PositiveHarvard ReviewMarie-Helene Bertino’s third book, Parakeet, is almost impossible to describe. In some places, the novel is darkly funny, as it points out the ordinary absurdities and hardships of life; in others, it descends into what feels like a fever dream ... Bertino brings a lot more to the table than a just a love story gone wrong. The novel’s strangeness is apparent from page one ... There are strained conversations and strange fart jokes, and too often the novel’s weirdness has no discernible purpose, seeming only to distract from the story’s emotional force. More effective are the novel’s funny one-liners ... The best parts of the novel are the occasional poignant moments ... Bertino’s understated portrayal of the difficult parts of life are what make the book worth reading, despite the many distracting tangents of body swapping and misidentification. Each of the novel’s final chapters wraps up one of the story lines ... Though touching, these chapters feel like serial attempts at a perfect ending rather than a cohesive finale, reflecting the novel’s scattered attention.
Megha Majumdar
MixedHarvard Review... highly political, eschews grammatical norms, and is made to be consumed in a single sitting. But what truly makes A Burning stand out are the ways in which the story of a young girl in Kolkata, India, holds a mirror to the current political situation in the United States ... after a while the novel begins to feel a bit one note. Every moment seems designed to serve the same end: to show how corrupt the system is ... A Burning presents a problem, again and again, but offers little hope and no solutions.
