Acid

Life is a brief, waking dream-but who casts the spell? Two striking women, Kamala and Shaly, helm an unusual household, fuelled by their intense, tempestuous romance in a rapidly changing Bangalore. Downstairs, Kamala's sons take care of each other in their own way-the twins are bound together by an early accident that paralysed Shiva, making Aadi his brother's caretaker. Beautiful Shaly is the object of more than one person's affections-and she, too, has a complicated past. When Kamala's mother dies, the motherland calls her to Kerala-to an ancestral house of horrors which lies next to the cremation grounds in Cochin's outlying reaches: a place which, nevertheless, is home. However, nothing can prepare her for the devastation that ensues in this lyrical, hallucinatory trip of a story. Utterly gripping and powerfully unsettling, Sangeetha Srinivasan's phenomenal debut subverts received ideas about society, individuality and motherhood. Acid unravels the secrets that lurk beneath...