Shreya Sen-Handley’s latest novel, Strange Stories, a book of 13 short stories was launched in Kolkata a couple of months ago at Starmark. It follows her 2017 book, Memoirs of My Body, released in 2017. Shreya is now engaged in opera writing in partnership with the Welsh National Opera that will tour the UK in 2020. Clearly, the writer, originally from Kolkata and now living in the UK is on a roll. Her ability to write in such diverse genres with such confidence and finesse is quite remarkable.

Memoirs of My Body was a bold book where Shreya spoke of her sexuality, the wanted and unwanted attention she received, with brutal honesty; Strange, while not autobiographical, is as bold in the range of often unsettling stories she tells with audacity. Shreya does not shrink from the seamier side of life and treats her often very dark characters with subtlety and sensitivity.

Each story, some set in India or among the Indian community in England, is pithy and in the short span of the telling takes the reader through many unexpected twists and turns in the plots that left me unsettled, not knowing where the tales would end. A bucolic country scene of children playing in the lush green English countryside takes a U-turn to reveal a sordid secret. A petty office thief, arguably obsessed with office supplies is portrayed sympathetically, is in fact engaged in far more nefarious activities that are bone-chilling.

As in her book Memories of Her Body, Shreya deals with issues of sexuality, perversion, and sex unflinchingly. The story of a very popular and man admired in office by many of the women with whom he works is startling in its brutality. The repeat offender never seems to pay the price for his treatment of the women who are willingly led to his lair, afraid to speak of the fate they met there. A young Indian woman who finds comfort in the arms of her lover from India with whom she shares so much culturally finds sexual solace with her English husband with whom she barely speaks. She nonchalantly dives back into her everyday life. A disgruntled wife has the pluck to set herself up for a one-night stand to find herself in waters much deeper than she could have anticipated. She reconciles herself to her fate as she knows there is no turning back as her attempt at flirtation started the ball rolling towards a tumultuous and maybe dangerous place. When each story ended, I was left wondering at the repercussions that each one of the protagonists had to contend with to come to terms with the consequences of their actions. I admired Shreya’s deft handling of the narrative which was always taut and told uncompromisingly.

Shreya’s agility in traversing tortuous psychological terrains, never belaboring her point or being judgmental, held me in suspense till the very end of each tale. I was absorbed, engaged and disturbed by almost all the stories, a couple of which continue to haunt me.

Hers is certainly a unique voice. I look forward to following her literary adventures. I am sure Shreya, like her stories, will have many a surprise in store for her audiences.

Shreya Sen-Handley’s latest novel, Strange Stories, a book of 13 short stories was launched in Kolkata a couple of months ago at Starmark. It follows her 2017 book, Memoirs of My Body, released in 2017. Shreya is now engaged in opera writing in partnership with the Welsh National Opera that will tour the UK in 2020. Clearly, the writer, ori