Publication Date: 27th July 2023
Genre: General Fiction, India
4.3 Stars
One Liner: Character-driven and a slice-of-life novel (a worthy debut)
Grand Life Apartments is a middle-class apartment block in Chennai. With its beautiful gardens and open space, it is home to different people navigating various stages of their lives.
Kamala is a widowed dentist and a typical middle-aged conservative woman whose daughter is studying at Oxford. She and her friend Sundu share a wonderful relationship. Revathi is a thirty-two-year-old working professional living on her own and dealing with her mother’s non-stop calls about getting married. Jason, the British chef, moved to India after a breakup with his girlfriend and hopes to restart his life in a new country. Mani is the owner of the apartments, an old man writing a book about the city.
The residents lead parallel lives, which get entwined over time. And when a construction company threatens to tear apart their home, they may have to do more than passively move on from one day to another.
The story comes from the limited third-person POV of Kamala, Revathi, and Jason, with a couple of chapters from Mani.
My Thoughts:
As always, I was hesitant and curious when I requested the book. (My reviews for India-based books begin with the same disclaimer). However, this one proved to be a good choice in many ways.
This is a character-driven novel with no specific ending. It’s not something I like in my novels, but this book is an exception. The characters are based on their stereotypes but are rounded and complete. Their emotions, feelings, vulnerabilities, fears, decisions, etc., are realistic and align with their arcs.
The exact period of the setting is not mentioned (trust me to read such books back-to-back). It seems to be around the early 2000s at the most (and definitely not after 2010). Fortunately, I could relate to it, given my nationality.
The characters are your average people with personal issues trying to find ways to make their lives better, handle the changes around them, and still be hopeful about the future. These are the kind we see around. They could be us and our friends!
The writing is easy to read and has some quirky metaphors. I’m not sure how the pacing will work for others, but for me, it went well. I could read at a steady pace and didn’t feel bored even when the plot was slow to progress.
As such, there isn’t any plot. The central premise of the threat from the construction company is more of a subplot and is established only at the midway point. Even then, there is no action. We don’t see any drastic change in personalities or social activism. There’s more passivity than action. While it keeps the story realistic and true to life, it can also disappoint readers expecting something dramatic. My only issue was that the case gets resolved too easily (we know how the courts work). (Rewording the blurb to remove the focus from the threat would set better expectations.)
The setting, Chennai, comes alive on the pages. Though I haven’t been there, I know enough (and many Indian cities are similar, sans the beaches) about the buildings, weather, Saravana Bhavan, and food!
Oh, man, the food in this one made me so hungry! I read after dinner, but the descriptions of my South Indian dishes made my tummy rumble in approval. Here, I’ll have to mention a scene where Jason makes jackfruit short beard and offers them to young Salim. The kiddo says, “Of all the things you can make with jackfruit, you choose to make biscuits?” (paraphrased), and I was like hi-fi dude, couldn’t have said it better.
The side characters, Sundu (Soundavalli), Salim (this kid is going places, I tell you!), Mani, Reva’s mother, Karthik, and Lakshmi are also well-etched. Even though Reva’s mother is the most stereotypical character, there’s no exaggeration as such. That’s the only way she knows to express her concerns (generational conditioning, you could say).
“…As she (Reva) brought up this reference with ease, she realised how much she knew about life in the UK from just reading the books that had filled the library in her school. She had pieced together clues along with Enid Blyton's intrepid investigators as a child, swooned in the countryside in the arms of Georgette Heyer as a teenager and, as recent as the month before, had inhabited the world woven by Zadie Smith for an entire weekend. She was certain that Jason would not have encountered as many stories from India and wondered, in a slightly alarmed manner, if his entire frame of reference for the country came from watching Slumdog Millionaire.”
Of course, Jason is an absolute sweetheart. He was neither an ‘eww… dirty Indians’ tourist nor an ‘oh, such potential for activism’ foreigner.
I love that we don’t have any unwanted romance or love blooming between the characters. There is a possibility of it but things may or may not happen. There’s no attempt to force connections. Rather, how the characters come to know each other and become friends (despite their differences) feels very organic (and much like how things work in real life).
To summarize, Minor Disturbances at Grand Life Apartments is a quiet and gentle book that celebrates middle-class Indians and their lives. If you want a book that shows a more human (and realistic) side of India, pick this one and go with the flow.
Thank you, NetGalley, Hodder & Stoughton, and Coronet, for the eARC.
#NetGalley #MinorDisturbancesatGrandLifeApartments
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P.S.: I admit I didn’t pay much attention to the cover until I finished the book. The details reflect the characters and the premise without being in the face. I love how artfully this is done.
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