Words From Vaish

Still Me    Jojo Moyes                Michael Joseph 2018                                                                           472 Pages As the blurb on the back cover put it, Louisa Clark knows many things. And in Jojo Moyes’ Still Me , she’s getting to know a whole lot more - as an expatriate Englishwoman in New York. Much less sentimental than previous outings Me Befor e You (2012) and After You (2015), this latest installment in the adventures of much-loved character “Lou” sees her separated from new beau Ambulance Sam...

My Not So Perfect Life Sophie Kinsella Bantam Press 2017                                                                                                     391 Pages Author Sophie Kinsella’s patented chick lit formula is the literary equivalent of blandly satisfying comfort food like mashed potatoes and chicken soup. My Not So Perfect Life constitutes another helping, only slightly more astringent in flavour. That faint tinge of bitter comes from the setting of the cutthroat w...

ROMANCE GONE WRONG Romance in real life rarely seems to play out the way it does in Hindi movies or Mills & Boon paperbacks. At least, that’s been my admittedly limited experience of it. I witnessed a fair amount of awkward courtships in college, with boys trying out moves – and lines – they’d learned from movies and TV shows. These attempts never seemed to work very well and were invariably met with ego-puncturing derision. When a businessman’s two college-going sons unexpectedly eloped with the two daughters of a widowed mother, it came as a complete surprise, especially as none of the protagonists in this little drama appeared to be especially attractive or glamorous. A colleague of those days ran off with his landlord’s daughter and despite some initial friction between both sets of parents, an amicable reconciliation eventually took place, sans much of the melodramatic histrionics that would attend such an event in a Bollywood tear-jerker. Honestly, I would ha...