reading notes

Hiromi Goto
ISBN: 1551521571
There are eleven mostly odd stories in this collection. I mean that in a good way. Reading so many stories with unapologetically Canadian (folks wear toques, not winter hats) and Japanese characters, I realized how “scrubbed” many short stories are — too many happen in generic places with generic people. The foreignness of [...]

by Anosh Irani
ISBN: 1551928035
Irani knows how to set up a story:

There will be magic, poverty, thievery, music, pollution, dancing, murder, and lust and very little prayer.

His novel, set in a bizarre and fantastic Bombay, does have all of these things. It also has lepers, a limb market, beauty, and acts of horrific cruelty. The main [...]