often so short that they hardly get started, but they're still whimsical and angsty and really cool. There are a lot of lazy or mean or hopeful or lovelorn girls, plenty of strange bugs and other animals, weird flashes of life in India, lots of toying with words. Other strange things that pop up: a foetal twin in a jar, a shoe that won't stay buried, ice cubes made of rainwater, a baby being thrown off a bridge. And plus, there are all these interspersed textbook-like pictures of insects, with amazing captions like "Fig 5. A Literary Appreciation of T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land Seen as a Diagram of a Mutant Fruit Fly."
July 5, 2012
A lot of things have been written about this book. Honestly I didn't bother to read any of them. And I don't think I am going to read any of them now. I picked up the book because me flatmate was reading them and I was intrigued by the cover and the title. The writing is nice. The stories are shit. Quirk is good but twisty knots aren't. If I was a certified psychoanalyst (which I am not) and the stories in this book were entries in a diary, then I can safely assume that all the stories are an exercise to exorcise the demons of pendulumatic daddy issues, failed relationships with friends and disillusionment with ones heroes. The motif of insects are used to portray disintegration of values, colors to portray emotions and words to wrestle with the complex set of emotions one finds oneself waking enveloped with 4AM on a muggy Thursday morning. I do hope that the author was able to exorcise her inner demons. I also hope that I don't have to read her diary again. It is painful. Covered with the long lengthy roll of absurd humor and imagery as a balm.
November 7, 2014
It takes some stature of carefree arrogance to write all the world's consuming pointlessness with such poise, and clarity. Kuzhali Manickavel's writing reeks of attitude that is absolutely pointless and irrelevant possibly because in a sane dying world, abstracts aren't important. But hey, that don't make them not interesting. :)
All through my time with this book, I was juxtaposed between trying to find meaning in these stories, and alongside having fun with the narrative style. Towards the end, to my astonishment, I discovered that good writing has got nothing to do with a tight contained and a meaningful narrative.
This is an obnoxious lil book that will give your insanity lots of ego validation. Give it a shot. :)
All through my time with this book, I was juxtaposed between trying to find meaning in these stories, and alongside having fun with the narrative style. Towards the end, to my astonishment, I discovered that good writing has got nothing to do with a tight contained and a meaningful narrative.
This is an obnoxious lil book that will give your insanity lots of ego validation. Give it a shot. :)
January 12, 2009
More whimsical than surrealistic but with lots of blood, vomit, dead bugs and decaying body parts. I didn't count but I believe the word "decay" is the most common word in these short stories. A couple of stories were almost interesting.
July 2, 2023
Some stories are misses, but others beautifully capture the ennui of teenage and young adult years. The bonkersness of the stories is infectious, but underneath all that exuberant weirdness is some genuine pathos.
April 24, 2017
Roughly cut. Some gems, some pebbles. But I liked them, even the pebbles. The tone is right. Like young Salinger of sorts.
November 29, 2020
I will always love spec fic because of how freeing it is to read but also difficult to successfully write. Have been a fan of Kuzhali's previous, Things we found in the autopsy. I did like that better (only a tiny bit more), this was different and fun in its own way. My favourite part has to be the mixing of insect anatomy with social constructs - that's the thing about speculative fiction, you never really know where it'll take you but you're glad to be there once you arrive.
July 23, 2018
Myślę, ze kiedyś przeczytam wszystkie książki tej autorki.
March 26, 2020
A collection of bizarre stories that resemble dreams which don't make sense in the mornings.
Few of them are eerily surreal, while others are unconventional. Not for everyone, but a curious read indeed.
Few of them are eerily surreal, while others are unconventional. Not for everyone, but a curious read indeed.
March 12, 2022
A wonderful collection of short, very strange tales.
June 19, 2024
3.5
Some good, some bad, some just too short to be either at all.
Some good, some bad, some just too short to be either at all.
March 14, 2023
This is the first work of Kuzhali Manickavel that I've read, and it's no exaggeration to state that I'm pleasantly surprised with their style of writing. If you're someone who admires Sayaka Murata's works, you can give this a try! The title is not deceiving, to say the least. :)
May 22, 2019
3.5 stars. The book reminded me a lot of Helen Oyeyemi's stories. I'm sure it's one of those that get better with every re-read. Beautiful use of language, even though I didn't really understand some stories, but I'm okay with that. Would recommend.
