Jenny Bhatt’s debut book is a revelation ... in every way, these narratives are very far from conventional. They are brilliant without showiness, heartbreaking without sentimentality and their insight into human nature is incisive, shrewd and compassionate ... Though many of Bhatt’s stories portray difficult lives and the consequences of bad decisions, 'Separation Notice' is a bright dash of flash-fiction humor ... With this powerful, complex work, Bhatt should be launched into a wider readership that is fully deserved, and the literary world should rejoice in discovering a bright new star.
Debut collections rarely prove even in quality and efficacy, which makes Jenny Bhatt's 15 compelling stories in Each of Us Killers even more memorable ... Challenging assumptions, confronting power, manipulating barriers whenever possible--even at grave personal cost--Bhatt's cast surprises, inspires, frightens, beguiles, but never disappoints.
A few of [Bhatt's] stories—mostly flash fiction or those involving an unconvincing second-person point of view—are less successful, but overall, this collection of 15 stories introduces a writer of great promise ... Bhatt’s prose, sprinkled with similes and metaphors, can be evocative, and she can sum up a presence with a nifty sentence ... powerful.
The stories in Bhatt’s rich debut collection mine the complicated experiences of Indians and immigrants ... Bhatt is skilled at locating her characters’ suffering and desires, and her blunt prose captures their matter-of-fact worldviews. These stories are memorable on their own, and they add up to a powerful expression of the hunger for success on ones own terms.
A slim debut full of nuanced, cleareyed tales of unvarnished humanity ... Creating a rich array of Indian immigrants, students abroad, repatriates, and people who have never left their villages, Bhatt skillfully probes the fault lines where desire shears against limitation, revealing the complex mix of luck, history, circumstance, and grit that determines which side will dominate ... as in most collections, not every story stands at the same level, there are more than enough gems of polish and depth to satisfy. A formally diverse collection with exquisitely crafted stories about longing, striving, and learning what we can control.
