Review: Mira Jacob’s The Sleepwal­ker’s Guide To Dancing

Hailed as the new Jhumpa Lahiri, Jacob soars with a voice entirely her own, less bleak and more vibrant: Neha Bhatt in The Outlook

Death, in fact, many deaths, loom large over Mira Jacob’s debut novel The Sleepwal­ker’s Guide To Dancing. Yet, the novel never feels weighed down by its dark moments, in Jacob’s sure hand, the narrative moves soft as breeze. The novel opens with a prologue where a mother complains to her daughter about her father’s latest shenanigans, affectionately, of course, and not without dollops of wry humour. It’s enough to pull you into their story, buoyant with everyday conversations that are comic, tragic, and often both.