Within: Short Stories for the Evolving Multicultural Woman - Aditi Wardhan Singh

Author: Aditi Wardhan Singh

Genre: Anthology

Rating: 2.5 stars.

Some decent stories in this anthology but the book requires a LOT of editing and will have a very restricted appeal.

This is a collection of 30 stories, the length of these being quite varied right from 2-3 pages to almost of novelette size. Some are quite intelligently written, beginning one way but soon showing you a different direction. But the length works against the story a few times as it is over even before it has begun. This tale then feels like a small abrupt narration than a well-developed and well-structured tale.

The stories are quite sweet and in many cases, they seem to be written with one clear agenda in mind – to spread moralising knowledge (or ‘gyaan’ as we Indians call it) on some topic (the topic depending on the theme of the story.) Most of the stories move in the form of incidents in the characters’ lives, wherein they face a major/minor problem, and either sort it out by themselves or though some other character spouting motivational thoughts. They are basically happy stories and meant to spread joy and awareness in the reader’s mind. All the stories are from the female character’s point of view, though in one case, this isn't immediately apparent.

Each story is titled after some abstract noun or thoughts such as ‘Disgust’, ‘Soulmate’, ‘Bias’, ‘Perfection’, and so on. The titles are apt in most cases. The tales tackle some difficult topics such as body shaming, homosexuality, ethnic bias, and domestic abuse.

Is it a must-read collection then? Sadly no. And a major reason for this is its writing. The entire book, every single one of the 30 stories, is written in a conversational language, with lots of slang (“Why are you getting agro?”) and ‘Hinglish’ usage (“Toh this day is not just yours, na.”) I don’t understand how international readers will comprehend such sentences with such a lot of Hindi and even Marathi peppered in the content with no meanings provided. Adding regional lingo works only when skilfully done; in this case, it unfortunately wasn’t. It doesn’t stop only at word usage. There are many grammatical errors -- tenses, sentence structure, punctuation… - and word usage errors too. In some cases, the character’s age doesn’t match their style of speaking. The lines sound so artificial at times. There are many repetitive dialogues as well, and when there's a series of dialogues, it's tough to follow who said what as there is no clear indication of the speaker’s identity.

Basically, this is a very quick, feel-good kind of read but it will mainly appeal to Indian readers because of the language use and the references to Indian customs without any footnotes provided. Let me clarify, it’s only for those Indian readers who don’t mind wonky grammar.

No story crossed the 4 star mark for me. My ratings ranged from 1 star to 4 stars, and this was after I decided to ignore grammar. If I included the language issues in my ratings, they would have slid much further down.

2.5 stars, based on the average of my ratings for all the stories. Rounding down because grammar is also important.

My thanks to Raising World Children LLC and NetGalley for the DRC of “Within: Short Stories for the Evolving Multicultural Woman”. This review is voluntary and contains my honest opinion about the book.