brigdh

All the Fishes Come Home to Roost, by Rachel Manija Brown, is a memoir about growing up on a bizarre ashram in India.

It's not a book to read in public, unless you like bursting into laughter and then trying to muffle it and ending up with that weird coughing sound and contorted face. Or maybe that only happens to me. Yes, the book is funny. It's often hilarious. It's also interesting and entertaining and thought-provoking: one scene made me wonder around campus for the next few hours considering life, the universe and all those fun questions. I read the entire thing in about a day and a half, because it's just so captivating; it's a book you don't want to put down. It has crazy librarians and poisonous snakes and evil nuns and pretty much every other imaginable ingredient required for good reading.

It can also be extremely sad. It was strange for me to read a book by someone I know; stranger still because it was a memoir instead of fiction. Each time something yet more horrible happened, I wanted to run to the computer and write an email consisting mainly of cooing, but I figured that'd just embarrass myself rather than do any good.

It's a good book. It's an excellent book, actually. The author is, of course,