BOOKS
Somebody Loves You
by Mona Arshi
(And Other Stories, ISBN 9781913505165)
Ruby, a young, superfluously tall girl living with her Indian family in a British suburb, describes herself as an expert in the art of solitude and quietness. She decides at a young age to give up talking, becoming instead an astute observer and (through her written narration) commentator on the world around her. Her mother flits in and out of her life, periodically felled by depressive episodes that see her hospitalized; her vivacious and raucous older sister Rania is a talker who speaks in a torrential rush; and her friend Farah