Read
October 23, 2017The title of the collection is ‘Insects are just like you and me�. She brings insects in the spotlight and not humans with this title instead of ‘You and I are just like insects�, yet there is an equal status (that challenges our position in the world, evolution, superiority etc.)
There are diagrams of insects in this collection. Fig 1 is titled ‘The General Organization of a Primitive Winged Insect Viewed as a Collection of Unphrases�. The gut of the insect has a description ‘Believe a Snake but Not Girl�. I understood it to be a reflection on how most of us ‘consume� things from what we have heard, passed on from generations and also how we regurgitate it without much thought. Kuzhali’s work has undertones of atheism, symbolism, feminism and is satirical in tone but this doesn’t mean these are the only takeaways from her work, it is only my interpretation of it. The aim of her stories seem to laugh at everything in the face, to laugh at what we know, what we think we know.
The first story titled ‘Godlet� (notice it’s not ‘Goddess�) features a female protagonist Malathi who has paranormal powers for a short time, later she is defeated by the world. The futility of God (more so a female God) is shown here, the helplessness. This story reminded me of a conversation I had had recently with a friend to whom I had told that women might be priests one day (thanks to Pope Francis) and then he went on to tell me that there might be a reason after all that women are never Gods (Christianity). Mother Mary, yes, because she’s Jesus� mother, Mother Theresa okay? But disciples, see, no women!
In the story Paavai- a woman is grieving her husband’s death, his ghost haunts her. The end could be seen in a feminist light- her want to let go of his memory even as opposed to the ancient ritual of Sati (extremes) and a human light- to not want to revisit a bad memory to help cope easier (at the risk of sounding/seeming cold to the world/reader).
In the story ‘You have us all late and follow�, the characters say to each other,
‘I’ll repeat it if you like. You Follow and Make Us Late All the Time.�
‘That’s not what you said the first time.�
This dialogue should give you a glimpse at the pattern of the story. Makes one think of the genesis of rumours, Holy scriptures, Chinese whispers, folklore and the nature of speech, the act of recording it. Oral storytelling and written. How much is lost, gained, retained in conversations. The transactional nature. Also, would make a writer think of how an idea is conceived and what appears on paper seems different from what was planned and does the word choice really matter in conveying a story?
*
Her stories/diagrams reminded me of the creature in Metamorphosis by Kafka, while Kafka’s stories are heavy and the frustration of the characters make you feel frustrated like in the story ‘A Common Confusion� where A and B never meet despite wanting to meet. Manickavel’s stories show the helplessness with a certain lightness. They don’t seem heavy while you read them but after you have read them, they will leave the cogs of your mind turning and that heavy feeling stays. Those who enjoy Etgar Keret’s surrealism, Murakami’s strangeness, Kafka’s symbolism might like Manickavel’s work. (Oops all men)
*
Kuzhali’s stories are available online. A friend had told me about her stories. I found her story ‘Whore� on Out of Print, which is a good story and went to revisit, I found that it was blocked by the country’s cyber filters. (Ironical that her work hints at just that- religion, mind blocks etc. and the frustration I faced was identical to Kafka’s stories.) Other stories of hers online are Item Girls in GRANTA.
In an article on online literary journals (), C.S. Bhagya mentions how Manickavel first had her work published online in literary zines (DesiLit being one of them- now known as Jaggery Lit Mag) and then was noticed by a publisher (Blaft Publications) for a collection.
*
There are diagrams of insects in this collection. Fig 1 is titled ‘The General Organization of a Primitive Winged Insect Viewed as a Collection of Unphrases�. The gut of the insect has a description ‘Believe a Snake but Not Girl�. I understood it to be a reflection on how most of us ‘consume� things from what we have heard, passed on from generations and also how we regurgitate it without much thought. Kuzhali’s work has undertones of atheism, symbolism, feminism and is satirical in tone but this doesn’t mean these are the only takeaways from her work, it is only my interpretation of it. The aim of her stories seem to laugh at everything in the face, to laugh at what we know, what we think we know.
