Publishers Weekly
12/24/2018
Laskar’s stunning debut skillfully tackles hefty topics such as bullying, racism, and terrorism in a mosaic, life-flashing-before-one’s-eyes narrative. Set in 2017 near Atlanta, the novel centers on Mother, an Indian-American woman in her 40s with three daughters and a husband who travels internationally more than he’s at home. One morning, after taking her children to school, Mother is gunned down in her driveway in an unexplained robbery; the narrative is told in discursive segments that jump around in time to present flashes of Mother’s life, all while she lies dying. These short pieces cover her job as a former crime reporter demoted to obituaries; her North Carolina childhood and girlish fascination with Barbie dolls and their tainted concept of beauty; being asked, beginning as a child, where she was from, though she was born in the U.S.; her family’s move to the Atlanta suburbs in an unwelcoming neighborhood where other kids torment her middle daughter and cops often question Mother about her husband’s job. Laskar touchingly shows how Mother just wants to have a normal life with her family and rise above prejudice. Elevated by its roaming structure, this is a striking depiction of a single life. (Feb.)
From the Publisher
Winner of the Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature
Winner of the 2020 Crook's Corner Book Prize
Long-listed for the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature
The Washington Post, 1 of 50 Notable Works of Fiction This Year
“The Atlas of Reds and Blues is a quick read, in part, because of these short sections, some only two sentences long. But it’s a page-turner, too, because of the urgency of each small story, each revelatory memory . . . If The Atlas of Reds and Blues and the lyric, thematic and structural care the author has lent it are an experiment, then it is certainly a successful one.” —Ilana Masad, The Washington Post
“[A] devastating, poetic debut about racism in Trump’s America . . . A powerfully written novel . . . Laskar never seems to polemicise; instead she gravely turns traumatic memories into fragments of poetry, floating in the ether, fighting for survival.” —Nikesh Shukla, The Guardian
“A novel of identity . . . One of the beauties of this accomplished first novel is its simple and delicate structure.” —Meg Waite Clayton, San Francisco Chronicle
“The entire novel takes place over the course of a single morning . . . and the effect is devastatingly potent.” —Marie Claire, The Best Women's Fiction of the Year
“Laskar’s use of vignettes to comment on weighty topics like racism and sexism recalls Sandra Cisneros's The House on Mango Street . . . Like Cisneros, Laskar varies the tone of her vignettes; some are sad or angry while others are humorous, and their power is collective.” —Anita Felicelli, Bustle
“Laskar has written a searing and powerful novel about the second-generation immigrant experience, making clear the ways in which America terrorizes its own people. It’s a violent look at a violent place, and you’ll feel forever changed for having read it.” —Kristin Iversen, NYLON, 1 of 50 Books You'll Want to Read This Year
“Laskar shows how women, and particularly women of color, not only have to manage motherhood, marriage, and ambition, but also must fight for respect on top of it all.” —Meredith Boe, Chicago Review of Books
“It takes place in a morning; it covers a lifetime. Short, vivid chapters, like puzzle pieces, deliver the thoughts of a woman sprawled on the pavement, bleeding . . . Not only does Laskar bring her honed skills as a poet and journalist to her pulse-racing first novel about otherness and prejudice, she also draws on her own experience of a shocking raid on her home. Laskar’s bravura drama of one woman pushed to the brink by racism is at once sharply relevant and tragically timeless.” —Booklist (starred review)
“Devi S. Laskar's The Atlas of Reds and Blues is as narratively beautiful as it is brutal . . . I've never read a novel that does nearly as much in so few pages.” —Kiese Laymon, author of Heavy
MARCH 2019 - AudioFile
Narrator Jeed Saddy tells the story of a woman known only as Mother. This novel, which focuses on the second-generation immigrant experience, takes place in a wealthy suburb of Atlanta over only one day. Saddy employs accents to differentiate characters. The accent of the protagonist’s Bengali mother is especially effective, as is the childish lilt Saddy gives Middle Daughter and the Southern drawl she uses for the people in the community. As Mother lies bleeding in her driveway after being shot by police, Saddy is especially effective as Mother replays the questions people have always asked to cast doubt on her status as an American. She delivers them in a rapid-fire style that echoes the gun shots we hear too often in today’s divided nation. N.E.M. © AudioFile 2019, Portland, Maine
