17. “I bear witness. Is life very fragile or very resilient? This dragonfly’s struggle scores one for both.”
New writing, and some old and new Pride Month reading recommendations
Dear reader,
I’m writing this a day after the Air India tragedy, heartsore for everyone affected—all the lives lost and all who have to live theirs forever carrying the loss and the grief. My gods. A reminder then to be grateful for all that we have in this gossamer-spun existence because we just never know.
Today, I have two new published pieces to share with you (a review of Marie-Helene Bertino’s Exit Zero short story collection and a review of Bhavika Govil’s debut novel, Hot Water), some of my recent favourites (and some older ones) for your Pride Month reading—in that order, so if you wish to jump to a particular section first, you can do so! It’s also on the longer side because of the list and all that one entails, so you might be better off reading it in the browser than email so you’re not cut off.
Anu Recommends: Exit Zero by Marie-Helene Bertino
I made my Strange Horizons debut with this review. For those who aren’t aware, they are a weekly magazine of and about speculative fiction, publishing fiction, poetry, reviews, essays, interviews, roundtable discussions, and art. You can check them out here. I’ve long admired their work and wanted to contribute. This year I got that chance. There’s another review coming later in the year, and hopefully many more in the future. It’s been a fantastic experience working with their reviews editor, Dan Hartland—shoutout to Dan for his keen instinctive understanding of my writing and the insightful edits to help it become its best version; I’ve been lucky enough to work with some fantastic editors over the years, and it’s always such a pleasure when you find another.
Alright, so back to the review in question. This isn’t the first time I’ve mentioned the author or this collection. When I got a chance to read this early, I was delighted to find multiple stories that spoke to me in the same way as so much of Beautyland, her novel that I’d read and loved last year.
The publisher’s blurb:
Death-shaped entities—with all of their humor and strangeness— haunt the twelve stories in Exit Zero. Vampires, ghost girls, fathers, blank spaces, day-old peaches, and famous paintings all pierce through their world into ours, reminding us to pay attention! and look alive! and offering many other flashes of wisdom from the oracle and author of Beautyland, Marie-Helene Bertino.
You can find the full review at this link: http://strangehorizons.com/wordpress/non-fiction/exit-zero-by-marie-helene-bertino
Here are a few snippets.
“‘Language is pitiable when weighed against experience,’ wrote Adina Giorno, the protagonist of Marie-Helene Bertino’s quietly stunning Beautyland (2024); perhaps true, but equally true is the transportive weight of Bertino’s writing, which allows us brief, but vital, glimpses of what it’s like to be in the shoes of the people she brings into existence in her stories. This was evident in Beautyland, and remains all the more so in Exit Zero, her first collection of short stories since her award-winning debut Safe as Houses (2012).”
“The characters populating each of the twelve stories in Exit Zero—though diverse in age, background, location, and experience—all figuratively share Adina’s alienation (‘I am always ever-so-slightly out of reach’), and experience emotional, narrative, and physical distances that are cracked open by unique—and, more pertinently to Bertino’s work, strange and humorous—situations. They are all searching for something, often not knowing what; sometimes finding it but not always, and even then not in ways you’d expect.
“This collection of transitions evokes both fragility and resilience, too—as a whole, and individually. Each story offers moments of shift within the plot and characters; but the collection is also about the transitional nature of life. Feelings of fraying tethers, along with a simultaneous and deep sense of being rooted in our current, tumultuous present, means that Exit Zero is strewn with spectres of all shapes, forms, and realities—after all, ‘anything can be haunted as long as there is a residual memory and a location.’ But there is something wondrous in each story, a reverence for life, death, everything in between and beyond. Each reminds us to ‘pay attention! and look alive!’”
Anu Recommends: Hot Water by Bhavika Govil
Again, not the first time I’ve mentioned the book on here.
The publisher’s blurb:
It has always been Mira, Ma and Ashu. The three of them-as they sing Simon & Garfunkel in Ma’s sun-yellow car, watch TV on the sofa and holiday on the mango farm-are bound firmly together. Yet, beneath this tale of proximity, lurks another story—that of a family in hot water.
Nine-year-old Mira, fourteen-year-old Ashu and Ma harbour secrets. All of them confront questions that have no neat answers. Where is Mas’ husband, for instance? Who does Ashu pine for? Why is Mira on the alert?
One long, hot summer, the secrets come tumbling out. And the world Ma, Mira and Ashu have cobbled together threatens to give way.
An achingly beautiful novel, Hot Water traces the ways in which the love we feel for one another can both make and wreck us.
My review of the book was published on June 1 in the New Indian Express.
If you wish to read it at the link: https://www.newindianexpress.com/lifestyle/books/2025/Jun/01/the-many-shades-of-love
For everyone else, here you go 😊 An assured debut, and a writer I cannot wait to read more from!
