THE BIG FAT INDIAN WEDDING

The Wedding by Gurjinder Basran, Douglas & McIntyre, $24.95. You’re invited to The Wedding, and not just any wedding, but a big, fat Indian one! One that’s costing the groom’s side alone a whopping $250,000.

Devi and Baby are getting married, and the union of two people comes intertwined with the union of two families and all the ways in which an entire community bears witness, ensnares and uplifts itself. Set in Vancouver and Surrey, BC,  The Wedding exposes the inner lives of the wedding party, guests and event staff in the lead-up to a lavish celebration. All the secrets, resentments, and unspoken truths boiling just beneath the surface.

The snide remarks, the games of one-upmanship.

And the doubts. Her gauzy reflection hovered in the window and she took a deep breath as she stared through herself to the outside world, as though she were trying to find her place in it.

Gurjinder Basran, an award-winning author, skillfully weaves together themes of abuse which must never be acknowledged, the plight of international students, of women escaping bad marriages to work below minimum wage as they “hide in plain sight”, of disenfranchised youth being inducted into a life of crime. And neighbours, some of whom embrace the celebrations and get togged up in South Asian finery to enjoy sweet and spicy treats and others, who resent the loud, colourful community in their midst.

“You Indians are everywhere.”

Simple sentences reveal what lies beneath.

She’d never known Indian women to be addicted to anything but suffering.

Basran delivers a wide-ranging but intimate portrait of a vibrant, complex community, and a family drama steeped in tradition.

WHAT? WHEN? WHY?

Burning Questions by Margaret Atwood, McClelland & Stewart, $36.95. In this collection of essays and occasional pieces written between 2004 and 2021, Margaret Atwood asks a series of “burning questions”.

Such as: How can we live on our planet? How slippery is the slope? Is it true? And is it fair? Why do people everywhere, in all cultures, tell stories? So what if beauty is only skin deep? What do zombies have to do with authoritarianism?

She approaches each in her classic, familiar style.

In Five Visits to the Word Hoard, for instance, she writes about the act of writing. “MY own acts of writing, which are the only kind I can speak about – and how I’ve approached them over the years. This is an area I usually duck on chat shows. When people say, ‘How do you write?’ I say, ‘With a pencil,’ or something equally terse. When they say, ‘Why do you write?’ I say, ‘Why does the sun shine?’ or, if I’m feeling crabby, I say, ‘People never ask dentists why they fool around inside other people’s mouths’.”

And then goes on to explain why she is so evasive, by sharing a true story. The range is so wide that the collection will appeal to readers of all stripes.

TIRED OF ALL THIS

The Exhausted of the Earth by Ajay Singh Chaudhary, Repeater, $25.95. Climate change is not only about the exhaustion of the planet, it’s about the exhaustion of so many of us, our lives, our worlds, even our minds.

Ajay Singh Chaudhary, executive director of the Brooklyn Institute for Social Research, brings together the science and politics of climate change. “From the Red Fort in India to the Alhambra in Spain, one can see examples – of deceptively complex passive, evaporative air-cooling systems that were (and sometimes still are) prevalent in geographies experiencing high temperatures and water scarcity... As scores of Asian and African engineers and architects have noted, such technologies and designs are frequently more comfortable than contemporary global equivalents. They are also considerably more beautiful.”

I read this and think of the once ubiquitous coolers with screens made of khus (vetiver roots) that cooled rooms with their fragrant breeze – in cities where people are now dying in the unrelenting heat.

YOU’LL NEVER GUESS THE ENDING!

The Offing by Roz Nay, Viking, $24.75. A father and his 11-year-old daughter (and her cat) on a bonding trip take on two young women and a young man as crew.

What could possibly go wrong? Plenty, as each discovers the others are hiding secrets, and all of them are running from something. Or someone. Are the girls simply claustrophobic on the boat, or have they stumbled into something very dangerous? Police transcripts interspersed in the story provide tantalizing leads – which then twist back upon themselves.

With severed hands and heads floating around (quite literally so), and unidentified bodies, The Offing is less whodunnit and more who-done-exactly-what? A nail-biting, edge-of-your-seat thriller that will keep you guessing until the very last page. And even then, you’d guess wrong.

A NIGHTMARE

Middle of the Night by Riley Sager, Dutton, $23.99. One July night, 10-year-old Ethan and his best friend and neighbour Billy fell asleep in a tent set up on Ethan’s manicured lawn. The next morning, Ethan woke up alone. Someone had sliced open the tent with a knife and taken Billy, he was never seen again.

In this latest thriller from New York Times bestselling author Riley Sager, a man must contend with the long ago disappearance of his childhood friend – and the dark secrets lurking just beyond the safe confines of his picture-perfect neighbourhood.

