RaveThe Arkansas InternationalPriyanka Champaneri’s debut novel The City of Good Death , nothing is so easy, and memory proves as persistent as a lingering spirit \'determined to be heard,\' holding tight to the living until fulfilling its purpose. This novel could be seen as one cleaved in two, with mysteries unfolding discreetly in the realms of women and of men, and Champaneri deftly balances the weight of expectation and introspection, of skepticism and faith, and what is sought out and what is hidden. As the city stirs with gossip and intrigue, Pramesh and Shobha deal with hauntings of all kinds, their stories weaving around one another to reveal the intersection of love and grief, and perhaps even illuminating some of the mysteries of the Land of the Dead.
Jana Larson
RaveArkint.orgA captivating blend of memoir, true-crime, meditation on women in film, and fantasy played out through the pages of screenplays that will never be completed ... What begins as a cataloguing of a ravenous, journalistic hunt becomes a mesmerizing exercise in projection and subjectivity ... With this essay, Larson captures both the fanaticism of creative fixation and the listlessness of artistic existential dread with clarity and empathy ... There is something inherently defiant in Larson’s exploration of those who are lost and deluded, and something freeing in bearing witness as she becomes the true subject of her art.
