Paradise Towers – Book Review

Author: Shweta Bachchan Nanda
Genre: Contemporary Fiction
Paperback: 184 pages
Publisher: HarperCollins India; 1 edition (6 October 2018)
Language: English

BLURB as on Goodreads

Add On GOODREADS PARADISE TOWERS

Dinesh opens the door to the Kapoor flat to find Lata, the enchantress who works at Mrs. Aly Khan’s, carrying a hot case with freshly made gaajar ka halwa. On the first floor, the inquisitive Mrs. Mody wipes the dust off her precious binoculars to spy on the building’s security guard. The Singhs open the doors of their SUV, their four boys creating a ruckus – they are the newcomers, the outsiders. Through the peephole, the ever-watchful Mrs. Ranganekar observes their arrival. Welcome to Paradise Towers, an apartment building in central Mumbai. Everyone here has a story to tell. Or maybe they have stories to hide. Shweta Bachchan-Nanda’s quirky, intimate debut explores the intertwined lives in this building – a forbidden romance, an elopement, the undercurrents of tension in corridor interactions and an explosive Diwali celebration. Bachchan-Nanda’s is a dazzling voice that will draw you into the intoxicating, crazy world that is Paradise Towers.

Look at the cover and you tend to assume that the book is about an apartment and its inhabitants. Well, yes it is. Paradise Towers is a building in the posh location that houses people of different communities. All of them vary in their religions, beliefs, and stories. There is a family which stays conservative and refrains from mingling with other occupants of the apartment. Then there is other with 5 children with the beautiful eldest daughter being asked to stop blossoming her love for a Hindu boy. There is Mrs. Mody, an old nosy lady, who dies under mysterious circumstances and then the whole turn of unexpected events take place. And those occurrences are quirky and somewhere, outright plain narratives. They have the essence of typical Bollywood masala movies.

Being a debut novel, it definitely has done a good job but not something outstandingly amazing. The plotline involved mundane happenings of a typical apartment life. There are gossips, a clandestine love affair, a tendency to peek into others’ private life, etc. What might hook a reader would be its narration which is light and astute. The language is amazing to match the backdrop of high-class drama. The flow of the story is maintained properly. And the climax has been developed and presented wonderfully. Each character gets an ample space in the book and an equal voice to give a colorful vibe to the story.

In a nutshell, it is an entertaining book. One could go for this to have a light reading experience.

MY RATING: 3/ 5

BUY YOUR COPY PARADISE TOWERS

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Shweta Bachchan-Nanda is a columnist for DNA and Vogue. A well-known personality, she is the daughter of actors Jaya and Amitabh Bachchan. Shweta is married to Nikhil Nanda and is the mother of two children. She has her own clothing label, MxS, which launched in 2018. She lives in New Delhi. This is her first novel.

Shweta Bachchan-Nanda’s quirky, intimate debut explores the intertwined lives in this building – a forbidden romance, an elopement, the undercurrents of tension in corridor interactions and an explosive Diwali celebration. Shweta Bachchan-Nanda’s is a dazzling voice that will draw you into the intoxicating, crazy world that is Paradise Towers.