I was excited about Her Nightly Embrace ever since I saw it in the Simon and Schuster Canada blogger email. It’s the first in a new mystery trilogy featuring a protagonist of Indian descent and written by a graphic novelist and screenwriter of Chinese-Thai descent. Even better, it is part of a multimedia approach to storytelling with a TV show and podcast produced by Idris Elba and starring Sendhil Ramamurthy, whom I loved in Heroes. So to be completely honest, I began this book already predisposed to liking it.

And now, having read the book, forget just liking the book. I’m a full-fledged fan girl and am so excited to see how these stories will play out on the screen! Structured to fit the multimedia publication format, Her Nightly Embrace is a collection of four short mysteries, each focusing on a particular case, and all four exploring a larger narrative around protagonist Ravi Chandra Singh’s introduction into life as a private investigator, and in particular a P.I. working at Golden Sentinels, an upmarket London investigations firm staffed by “strays with skills”, “brilliant fuckups with nowhere else to go.”

Indeed, the cast of characters is probably the biggest strength of this series. Ravi is fantastic as the “regular” guy in the group, a failed religious scholar and former high school teacher who sees gods. The very first line of the book reveals his propensity to find gods, usually Hindu, at stressful times, and I love how matter of factly Tantimedh treats this particular skill, simply inserting Kali into a corner tweeting to the other gods about Ravi’s latest exploits. The rest of the staff at Golden Sentinels is even more colourful. My favourite is probably Olivia Wong, a Hong Kong heiress and genius hacker, just because she’s super smart and, yes, an Asian woman, so I’m really excited to see her onscreen. Other memorable characters include: Ken and Clive, a pair of ex-cops who act as the firm’s muscle and who also happen to be a couple; Marcie Holder, an American former publicist; Benjamin Lee, a MacGyver-style techie; Mark Chapman, a stoner; David Okri, a lawyer from a Nigerian immigrant family who often goes with their boss Roger Golden to woo super rich potential clients; and Cheryl Hughes, the office manager and Roger’s right hand woman. With so many characters, it can get a bit difficult to tell them apart in the beginning, but Tantimedh does such a great job in making each of them so vivid that each becomes memorable in their own way.

The cases as well are intriguing. Tantimedh’s writing is funny and fast-paced, and the mysteries suck you in. I particularly love “War of the Sock Puppets,” about a female celebrity who faces online harassment and doxxing for being a feminist, and “The Hideaway Bride,” about a woman from a traditional Pakistani family who goes missing shortly before her arranged marriage. I found both cases particularly relevant, and found myself cheering Ravi and his team on as they investigate. The final case, “The Leaky Banker,” about a banker who fears for her life, had the highest stakes and it was great to see Ravi truly settling into his role and taking charge, but it also had the most traditional feel to it and so didn’t quite stick with me as much.

The titular case “Her Nightly Embrace” had an interesting premise — a politician claims his dead fiancee is haunting him for sex — and I like how the character of the politician evolved over the story, but I admit to being dissatisfied with how something was handled at the end. This is one instance where I thought the episodic format worked against the book, as I felt that in the interest of wrapping things up, the extent of a particular act’s impact in this story wasn’t given due significance for how heinous it really was. That being said, it’s a single glitch in an otherwise enjoyable set of mysteries, and I really like how most of the time, Ravi serves as the voice of conscience to his more experienced colleagues, and in that way probably addresses audience concerns as well.

Overall, Her Nightly Embrace is a fantastic start to this new mystery series. I love Ravi and his co-workers, and I also loved his scenes with his family, which are all hilarious and feel so real. I’m so excited for the next books in the series, and I can’t wait to see how the podcast and TV show turn out! (I have no idea if they’ll be based on the same stories or will have their own, but selfishly, I’m rather hoping for original stories on screen, just so I have more Ravi, P.I. cases to enjoy!)

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Thank you to Simon and Schuster Canada for an advance reading copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Image courtesy of the TIFF website

Effi Briest shows at TIFF Bell Lightbox November 3rd at 6:45 pm, as part of Imitations of Life: The Films of Rainer Werner Fassbinder, a retrospective that runs from October 28 – December 3.

Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s Effi Briest, a 1974 film starring Hanna Schygulla, feels very faithful to the format of its source material. While I haven’t read the 1896 novel Effi Briest by Theodor Fontane, Fassbinder’s approach in this film feels so novelistic in its quiet tone that I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that the scenes and dialogue have a one-to-one correlation to the original book. Take for example the opening scene, where the screen shows a still image of a house and a narrator describes the house in great detail and says that across it, “the village street lay still, bathed in the midday sun.” There are also scenes where there is no dialogue, but rather the narrator relays an earlier conversation or the characters’ inner thoughts while the actors move about silently on screen.

This style fits particularly well with the restrictive 19th century social conventions explored in the story, which is about an unhappy marriage told from the perspective of a 19th century woman and has been compared to Anna Karenina and Madame Bovary. Effi Briest’s parents arrange her marriage to Baron Innstetten, a man over twice her age who had courted her mother many years ago. As her mother told her, the marriage would increase her status and let her achieve at 20 what many women do at 40.