The first story titled ‘Godlet� (notice it’s not ‘Goddess�) features a female protagonist Malathi who has paranormal powers for a short time, later she is defeated by the world. The futility of God (more so a female God) is shown here, the helplessness. This story reminded me of a conversation I had had recently with a friend to whom I had told that women might be priests one day (thanks to Pope Francis) and then he went on to tell me that there might be a reason after all that women are never Gods (Christianity). Mother Mary, yes, because she’s Jesus� mother, Mother Theresa okay? But disciples, see, no women!
In the story Paavai- a woman is grieving her husband’s death, his ghost haunts her. The end could be seen in a feminist light- her want to let go of his memory even as opposed to the ancient ritual of Sati (extremes) and a human light- to not want to revisit a bad memory to help cope easier (at the risk of sounding/seeming cold to the world/reader).
In the story ‘You have us all late and follow�, the characters say to each other,
‘I’ll repeat it if you like. You Follow and Make Us Late All the Time.�
‘That’s not what you said the first time.�
This dialogue should give you a glimpse at the pattern of the story. Makes one think of the genesis of rumours, Holy scriptures, Chinese whispers, folklore and the nature of speech, the act of recording it. Oral storytelling and written. How much is lost, gained, retained in conversations. The transactional nature. Also, would make a writer think of how an idea is conceived and what appears on paper seems different from what was planned and does the word choice really matter in conveying a story?
*
Her stories/diagrams reminded me of the creature in Metamorphosis by Kafka, while Kafka’s stories are heavy and the frustration of the characters make you feel frustrated like in the story ‘A Common Confusion� where A and B never meet despite wanting to meet. Manickavel’s stories show the helplessness with a certain lightness. They don’t seem heavy while you read them but after you have read them, they will leave the cogs of your mind turning and that heavy feeling stays. Those who enjoy Etgar Keret’s surrealism, Murakami’s strangeness, Kafka’s symbolism might like Manickavel’s work. (Oops all men)
*
Kuzhali’s stories are available online. A friend had told me about her stories. I found her story ‘Whore� on Out of Print, which is a good story and went to revisit, I found that it was blocked by the country’s cyber filters. (Ironical that her work hints at just that- religion, mind blocks etc. and the frustration I faced was identical to Kafka’s stories.) Other stories of hers online are Item Girls in GRANTA.
In an article on online literary journals (), C.S. Bhagya mentions how Manickavel first had her work published online in literary zines (DesiLit being one of them- now known as Jaggery Lit Mag) and then was noticed by a publisher (Blaft Publications) for a collection.
*
November 12, 2008
I picked up this book of short stories upon reading a review that likened it to Miranda July’s short story collection No One Belongs Here More Than You. The main similarity between that book and this one lies in the quirkiness and surreality of the characters and stories. To call this book a collection of short stories, however, is an understatement. There are 35 shorts in this book, packed into only 141 pages � i.e. about a third of the “stories� are only a few paragraphs long. This is ultimately the book’s great weakness. Where short stories by masters like Raymond Carver are slices of life, the stories in this collection are like slices of slices of life. And while the book’s title fills you in on what the author is going after (showing that human lives are every bit as small and strange as bugs� lives), most of the stories fall short of delivering any depth or punch; the shortest stories only attempt vague hints at significance, which may be the point being made, except it’s a point that isn’t worth spending two hours to get through. There are a few gems in here (my favorites include “Flying and Falling�, “Paavi�, and “Jam that Bread of Life�), but as a whole, I found the collection uneven. Very easy and quick read for fans of quirkiness, but if given a choice between this one and July’s collection, I would definitely choose the latter.
November 12, 2013
I read this book piecemeal, stretched out over several months. Halfway through, I decided to finish the rest in one go. My conclusion is that the first style is better. This book is filled with strange, sometimes beautiful, sometimes bizarre snippets. Fantasy, memory and stark reality intermingle. It seems a bit much when consumed in one go but works well when you read them one or two at a time only.
