“I wish I had never met you. You’ve been nothing but an inconvenience.”
Rosalyn D’Mello, A Handbook for My Lover
Read an excerpt
“Part kitchen-sink realism, part erotic memoir, this is a brave book that stakes the human body with all the intimacy and longing of a lover’s gaze, looking beyond, to the history of other lovers, and to the idea of the end, which hovers over all love stories, however traditional or untraditional they may be.”
— Review/Interview, Tishani Doshi, The Hindu
“For the Handbook is a birth, a becoming, and from the literary fancy-footwork and carnal bodies emerges a picture of a young woman who successfully imagines herself. A Handbook For My Lover breaks new ground skillfully and well – it is an enjoyable self-portrait of a woman turning 30 amidst a sensual life of food, drink, sex and books.”
— Review, Amrita Narayanan, Scroll
“D’Mello’s book is a work both of intellectual acumen and of tender intimacy. There is, after all, no Cartesian divide - only the compartments we create in order to be able to live with ourselves and with others.”
— Sharanya Manivannan, The Queen of Jasmine Country
“Rosalyn D’Mello’s light but penetrating gaze makes for a delicious exploration of the theme of love. While informed and fully aware, she manages not to lose her sense of curious wonder. A Handbook for My Lover is a most original memoir; a love song to the very needs that make us human.”
— Bee Rowlatt, In Search of Mary
“In its honesty in confronting fears and desires and the lyrical and reflective style of writing – reminding one at various points of Joan Didion, Jeanette Winterson and Joe, the protagonist of Lars von Trier’s Nymphomaniac – A Handbook… comes through as a fine addition to the modest library of modern Indian literary erotica.”
— Review, DNA
“The modern Indian woman’s journey into self-awareness through sex, heartache, desire and fulfilment has found a brave new voice in Rosalyn D’Mello’s erotic memoir, A Handbook for my Lover.”
— Review, Sudha Tilak, Hindustan Times
“A skillfully constructed memorabilia, this handbook celebrates the joy of living life voraciously, hedonistically and with wild abandon, greedily gorging on every particle of pleasure that the human existence affords, be it a Chilean Red with wood-fired pizza, truly epic sex or the slow honing of one’s craft against the flesh and blood of an all-consuming passion. Interestingly enough for a work of erotica, A Handbook offers equal if not more insight into the fine art of conceiving and creating art be it writing or photography as it does love and lovemaking.
— Anuja Chandramouli, The Sunday Standard
Sex has never flowed so unpretentiously and with such grace in Indian writing.”
— Gayatri Jayaraman, India Today
ANTHOLOGIES
