Baby Does A Runner
Anita Rani
06 July 2023
9781838779412336 pages
Synopsis
Sometimes you need to run, to find out where you really belong...
'A must read and one of my favourite books of the year.' - 5 stars, Amazon reviewer
'The author had me in stitches one minute and in tears the next.' - 5 stars, NetGalley
'I was glued to the pages from the very start' - 5 stars, NetGalley
'Rani paints such a beautiful picture of how difficult some Indian women have to find their place in the world without getting married ... a talented author who sucks you into her world' - 5 stars, NetGalley
Baby Saul has had it with just about everything. She's fed up with her job and her colleagues, her love life is permanently casual, and underpinning everything is the grief of losing her much-loved dad. Oh, and if the aunties don't stop asking her when she's going to settle down and start having babies, she might just lose it.
When she finds some love letters between her grandfather and someone who is very clearly not her grandmother, Baby realises that she needs to know more. She heads to India to do some detective work on this mysterious other woman... and to find out a bit more about herself along the way. What she doesn't bargain for is Sid, her guide (and unwilling driver) being annoyingly handsome, with a knack for asking Baby the sort of questions that force her to look at what she really wants out of life.
'A must read and one of my favourite books of the year.' - 5 stars, Amazon reviewer
'The author had me in stitches one minute and in tears the next.' - 5 stars, NetGalley
'I was glued to the pages from the very start' - 5 stars, NetGalley
'Rani paints such a beautiful picture of how difficult some Indian women have to find their place in the world without getting married ... a talented author who sucks you into her world' - 5 stars, NetGalley
Baby Saul has had it with just about everything. She's fed up with her job and her colleagues, her love life is permanently casual, and underpinning everything is the grief of losing her much-loved dad. Oh, and if the aunties don't stop asking her when she's going to settle down and start having babies, she might just lose it.
When she finds some love letters between her grandfather and someone who is very clearly not her grandmother, Baby realises that she needs to know more. She heads to India to do some detective work on this mysterious other woman... and to find out a bit more about herself along the way. What she doesn't bargain for is Sid, her guide (and unwilling driver) being annoyingly handsome, with a knack for asking Baby the sort of questions that force her to look at what she really wants out of life.
Beautiful, haunting, funny, incredibly relatable and topical. Everything I wanted it to be, and more.
Sophisticated and pacy, Anita Rani's debut novel follows Baby Saul on a journey from Yorkshire to India to solve the mystery of the love letters she finds amongst her late grandfather's belongings.
Anita has you rooting for Baby throughout every step of her journey as she travels 4,000 miles not just to find the truth behind the secret love letters, but to find out the answers to her own questions about her family, culture and identity. From Manchester to Yorkshire, Delhi, Amritsar and eventually Lahore, Baby's journey is one that not only uncovers her family history, but it also uncovers the stories of the forgotten women of Partition.
Oozing authenticity to the point where it feels like a memoir, Baby does a Runner is about family, love and loss.... history, colonialism, religion... and it's also about the secrets and trauma that the generations before us harboured with intense stoicism. Tears filled my eyes at least three times whilst reading this, but it wasn't all doom and gloom - how can it be with 'illuminaunties' around - the aunties who watch your every move and pressure you to get married!Tasneem Abdur-Rashid, author of Finding Mr Perfectly Fine
