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A Novel
by Bindu Bansinath
From brilliant new voice in fiction Bindu Bansinath, a darkly funny and moving story about death, life, and community in a South Asian suburban enclave of New Jersey.
When Matthew Pillai is found dead, slumped over the wheel of his BMW, the women of Willow Road are roped into the investigation of their friend's death.
At the center of the case are the Sharmas--Anita, a widow whose husband introduced Matthew to the neighborhood, and her boundary-pushing daughter, Leila, who called him Uncle. To Anita, who has been in freefall since her arrival in America as a young woman, Matthew's presence offered hope, including a promise of betterment for Leila. The truth, however, is far stranger.
In this darkly funny debut, the women of Willow Road find that despite their internecine quarrels, casual backstabbing, and generational feuds, in the end, there is no one to turn to but each other.
"Bansinath is an impressive storyteller...Readers will be engrossed by this clear-eyed and explosive tale." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"This darkly funny satire threaded with a subtle murder mystery is thoughtful and unflinching...Bansinath's frank and sardonic insights into immigrant experiences within the walls of an insular community are complexly entertaining." —Booklist
"Men Like Ours is a wholly unpredictable ride, brimming with sharp characters I felt I knew intimately. These women, tucked within their deceptively quiet lives, are many things-surprising, acerbic, dramatic, humorous, exasperating, tragic, but each is ultimately impossible to ignore." ―Parini Shroff, author of The Bandit Queens
"Bindu Bansinath has written the most promising debut I've read in decades. With humor dryer than an Englishman's martini and darker than a moonless night, she delivers a pitch perfect howl against the patriarchy, alongside the portrait of a community in crisis as vivid and complicated as anything out of Morrison or Naipaul." ―Gary Shteyngart, New York Times bestselling author of Our Country Friends
This information about Men Like Ours was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Bindu Bansinath is a staff writer for New York Magazine's The Cut. She lives in Jersey City.
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