Unfortunately, Baron Innstetten is a scary, controlling figure, and rather than comfort Effi when she has trouble sleeping, Innstetten dismisses her fears about a ghost in their home, and worse, Effi later realizes he had been trying to use the ghost to ‘educate’ her. Effi finds a much-needed friend in the handsome and dashing Major Crampas, an acquaintance of the Baron, and as anyone who’s read Anna Karenina or Madame Bovary can predict, this cannot end well.

The main highlight of the movie for me is the performance by Hanna Schygulla, who plays Effi which such lovely innocence that it’s heart-breaking to see her transform from the joyous ‘aerial spirit’ in the first scene to the more restricted, fearful wife and tragic figure that she becomes. I wanted her to find a happy ending with Major Crampas, yet knew she was restricted by the unfortunate reality of her time.

Effi Briest is a beautiful film, and it’s no wonder the book on which it was based was a literary classic.

Image from Berlin Alexanderplatz courtesy of the TIFF website

Anosh Irani’s The Parcel hooked me from the very first line: “I go by many names, none of my own choosing.”

In Madhu, Irani has created such a beautifully arresting and evocative heroine whose story just draws the reader in and refuses to let go. This is particularly significant since Madhu’s story isn’t an easy one to read, and Madhu herself isn’t an easy person to root for, given what she is tasked to do. See, Madhu’s job is to ready a parcel for delivery, and in this case, ‘parcel’ refers to a ten year old girl from the provinces who was sold by her family into prostitution, and ‘delivery’ means readying the girl for the man who bought her.

I struggled to write this review, because, really, how can I admit feeling empathy for a character who does such a horrible thing? How can I detest what Madhu is doing while still in many ways understanding why she is doing it? It’s a terrible, inescapable tension that permeated my entire experience of reading this book, and it’s made even more difficult by the realization that there are likely people in the real world who live as Irani’s characters do and who face the same situation as Madhu and the parcel and the other characters in this book do. I’m not completely sure how I feel about this book or its characters, but I do believe it’s a testament to Irani’s writing that the book has affected me this much.

Irani plunges us deep into Madhu’s life, and shows us the world of Kamathipura, a red light district in Bombay, India, through her eyes. Madhu is a eunuch and a hijra, one who is neither man nor woman but a third gender. At forty, she is too old to continue as a prostitute, and based on experience, too ill-suited for performing at weddings. She is thus relegated to begging for alms from passengers in taxis, and when her hijra clan’s leader Gurumai orders her to prepare a parcel for a powerful brothel owner, Madhu can’t refuse.

In some ways, Madhu sees her task as merciful. Rather than the usual way of ‘opening’ a ‘parcel’ through force, Madhu takes the time to first remove any last shred of hope or humanity in the girl. Madhu’s reluctance is clear — she distances herself from the girl’s humanity, referring to her as a ‘parcel’ throughout, yet at one point, loses control and lashes out during a particularly disturbing stage of the preparation process. Madhu also clearly forms an empathetic link with the girl, being reminded of the past as she tries to make the girl break all links to her own past.

What’s clear is that Madhu views her work as necessary. She says that hope is dangerous, and the sooner a parcel accepts her fate, the easier it will be. So much of me rebels against this, yet part of me is also aware that, for Madhu and other hijras, and for so many other characters in this book, hope is indeed futile. Among the most heart-wrenching scenes in this book are centred on hope — Madhu standing on a bridge and looking at her childhood home wondering if she can ever return, or an elderly hijra Bulbul listening to the radio and absolutely certain she hears coded messages from a former lover who wants her back.

The full extent of Irani’s talent, however, is not in the bleakness of such themes, but in teasing out the strands of light and humanity in them. I absolutely love the community of hijras in Irani’s Kamathipura, in particular Gurumai and Bulbul, who take Madhu into their family and become the loving and accepting mother and sister she never had. I love how they take in hijra prostitutes who are ‘pojeetive’ or have angered their clan leader and are therefore cast out from the hijra community. Even these loving relationships and close-knit communities aren’t perfect — Gurumai is a maternal figure yet still takes her share of Madhu’s earnings — and it’s this inextricable intertwining of the positives and the negatives that make this world feel ever more real.

The Parcel is not an easy read, but it’s a powerful one. Irani’s world of hijras in Kamathipura will move you, and Madhu’s story will stick with you long after you finish reading.

Anosh Irani’s appearances at Toronto’s 2016 International Festival of Authors:

• Monday October 24 8pm “GGs at IFOA”
• Thursday October 27 8pm “Reading Award Winners”
• Sunday October 30 3:30pm “Stories of Redemption” (Reading/Round Table)

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Thank you to Penguin Random House Canada for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review, and to the International Festival of Authors and blog tour organizer Buried in Print for the invitation to participate in this blog tour!