Em and The Big Hoom

Em is for empathy! What a beautifully written book on a difficult subject.

Wow. What a read. Like reading a story about someone who could be my aunt. Or my own mother - had I been able to bear sticking around... Exhausting and beautiful

to: my reddit secret santa, you are the best because this book is <3

Do you know what I really love? Heung-Min Son, yes but also well written contemporary Indian authors. As someone who reads a lot of non-Indian nonfiction, I often feel guilty for not consuming more domestic pieces of literature. This is a reminder that my common excuse of “most mainstream Indian literature feels trash” is BS.

Em and the big Hoom somehow made it to my TBR list but I didn't seriously pursue it. Not until a softcover copy of the book mysteriously turned up at my doorstep, quite literally. On a whim, I once picked it up during my lunch break and the next thing I know I am 40 pages in and don't want to stop.

There isn't much of a “twisty” story-telling in this book. It feels more like a diary entry jig-saw puzzle spread over a few decades. Its appeal is being able to be humorous and witty while being heartbreaking sad and bleak. The book's pacing is very persuasive - much like real-life, all the highs come with annoying pit-in-you-stomach anticipation of the lows. The madness and sorrow in this book is written with such grace. Endearing and eccentric characters make you want to read more. Also, the main hero - city of Bombay - just shinesss in this book. I don't know much about the city but I felt what Maahim would be like. The revisit to Goan culture in flashbacks was also brilliant.

Much like the edges of the book, the writing is vivid and colourful - a bizarre adventure into two strangers and their love and life. All the while not knowing anyone's name. Stranger, crazy book finished it in two sittings.

What an emotional rollercoaster, I can't even write a review for this property. Just read it, you won't regret it.

Jerry Pinto, I wonder how much you suffered to create this masterpiece. Wow.
Shoutout to my Reddit secret Santa for sending me this wonderful book, I am ded - thanks.

I purchased this without a lot of research, and have misinterpreted what it was - I expected a (albeit light) multi-generational Indian story. It sort of it this, but essentially it revolves around Em (Imelda Mendes), and her mental health problems, and her relationship with her husband Augustine Mendes (the Big Hoom), her daughter Susan and her (un-named in this book) son, who is the narrator.

Pinto has woven a present time narrative with a dipping back into family history that reads well, albeit a little overstuffed with information (possibly a result of a first novel - trying to shoe-horn every thought in), covering the couples relationship and early family life.

Despite essentially being a story about postpartum depression, manic-depression and paranoia, suicide attempts and how the family all deal with this, it is treated in an amusing way. Parts are very funny, parts are sad, as you might expect.

There are some good quotes on society, as well as commentary on mental illness.

Schoolchildren can smell a nervous teacher. They see it in her gait as she enters the room, uncertain of her ability to command and instruct. They hear it in her voice as she clears her throat before she begins to speak. They sense it when she looks at the teacher's table and chair, set on a platform to give her a view of the class, as if she has no right to be there. They watch without remorse or sympathy as she walks the gauntlet and suddenly they are in the grip of a completely new sensation. It is power that they are feeling as they anneal into a single organism: the class. At any moment now they will cry havoc and let loose the dogs of war.-If there was one thing I feared as I was growing up . . .No, that's stupid. I feared hundreds of things: the dark, the death of my father, the possibility that I might rejoice the death of my mother, sums involving vernier calipers, groups of schoolboys with nothing much to do, death by drowning.But of all these, I feared the most the possibility that I might go mad too.

Its not often one comes across a book about any kind of mental illness. That too written with sensitivity and from the point of view of family members. It is a love story too, narrated by the child while managing the affected parent. The reader is a part of the family and feels each episode keenly. It was an excellent read without any depressing bits one would usually associate with mental and emotional trauma. Must read.