Review of a review

Here is another review of my book, A Grasshopper's Pilgrimage from a fellow Ftiian, and fellow blogger friend, Banno.

Ok, I am going to comment just for the heck of it. Actually, its an extremely sincere response to the book.

Here is a paragraph that got my goats up.

Gopika accepts that she is a screw in the huge machinery of God and the Cosmos. And that gives her an immense sense of freedom from the worries of day-to-day life. Gopika is no enlightened soul, but her deep craving to be enlightened makes all other problems seem petty and fade away.

Dukhti rag per haath rakhna jaroori tha? You make Gopika out to be some kind of moron, Banno.

She’s beautiful, spunky, irreverent, and affectionate. She is generous, warm and cranky. She can run away or run back to fulfill her quest. In that, she is completely selfish.

Selfish? Why selfish? How selfish? If a persona is professionally one-pointed, focused, and passionate, do we ever call him selfish? Well, errr, I do sometimes call my hubby that, so...

Manjushree Abhinav is able to bring God out in the open. She is able to talk about her spiritual journey without embarrassment or secretiveness. Her writing is clear and open, her laughter can be heard between the words, unfettered by what anyone might think of her. Her affection for her characters, those who understand Gopika, those who don’t, those who help her and those who don’t, reflects her warmth. Because the book has the unpredictability of fact, it’s a page turner, not something that one expects from what the ‘blurb’ calls spiritual fiction.

And yet, her very strong belief in what she’s talking about makes reading her book like a session of meditation.

This is nice, thank you, Banno.