![]() ![]() ![]() Oh and it has one of the most beautiful covers I’ve seen in a new book. So while I may not have ended feeling that I’d learned anything significant about her poor family, reading this brought Em wholly and unforgettably alive. ![]() She’s capricious, vulnerable, intense and outrageous. He perfectly captures Em’s free-wheeling and inventive way of looking at the world and her own history. This novel unfolds through conversations and Jerry Pinto is an absolute master of conversation. ![]() The book captures the life of the unnamed narrator and his sister Susan who live with their parents Imelda and. She’s mentally ill, swinging from hilarious and outrageous good humour to such intolerable depths of pain that make the term ‘depression’ hopelessly inadequate.īut she’s drawn with such affection and honesty that you can’t help but love her as much as do her long-suffering family. The fiction novel, Em and the Big Hoom, written by Jerry Pinto, (loosely based on the author’s life) revolves around the Mendes, a lower-middle-class, Roman Catholic, Goan family, living in Bombay in the late twentieth century. Perhaps that’s because of the immense power, charisma and tragedy of the central character, Imelda Mendes or Em, as she’s known to her children. I never felt particularly affected by their suffering and loss, which is substantial. What I mean by that is that the narrator, his sister and even his father, the ‘Big Hoom’ of the title never seem to become much more than the supporting characters that they are. It’s deeply touching but in some important parts the emotional engagement is lacking. ![]()
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