Mallika is a painfully shy young woman growing up in the heart of a close-knit, sometimes stifling New Delhi colony. Though she is surrounded by love, her life is complicated by secrets that she, her mother and her aunt work hard to keep.
After suffering a trauma aged nineteen, Mallika loses three days of her memory and slowly spirals into a deep depression. She must find a way out of this abyss, back to herself and those she cares about. But she must also hide her mental illness from her community.
In a narrative that unfolds elliptically from the perspectives of Mallika and the seven people closest to her, the astonishing story of these characters’ lives emerges. For Mallika’s family, childhood friends and the two men she loves are also hiding truths. As each gives voice to contending with their own struggles, secrets and silences shatter.
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Review
Although the story is set in the adolescent times of people in their sixties today, it is a thoroughly contemporary book, and could be read with profit by young people who want to know what makes their elders tick. Jaded as we are by the empty rhetoric of acche din, it is salutary to be reminded of what the bure din of the past were like. This is a lovely book to read if you want a warm nostalgia bath at the end of a particularly postmodern day. ― India Today
The power of stories has been at the heart of Anjana Appachana’s writing – and in Fear and Lovely too, she conveys the individually fortifying and morally bracing power of storytelling: she suggests that the stories we tell and those we don’t, the stories we make up and those that we share even at considerable personal cost determine the moral compass within. — Mini Kapoor ― The Hindu
…I consider Fear and Lovely a book to keep for life. That’s because of the characters. I love Mallika and the people who surround her. They are so well drawn that as I read the book, I could see their faces and their forms. They are strong, funny, vulnerable, scared, annoying and real. I want them in my life forever. — Kushalrani Gulab ― Deccan Chronicle
Full of spice and verve, the novel keeps the reader turning pages till the very end. It’s a novel you don’t just read. You start living in it. ― Scroll
This is a delicious coming-of-age novel in which silence is loud and love for an era gone by is not whitewashed by facile nostalgia. ― Deccan Herald
Appachana’s gifts are extraordinary, her sympathies humble and unsparing, her subtlety and wit true heart-shifters. Fear and Lovely is one of the best books you’ll read this year, next year, last year. In Mallika’s journey readers will find a radiant portrait of our wounded bewildering world and the human hearts that will one day redeem it. A once-in-a-lifetime achievement — Junot Diaz
Some novels melt your heart. For me, this is one of them. Anjana Appachana’s Fear and Lovely is beautiful, wise, funny and deeply moving. It’s bursting with emotion, truth, secrets and love, all written with such insight and tenderness. I loved it — Rachel Elliott
Trauma, forgiveness, hope, marriage and the shame around mental health are all explored in this beautiful, complex and funny story set in 1970s New Delhi. It’s the first novel from Appachana in 20 years and one to be savoured ― Stylist
About the Author
Anjana Appachana was born and educated in India, where she did her BA (Hons) in English at Delhi University and her MA in Sociology at Jawaharlal Nehru University. After working in India for a few years, she went on to do her MFA in Creative Writing at Penn State. Subsequently, she has been living both in the US and in India. Appachana’s book Incantations & Other Stories was published in the UK, India, the US, Germany and France, and her novel Listening Now, in the US, India and France. Her short stories have been published in various journals, anthologies and magazines. Appachana is a recipient of the National Endowment of the Arts Creative Writing Fellowship and an O. Henry Festival prize. She is based in Arizona.
Product details
- Publisher : Penguin Hamish Hamilton (27 March 2023)
- Language : English
- Hardcover : 480 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0670098558
- ISBN-13 : 978-0670098552
- Item Weight : 610 g
- Dimensions : 20.3 x 25.4 x 4.7 cm
- Best Sellers Rank: #22,991 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #91 in Psychology (Books)
- #323 in Myths, Legends & Sagas
- #495 in Historical Fiction (Books)
- Customer Reviews: 4.7 4.7 out of 5 stars 23 ratings
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