Certified Fresh

Asma Menon has written a book best described as Certified Fresh

Story is what makes a memoir compelling.

“Angela’s Ashes” is an example.

But I recently read Asma Menon's memoir Moonlight Baby (written as a collection of 13 stories) which has 2 things going for it.

Story plus a unique style.

Make that very unique style.

Certified Fresh is the label I would put on Moonlight Baby.

I found the reading “is this for real” exciting.

Moonlight Baby is an artsy book, like nothing I have read before.

But then that’s not surprising, since it is written by Asma Menon, who is an artist and lives in Cholamandalam, or some other artists colony outside Chennai.

A few samples of her art are featured midway through the book, with accompanying text.

Ms. Menon qualifies as “ordinary" (=non-famous) people”.

But I wouldn’t be surprised if this book puts her on the map.

From the title and the foreword itself, Moonlight Baby promises to be a different read from anything you are used to reading.

“Shards of a word/comment/anecdote/childhood, have been dusted. Mosaics have been added to resurrect a snippet/prose/lyrics/short story. Embellished and polished.”

Who writes like that?

Ms. Menon does apparently.

Why did I not beat her to the punch of this unique style?

Why did I not think about dropping pronouns like she does, saying “Brother instead of “My brother”, Mother instead of ‘My Mother’, “Big Sister” instead of “My sister”.

And the endings.

I loved the endings to each of the 13 stories.

How did she know where to end the story and how to end the story?

How did she get the endings exactly right?

This being her first book.

All this and more kept me glued through all 13 stories of Moonlight Baby from Page 1 to Page 94. And I even enjoyed the pieces of art thrown into the mix.

Read it.

Moonlight Baby!

P.S. Don't pick up this book with the plan to read a few pages and then turn off your bedside lamp.  You will get so absorbed, you will lose track of time and wake up completely sleep-deprived the next morning.