I particularly enjoyed 'You Have Us All Late and Follow','Coconut Water','Information Regarding the Two Main Characters' and 'The Queen of Yesterday'. After awhile, the styles start to get repetitive. (For instance, 'Jame That Bread of Life' is much like 'You Have Us All Late and Follow').
The voice is certainly unique as are the settings - Tamil Nadu with an uber-urban bent of mind. So you have characters named Malar, Alarmel and Senthil in live-in relationships, filthy roommate camaraderie and suicide-from-boredom. Kuzhali's stories fall just on the right side of crazy - quirky enough to be entertaining, mundane enough to be relatable. This is poetry masquerading as literature.
I'd definitely recommend a read, for the novelty value alone. But you probably wouldn't want to have a shelf full of books like this.
I particularly enjoyed 'You Have Us All Late and Follow','Coconut Water','Information Regarding the Two Main Characters' and 'The Queen of Yesterday'. After awhile, the styles start to get repetitive. (For instance, 'Jame That Bread of Life' is much like 'You Have Us All Late and Follow').
The voice is certainly unique as are the settings - Tamil Nadu with an uber-urban bent of mind. So you have characters named Malar, Alarmel and Senthil in live-in relationships, filthy roommate camaraderie and suicide-from-boredom. Kuzhali's stories fall just on the right side of crazy - quirky enough to be entertaining, mundane enough to be relatable. This is poetry masquerading as literature.
I'd definitely recommend a read, for the novelty value alone. But you probably wouldn't want to have a shelf full of books like this.
October 19, 2017
yes, fear exists, that adamant prose like this would be claimed "interesting" by flamboyantly legitimizing the "so-what-if" questions like so what if it doesn't have structure, so what if *you* don't get it? and many other so-whats and of course yes, the interesting "maybe-that's" speculations like maybe that's what the author was going for, maybe that's the meaning of it all? and many other drunk-darts that claim to make perspectives. but it is evident and glaringly pompous that all the mechanisms that it unnaturally promotes (which is why they are unnecessarily adamant and darting drunkenly), dives into distant, lazy pretentiousness, which is, very, very different from uniquely poised, provocative and perspective-altering work. my worry is that both these would get confused with each other.
April 1, 2011
The morsels of stories here were delicious. I like fiction that gives me the feeling of reaching out, scrabbling for something that's _just_ beyond where the light falls. This definitely fit there, some stories are surreal and some are downright cracked out. This ranks up there with Neil Gaiman's "Smoke and Mirrors" for stories that shift your way of looking about five steps to the right.
Like most short story collections I've read, this is an uneven bunch. I know my favourites and I'll go back to read them again and again when that mood strikes.
Like most short story collections I've read, this is an uneven bunch. I know my favourites and I'll go back to read them again and again when that mood strikes.
October 28, 2012
Very interesting set of short stories. The conversations are abrupt and non-polished. The characters are all middle aged, just out of house/family young individuals trying to find their own meaning/foot hold of life. The stories comes in short spurts, a paragraph at a stretch, breaking, opening at another. In the conventional sense, these do not conform to the standards. Despite many short comings, they have a freshness around them. A very different voice in the Indian English Writing.
December 7, 2014
There's quirkiness and there is just plain weird. Some of these stories are mere brain farts, stuff you discuss when you have had one too many. The surrealism is a put-on patina, Murakami she is definitely not. I finished this book only because I started it. I like my stories to have a beginning, a middle and an end...I have no idea what happened with this one...an over-enthusiastic Editor?
May 3, 2012
A very beautiful book... had to put it down to smile often, and when I finished, I wanted to read some Borges, but I couldn't find any. So I have bought one of her other books. This one is just lovely. Do read it. It's a Curiosity and a Revelation.
August 10, 2016
Læs og bliv glad med indiske Kuzhali Manickavel - med og uden insekter, med og uden mening. Crazy stuff!
Læs hele anmeldelsen her:
Læs hele anmeldelsen her:
July 28, 2010
I'm not sure why I liked this so much -- the stories are odd, some of them surreal, some of them little more than vignettes, but the writing is so sharp that it's a real pleasure to read.
August 25, 2012
Easily among my favorite books.