Anu Recommends: Pride Month favourites
In order to help me narrow down these recommendations, I decided to focus on recent favourites (within the last two years), with some older ones that have stood the test of time. Here they are in no particular order.
The Monk and Robot novellas by Becky Chambers: What do humans need when basic material comforts are taken care of? Dex is a travelling tea monk who was previously a garden monk before feeling an urgent need to leave the city. Splendid Speckled Mosscap is a robot, the first of his tribe to interact with a human since all the robots developed consciousness and moved away from civilisation. Their friendship and philosophical chats about existential matters are at the core of these two novellas. Low on plot, high on comfort, but without shying away from the realities of any lived existence, surrender yourself to a quiet, contemplative, achingly hopeful and life-affirming story with two characters I'd follow anywhere.
*Psalm: Buy print | Buy ebook | Bookshop.org (US)
*Prayer: Buy print | Buy ebook | Bookshop.org (US)
The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller: Miller’s debut is her interpretation of the relationship between Patroclus and Achilles, because she was committed in giving Patroclus, a relatively minor character in The Iliad, a voice, intrigued by its use of the word “gentle” to describe him, a personality trait scorned by the ancient Greeks and Romans when it came to their masculine ideals and hero qualities, and yet one they’d used for this prince they had loved. Though narrated in first-person and then as an omniscient narrator by Patroclus, Achilles lives and breathes just as vividly. I'd never had much interest in him beyond the usual, but this book means that Madeline Miller's version of the boy who was mortal and god and the recipient of the prophecies of the Fates will always be close to me. Equally, though it is the pulsing, relentless inevitability of his impending death that drives the story on and makes you want to stop reading yet read on, it was Patroclus's fall that made me cry more. The force of the emotion throwing me off balance, a balance not restored until the final lines of the story. Beautiful, poetic language, vivid detail, breathtaking depth of emotion and a loving tribute to these two heroes.
*Buy print | Buy ebook | Bookshop.org (US)
Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe by Benjamin Alire Saenz: this first Ari and Dante book has stood the test of time and a reread, even though its long-awaited recent sequel was ultimately disappointing. Two Mexican-American teens who couldn’t be more different hit it off at the local swimming pool in 1980s El Paso, Texas. This is their summer of growing up, of discovery (about themselves and the world around them), and the start of making their own way in the world—all from Ari’s POV. There’s a movie that came out a few years ago that I haven’t yet been able to watch, but want to.
In the End, It Was All About Love by Musa Okwonga: Running throughout this magic-realism-interspersed, effortlessly poetic narrative about finding oneself as a bisexual, Black man, while navigating fear, loneliness, racism, imposter syndrome, is an endearing sincerity and earnestness that never dilutes the hard-won hope or the vulnerability and courage of its emotional truths. That we are enough as we are. Good enough. Worthy enough. Deserving of love. That we owe it to ourselves to occupy our space in this world even if it may not look quite as we imagined it; to find our joys where and as often as we can.
Darius the Great is Not Okay by Adib Khorram: Darius, named after Darius the Great, and Laleh are fractional Persians with an Iranian mother and an American father. When their maternal grandfather is diagnosed with an untreatable brain tumour, the Kellners travel to Yazd, to the mother’s hometown. From seeing his Babou and Mamou on Skype to finally meeting them in person, to making his first real friend in their neighbour Sorabh, to beginning to reconcile his fractured identity, his self-worth, his feeling of being unwanted and a disappointment, there is a lot to unpack here even without the addition of family dynamics, of which there are plenty. Darius also has depression, and this is a very realistic portrait of living with it and its effects on the people closest to the sufferers. But, refreshingly (though those stories are as important), it isn’t the aim of the narrative journey. This wasn’t a book about depression or a character learning to live with it, but a beautiful slice-of-life story about a teenage boy who just happens to suffer from it. Adib’s debut is the sort of quiet narrative I really enjoy, one focused on the relationships and connections between its characters. I also loved the immersion into the Bahrami household in Yazd and the cultural and historical elements introduced.
The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers: This was my first true-blue space opera novel and I loved every bit of it. Chambers’ debut has us following the motley crew of the Wayfarer as they journey to their most challenging job yet. This is cozy sci-fi, mind you, which is probably why I loved it so much, but whatever’s wrong with a well-written hug? A comforting hug, a warm mug of tea and a blanket on a chilly day, and a bit of goodness and hope when the world seems cruel and unforgiving. This one has found family, interesting characters given equal weight in an ensemble story, vibrant world-building, effortless diversity. I wished I could have had so much more time with this bunch.
