Book Review: The Many Lives of Ruby Iyer: By Laxmi Hariharan

The Many Lives of Ruby Iyer is an action movie in words.  The day Bollywood decides to make a Super ‘Heroine’ movie in the back drop of a collapsing Mumbai, Ruby Iyer shall be the place to start.

However unlike a movie, in the book you get to feel Ruby’s rage, smell the scents of Mumbai, listen to the cities cacophony and live the nightmare she is living. Ruby can look good, she can fight and she is angry.  In the dystopian world imagined by Laxmi Hariharan, both the central characters are women, the saviour and the villain.  The villain most lady like and the heroine trying to break the very mould she has been cast in by her upbringing.  The ‘damsel in distress’ is her close male friend and the knight in shining armour is a mysterious cop.  We should take a pause here and allow Bollywood to insert a song or two. However the book itself is tightly paced and leaves little room for such luxury.

The fast paced first person account leaves you with strong impressions of the central characters feelings but many unanswered questions. The questions push you to finish the book and the end leaves room for a sequel. I would recommend reading the short prequel, the Ruby Iyer Diaries to get more insight into the protagonist’s motivations and her psychological make-up. The writing itself is top notch and one hopes the sequel finds a way to add more colour to this nightmarish ‘mirror’ world and its other resident characters.  An unwillingness to add spoilers makes me end the review here.