I dig Mangla's way with words and he's a writer to watch, for sure. This book reminds me a bit, the more I think about it, as a slightly less weird cousin to Patrick deWitt's Ablutions - they both tap into a similar vein of nameless insecurity, but in an enjoyable fashion. It's a quick read and while you may not remember the book itself too long after reading it, I hope that you'll remember the author. May he have his own Sisters Brothers coming down the line (in terms of success, that is).

More at RB: http://wp.me/pGVzJ-Sj ( )

I dig Mangla's way with words and he's a writer to watch, for sure. This book reminds me a bit, the more I think about it, as a slightly less weird cousin to Patrick deWitt's Ablutions - they both tap into a similar vein of nameless insecurity, but in an enjoyable fashion. It's a quick read and while you may not remember the book itself too long after reading it, I hope that you'll remember the author. May he have his own Sisters Brothers coming down the line (in terms of success, that is).

More at RB: http://wp.me/pGVzJ-Sj ( )

I like short. I like concise. I like books that don't over-detail every setting, every character, every emotion and instead leave room for the reader to get involved. So it's not unexpected that I liked Ravi Mangla's book, Understudies.

This is a short novel broken into 200 bite-sized chapters and the end result is something of a meditation or a mood piece. The narrative covers the entire (but mostly recent) life of a high school teacher and his relationship with his girlfriend, mother, work colleague, rock band, and a neighbor who is obsessed with a famous actress who has moved to their suburb.

The many brief windows that open on the life of the unnamed narrator serve to show a man confronted by an often mystifying world. There are moments of humor throughout, but they are suppressed somehow, as if overly-medicated. To illustrate a life in snippet form like this is perhaps the most honest way. It is, after all, how life is experienced: randomly, largely without plot and navigated with maps as useless as the one sold by one of the characters who insists that squiggly lines and unnamed streets is enough. Rather than challenge the assumptions and opinions of people like this, the narrator tends to just accept and move on. It's as if he expects life to be strange (and it rarely fails to deliver) and he suspects that none of this may be real to begin with. If that's the case, why struggle?



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I’ll admit it. As I read the first couple of (very short) chapters in Understudies, I wasn’t sold. Mangla’s style is unique, and it takes some getting used to. I'm glad I kept reading, though, because I ended up really enjoying the book.

My favorite part is how Mangla can capture moods, reactions, subtexts in just a few easy words. His style is astute, concise, and subtly clever. In fact, his writing has an almost poetic quality to it. Perhaps a bit of an acquired taste, but it didn’t take me long to acquire it.

Full thoughts are posted on Erin Reads. ( )