Midcentury NYC series by Cat Sebastian: like a warm hug, one with heft, comfort, sincerity, and empathy. These books set in 1950-1960s NYC with some overlapping characters working at a newspaper company are populated by characters that almost immediately felt like friends—bright, beautiful, flawed, real folks wanting so much to be loved and accepted for who they are. A world that feels true and well lived in.
*You Should Be So Lucky: Buy print (India only) | Buy ebook | Bookshop.org (US)
The Order of the Pure Moon Reflected in Water by Zen Cho: a queer found family wuxia novella that I didn’t want to end (I would have totally read a novel set in this world with these characters). It’s warmhearted, witty, and utterly absorbing. The gist? Guet Imm is a young votary of the Order of the Pure Moon who joins up with an eclectic group of thieves (whether they like it or not) in order to protect a sacred object. For an in-depth understanding of the Chinese genre of wuxia fiction, here’s a fantastic article by Yilin Wang for the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers’ Association.
The House in the Cerulean Sea by T.J. Klune: The perfectly respectable and rule-following caseworker Linus Baker is sent off on a highly classified assignment by the Department in Charge of Magical Youth. The Marsyas Island Orphanage, managed by the enigmatic Arthur Parnassus, contains a gnome, a sprite, a wyvern, an unidentifiable green blob, a were-Pomeranian, and the Antichrist. For all its bright colours, whimsy, and fuzzy, enveloping warmth, this is as much a story about prejudice and hate, about the fear of what is different and not always understood. And it doesn’t shy away from the harsh realities. But, ultimately, it champions the possibility of redemption, the strength of found and chosen family, about the life and world changing power of unconditional love.
*Buy print (India) | Buy ebook | Bookshop.org (US)
Legends & Lattes by Travis Baldree: A cozy slice-of-life found family fantasy that was originally self-published by the audiobook narrator and game developer, but later reissued by Tor. Viv, a burnt-out orc mercenary, is retiring to open up the city of Thune’s first coffee shop. Will she succeed in her dream? It was my first "high fantasy with low stakes" (the author’s words) and I want more. And more is what I got with the prequel, Bookshops & Bonedust where Viv is at the start of her life as a mercenary, albeit one with an injury requiring an extended recovery by the seaside. This one features found family (albeit some temporary, others more permanent), a cozy but sleepy seaside town, lots of baking (courtesy a talented local dwarf who owns a bakery), and instead of coffee, there are books. Lots and lots of books, and a second-hand bookshop run by the immediately endearing, creatively foul-mouthed ratkin Fern and her sidekick gryphet, Potroast.
*Legends & Lattes: Buy print (India) | Buy ebook | Bookshop.org (US)
*Bookshops & Bonedust: Buy print (India) | Buy ebook | Bookshop.org (US)
The London Highwayman series by Cat Sebastian: I read Book 2 (The Perfect Crimes of Marian Hayes—very Robin Hood coded) before I knew it was a series, but suggest you start with 1 (The Queer Principles of Kit Webb) because there is some chronological overlap of their respective narratives. The books are set in Georgian London and feature roguish highwaymen with hearts of gold, very unaristocrat-like aristocrats, liberal queerness, and lots of adventure.
Tin Man by Sarah Winman: Ellis and Michael have known each other since they were young boys living in Oxford. We trace the threads of their adolescent friendship until it becomes something more. A decade or so later, Ellis is married to Annie, and a work injury forces him back into the past, especially the years in between, until the POV switches and Michael fills in some of the gaps. There is freedom, beauty, possibility, and hope. Loss, love, longing, and pain. I would also recommend Winman’s Still Life, which still remains my favourite book by her, and one of my all-time favourites.
The End Crowns All by Bea Fitzgerald: a fresh, fierce, inventive, heartrending, but also beautiful and hopeful, take on the Fall of Troy through the points of view of Cassandra and Helen. A sapphic love to defy the Gods, and how!
The Singing Hills novellas by Nghi Vo: I’ve already written enough about these novellas of late—you must be sick of me bringing them up! But if you have somehow missed those issues or mentions, you can catch up here and here.
*Novella 1: Buy print (India) | Buy ebook | Bookshop.org (US)
*Novella 2: Buy print (India) | Buy ebook | Bookshop.org (US)
*Novella 3: Buy ebook | Bookshop.org (US)
*Novella 4: Buy ebook | Bookshop.org (US)
*Novella 5: Buy ebook | Bookshop.org (US)
From the archives
Why I Reread: https://anushreenande.substack.com/i/127297678/rereading-a-micro-essay and some background of my reading history and a list of books I never tire of revisiting: https://anushreenande.substack.com/i/127297678/why-i-reread.
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Anu
*the book buying links I share on here are affiliate links (barring the links for my own published work for which I will earn royalties instead), which means that if you make any purchases through those links, I will receive a small commission from the sale at no additional cost to you.
Another readable write up. Impossible to match your reading speed! God bless you.