Em and the Big Hoom

In a tiny flat in Bombay Imelda Mendes - Em to her children - holds her family in thrall with her flamboyance, her manic affection and her cruel candour. Her husband - to whom she was once 'Buttercup' - and her two children must bear her 'microweathers', her swings from laugh-out-loud joy to dark malevolence. Brilliantly comic and almost unbearably moving, Jerry Pinto's portrait of a woman finding it difficult to stay sane - and what happens to those who cannot help but love her - is one of the most powerful and original fiction debuts of recent years.