Em and the Big Hoom
ABOUT
THE BOOK
In a one-bedroom-hall-kitchen in Mahim, Bombay, Imelda Mendes – Em to her children – holds her family in thrall with her flamboyance, her compelling imagination, her unspoken love, her sometimes cruel candour. Through this, her husband, to whom she was once “buttercup”, her son and daughter learn to cope with her mania and her frequent wish to die.
A seering, and at times darkly funny study of mental illness, Jerry Pinto’s first novel is also a deeply moving story about love and family relationships.
NOMINATING LIBRARY COMMENTS
A book that promises to make you laugh and cry, Em and the Big Hoom is about not giving up on relationships so easily but nurturing them till they grow, until they die on their own. Jerry Pinto’s first novel is about one woman’s madness, and how it is acidic glue that scars her family but also holds it together.
-India International Centre