Hindustan Times

‘Clear’, ‘concise’ and ‘insightful’ are perfect descriptors of Anita Nair’s latest novel, Eating Wasps. The book starts with 30-year-old Sreelakshmi’s suicide on a “Monday. A working day.” A Sahtiya Akademi winner, she is still considered damaged goods by the people in her vicinity because she is unmarried. After her cremation, an ex-lover Markose recovers her index finger from the funeral pyre, and thus Sreelakshmi is carried through the stories of several women who are fighting their own battles with society’s expectations and their own…. She draws pictures of flawed human beings. This is what makes Eating Wasps so compelling. It doesn’t just deal with the issues faced by women in a general sense, but presents them in detail…. Nair’s poetic prose set alongside unvarnished truths of the everyday lives of women makes Eating Wasps a satisfying and disturbing read all at once.