A Deep, Different Novel // Mornings After by Tharun James Jimani

Title: Mornings After

Author: Tharun James Jimani
Publication Date: August 23rd 2016
Publisher: Bloomsbury India
Part of a Series?: No, A Standalone
I Got A Copy Through: Bloomsbury India (THANK YOU!)
Buy Links: Amazon IN || Flipkart || Infibeam || 

Blurb Description: On the morning India woke up to the news of the gruesome assault on Nirbhaya, Sonya lay awake coming to terms with a nightmare of her own: If you place your safety in the hands of another, who is to blame for its consequences? Incited by the media post mortem of Nirbhaya that followed, Sonya gives up the security of corporate life and starts a feminist webzine instead. 
When a Bollywood matinee idol –‘Bhai’ to his devotees, and simply ‘The Torso’ to the media – expresses interest in promoting the launch of Sonya’s publication in exchange for a little whitewashing of his latest misogynist transgression, she is faced with the age-old question of just how far can one go till the end stops justifying the means? Thomas, her lover of a mere couple of months, suddenly burdened with contributing to food and lodging and Sonya, unable to apply her political stand to their abusive relationship, negotiate the fluidity and chaos of contemporary urban relationships in ways both familiar and unique. 

It’s really hard to find the right words to describe something out of the box.

It’s also really hard to describe something in a couple hundred words, when you needed to pause on every section of that something to soak it all in.

And by really hard, I mean I’m not sure I can quite capture the essence of Mornings After and deliver it to you, but I’m going to try.

I could give you just three words to describe this novel: intricate, intimate and highly introspective. 

Mornings After is a beautiful piece of literature that takes you deep into the minds of a couple in love, and helps you unravel the threads of thought and the mess of emotions in a highly modernized, free spirited world.

Truth be told, I was already sold when I heard this book was about sexual fluidity, rape and navigating modern relationships, I just didn’t expect Mornings After to also be a journey of two souls, learning to grow up and grow together, to fall in and out of love and most of all, to discover themselves.

Mornings After is a documentation of two souls in Bombay, India, that happened to run into each other. Sonya is a Business School graduate working a standard nine to five job, while Thomas is looking for inspiration. They’re different, and yet, it’s the Potential that attracts them to one another.

As they get to know each other, their relationship becomes something more meaningful and something more toxic, as only the people closest to us have the power to tear us down. They try and see if one will fit in the other’s pre-existing world and also if they can create a new one of their own together.

Then, the rape case that shook India, the Nirbhaya rape case, where a young medical student was brutally gang raped in a moving bus in New Delhi, and her friend severely beaten up as well, just as Sonya has a similar incident of her own sets in motion the need to quit her day job, and just Make a Difference.

Told with a beautiful writing style that I’ve never had the pleasure of experiencing before, Mornings After is all about modern relationships, and modern people – how they think, how they live, how they survive – and is also all about getting to know another person intimately. It’s about having the courage to do your own thing, to show the world who you really are, are learning every time you fall.

A Deep, Different Novel that you should be reading.

4 stars.

What was the last contemporary book you read? 

Do you have any recommendations for me that explore the themes that Mornings After does? I would LOVE to check them out. 

If you're looking for something YA, not Adult, I would recommend Louise O'Neill's Asking For It!