"Set in the near future, in a version of Kolkata afflicted by food scarcity and dramatic global warming, this adroitly plotted novel centers on the manager of a homeless shelter who isn't above dipping into its donations to feed her young daughter and widower father. The three are days away from flying to the United States to join the woman's husband, when a shelter resident sneaks into their home and absconds with their food and, inadvertently, their passports."
"At the novel's outset, Trip's mother travels to Nepal to attend a conference "for people who study death." While there, she dies in a freak accident; at the same time, Trip, who has autism, runs away, ending up on a road trip with a recovering addict. As the mother lingers in spirit form, trying to communicate with the living in order to save Trip from calamity-by possessing the body of another conference-goer, for instance-she faces the prospect of losing the attachments that defined her. "You'll forget everything," she's told, after lovingly relating a list of details about her son."
Near-future Kolkata suffers food scarcity and dramatic global warming; a homeless-shelter manager takes from donations to feed her family, then loses food and passports to a resident, triggering a tense pursuit that exposes moral elasticity and political stakes. Trip follows a mother who dies while attending a death-studies conference in Nepal as her autistic son runs away and joins a recovering addict on the road; the mother's lingering spirit attempts to intervene and confronts the loss of her defining attachments. A third work examines late-1940s Hollywood amid blacklisting, a collapsing studio system, and television's rise, with attention to the noir film "Sunset Boulevard."
Read at The New Yorker
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