CHANGING AMERICA

The Making of Another Major Motion Picture Masterpiece by Tom Hanks, Alfred A. Knopf, $45.  Tom Hanks knows a thing or two about making movies and this novel is about the making of a multimillion-dollar superhero epic. Although the film, Knightshade: The Lathe of Firefall, is being filmed in the present, the story begins in 1947, in the town of Lone Butte, California, where we meet five-year-old Robby, already artistically gifted, and his troubled uncle, Bob Falls, returned from overseas combat in World War II. Then two things happen that will shape the future. Young Robby sees a comic book about a soldier whose weapon is a flamethrower. And his uncle deserts the small boy in a drugstore, riding his motorcycle away from his home and his only family, never to return.

The story picks up in 1970. Robby now writes and draws comic books for a stoner underground comic book company in Oakland, California. He receives a moving letter from his long-lost uncle, which sparks him to write and draw a comic about a flame- throwing soldier.

Cut to: Today. A big-time, eccentric director discovers Robby’s 1970 comic and decides it’s exactly what he needs as the basis for a superhero movie with a heart. 

Funny, touching, and thought- provoking, The Making of Another Major Motion Picture Masterpiece is an insightful reflection on the changes in America over the past eighty years.

TRUE LOVE COMES CALLING

The Little Village of Book Lovers by Nina George, Ballantine Books, $37.99. In The Little Paris Bookshop, Nina George had introduced readers to literary apothecary Jean Perdue who was inspired to create a floating bookstore after reading a pseudonymous novel about a young woman with a remarkable gift. The Little Village of Book Lovers is that novel.

Marie-Jeanne can see the marks Love has left on people – tiny glowing lights on faces and hands that shimmer more brightly when the one meant for them is near. Before long, she’s playing matchmaker – with some help from books – bringing soul mates together. But she has no glow of her own. Will she recognize her own soul mate when true love comes her way?

A COLLISION WITH THE PAST

The Return of Faraz Ali by Aamina Ahmad, Riverhead Books, $36. Sent back to his birthplace – Lahore’s red-light district – to hush up the murder of a girl, a man finds himself in an unexpected reckoning with his past.

Assailed with a jumble of memories, he cannot stop asking questions or winding through the walled city’s labyrinthine alleyways chasing secrets – his family’s and his own. The Return of Faraz Ali poses the timeless question “Whom do we choose to protect, and at what cost?”

WHERE IS SHE?

Raj & Julie by David Joseph, $17.41 on Amazon. Raj Singh is looking back at how his life played out while being treated for an illness that has the doctors flummoxed.

Most of all, he thinks of Julie White, the girl to whom he gave his heart, but who was driven from him by his family. Where is she? How has life treated her? And will life bring them back together again?

A CELEBRATION OF LIGHTS

Diwali A Festival of Lights by Anita Yasuda, illustrated by Darshika Varma, A Golden Book, $7.99. This beautifully illustrated little book describes some of the stories around Diwali and how it is celebrated across the world. Including riding a ferris wheel called the Diwali Wheel of Light in Leicester, England! Rangoli, torans, sweets, and, of course, diyas and sparklers... all the sparkle and happiness of Diwali!

WHERE WERE YOU WHEN…

This Day in History for Kids by Dan Bova, Hearst Home, $34. “It’s the most amazing history book in history!” according to the blurb. Okay, so more American history – from the American revolution to when humans first stepped on the moon – but super fun all the same.

Those born on the first of November, for instance, will learn that this is the day on which astronomers detected light from the universe’s first stars!

I SPY SPIES

Island of Spies by Sheila Turnage, Dial Books For Young Readers, $25.99. Twelve-year-old Stick Lawson lives on an island, solving mysteries with her friends. But with World War II looming, things are afoot. The children just know there are spies on the island. But who? Inspired by the real-life U-boat torpedo attacks off the shores of North Carolina, this book offers big and bold heroes, and loving, tender and funny family depictions.

BWAHAHAHA!

The Last Comics on Earth Too Many Villains! by Max Brallier, Viking, $19.99. How many villains are too many? The answers range from one to zero. Because the kids are the ones writing this graphic novel and with no villains, they can go chill and eat pizza! But then there are others in the group who are saying, “Bring it on, bad guys!”

TEEN REVIEW

By ESHAAL KAMRAN

Innocent by Eric Walters, Orca Book Publishers, $14.95. Innocent by Eric Walters, is part of a colla-borative book series written by seven different Canadian authors.

It revolves around an orphaned girl named Betty, who later learns her real name: Elizabeth Ann. The orphanage burns down, leading Elizabeth on a journey of discovering her past.

She starts off as a maid for one of the wealthiest families in Kings-ton, slowly discovering the dark secret they hold.

Compared to The Unquiet Past by Kelly Armstrong, Elizabeth’s journey isn’t any easier than Tess’s. It in-volves just as many twists and turns. From her murdered mother, to her imprisoned father, Elizabeth digs deep into her past in order to figure out if her father was really the murderer or innocent.

This historical fiction novel was equally suspenseful and mysterious as The Unquiet Past.

The authors of this series have really outdone themselves and I have enjoyed the two books I’ve read so far in the series a lot.

This book shows how some-times you have to look back in order to move forward and represents the meaning behind the quote “don’t judge a book by its cover”.

• Eshaal Kamran is a youth volunteer at Brampton Library.