What Kitty Did (Trisha Bora) - Review

I’m not a huge fan of the chick-lit genre, so I approached this book with trepidation. But it turned out to be a surprisingly entertaining read. What Kitty Did is a smart, well-written, modern, breezy novel about a young journalist in Delhi who works for a lifestyle magazine and mourns her “poverty” (remember that article on ‘urban poverty’ that created a lot of debate on social media a while ago? Kitty Roy could be its brand ambassador) while attending swish parties and swigging wine. Don’t get me wrong — none of this rings false, because several female journalist friends seem to have similar lifestyles. Trisha Bora, the author, has captured this milieu quite effectively, and her descriptions of people from Delhi’s "high society” are both funny, sharp and accurate. This is quite a novel of manners.    

The protagonist, Kitty Roy, is a 20-something millennial and a fan of murder mysteries who stumbles into a murder mystery herself while researching an article about the death of a Delhi socialite and actress. The plot of the murder isn’t particularly robust, but Bora’s articulate prose and observational skills are absolutely on point, and before long you find yourself turning pages to find out whodunit. If anything, sometimes the protagonist’s thoughts and digressions into her own life (the book is written in first person) can be a little distracting, especially when you want to get on with the murder plot and want to know more about the murdered woman rather than the narrator, charming as she is. 

In an age when popular fiction has come to mean badly written novels about mawkish lost loves and half relationships and self-help books-disguised-as-novels, it is refreshing to come across a novel about young Indians that is self-aware and entertaining, despite the occasional self-indulgence. Reading What Kitty Did will be a Sunday well-spent.