Dear readers, I was impressed, and at moments a little terrified, by Monica Datta’s new novel, “Nebraska,” which I reviewed this week. It’s a maximalist, dizzying story of a family tragedy — Anna Chatterjee kills her youngest child by pushing his wheelchair in front of a train headed toward Grand Central Station — that leaps across the globe, from Kolkata to Britain and all corners of North America. We meet the Chatterjee family on what they believe is Anna’s parole date, when her husband and two adult children arrive at the facility where she’s been incarcerated for years. But Anna is long gone, and virtually untraceable. It’s a brilliant, beguiling hook — one of the most intriguing beginnings I’ve seen in a while, and one that endeared me right away to the author’s outlook and penchant for coincidence. If you’re deterred by footnotes, though, “Nebraska” might not be the right book for you — allusive annotations appear on virtually every page, sending readers down paths no other author could forge. There’s a fearlessness to the novel that I had to admire: the confidence of the writing, the intellect, the commitment to abstruse and even radioactive subject matter. Slim, thinly veiled autofiction “Nebraska” is not. It is a triumph. See you on Friday.
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