January 6, 2020
I had always wondered what it'd be like, writing while drunk or high. After reading this book, I think I have a fair idea what the result would be like.
I had high hopes about this book but it turned out to be so bad, only my compulsion to finish a partly read book made me hang on till the end.
This book consists of short stories. The title gives away that insects are a steadily recurring theme in those stories. To be honest, the stories are often not even stories, they read like very short excerpts of a thought or a dream. Now I don't mind reading unconventionally structured poetry or prose. And I myself have delved into writing stuff which were a form of self-expression. But I didn't enjoy any of the stories, save one or two. That too because those had some ounce of "normal" in them.
Let's go deeper into the writing. It's terrible at times. The stories begin and end abruptly. Sometimes they just make no sense and have no reason to be in the book, except to maybe add more pages. There are way too many insects and you can sense that the writer may have forced herself to write about insects because their appearance gets cliched and repetitive (too many butterflies and other insects wriggling out of hands, mouth or shifting inside loose bones). Get the idea?
Few stories are very good. Kudos for the thought, imagination and novelty behind those. But overall, I am as pissed off at having to pay money to read such a shitty book, as when I get when a juicy bug gets squished under my shoes with a loud crunch.
I had high hopes about this book but it turned out to be so bad, only my compulsion to finish a partly read book made me hang on till the end.
This book consists of short stories. The title gives away that insects are a steadily recurring theme in those stories. To be honest, the stories are often not even stories, they read like very short excerpts of a thought or a dream. Now I don't mind reading unconventionally structured poetry or prose. And I myself have delved into writing stuff which were a form of self-expression. But I didn't enjoy any of the stories, save one or two. That too because those had some ounce of "normal" in them.
Let's go deeper into the writing. It's terrible at times. The stories begin and end abruptly. Sometimes they just make no sense and have no reason to be in the book, except to maybe add more pages. There are way too many insects and you can sense that the writer may have forced herself to write about insects because their appearance gets cliched and repetitive (too many butterflies and other insects wriggling out of hands, mouth or shifting inside loose bones). Get the idea?
Few stories are very good. Kudos for the thought, imagination and novelty behind those. But overall, I am as pissed off at having to pay money to read such a shitty book, as when I get when a juicy bug gets squished under my shoes with a loud crunch.
August 27, 2020
I was halfway through "Suicide letters..." when it occurred to me that it actually had a narrative arc, like of a real _story_ and then it ended with a Glass Tiger lyric! None of the stories really have an ending. You could argue none has a beginning either.
All these stories are unapologetically off kilter and bizarrely compelling. I always knew I'd read all the stories, but it took many, many sittings to finish this book. Worth the irregular dips into a strange and intriguingly magical, depressive universe with strange protagonists, unstable narrators and a distinct Tamil tinge.
All these stories are unapologetically off kilter and bizarrely compelling. I always knew I'd read all the stories, but it took many, many sittings to finish this book. Worth the irregular dips into a strange and intriguingly magical, depressive universe with strange protagonists, unstable narrators and a distinct Tamil tinge.
Read
December 12, 2019I have not read anything like this before and I need a break before I can read anything like this again.
I cannot rate Kuzhali's book. I don't know how.
What I do know is that I found the stories and characters to be batshit crazy and weird and energizing and scary and creepy. Yes, all those at the same time.
If you think you have a better opinion or don't agree with what I said, jes' fuggawf min.
I cannot rate Kuzhali's book. I don't know how.
What I do know is that I found the stories and characters to be batshit crazy and weird and energizing and scary and creepy. Yes, all those at the same time.
If you think you have a better opinion or don't agree with what I said, jes' fuggawf min.
May 9, 2021
Probably the most imaginative Indian book I have read. I wish there was more to it also, in totality. Though certain stories do leave an impact on you. Especially the one in which a man starts imagining that his crippled daughter can fly. One really insightful short story about love. And a wonderful idea of what conversation usually is. People wanting to speak without listening.
December 13, 2018
Amazing imagery
Informative about South indian and Tamil customs and interesting Tamil slang words as well as very interesting and strange imagery.
A must read!
Informative about South indian and Tamil customs and interesting Tamil slang words as well as very interesting and strange imagery.
A must read!
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