Em and the Big Hoom

The anger is a primal force, the sadness wild and raw. Against this, the jokes are hilarious, reckless, free falling ... This is a rare, brilliant book, one that is wonderfully different from any other that I have read coming out of India

Kiran Desai

Extremely funny, and its pages are filled with endearing and eccentric characters. Em and The Big Hoom is a profoundly moving book

Amitav Ghosh

A delightful debut . . . Written with genuine compassion and sincerity, while a sprinkling of black humour ensures it is never overly sentimental

Financial Times

A near-perfect account of a psychologically troubled mother and the shockwaves felt by her family. Rich and beguiling . . . Within sentences of this touching, funny and calmly shocking narrative, their son makes it clear that he knows about the things that really matter

Irish Times

Jerry Pinto's prose is lively and incisive . . . moments of great humour here as well as moments of tenderness and poignancy

Herald

Pinto's written a novel that perhaps uniquely breaks free from India's historic, cacophonous clamour

Metro

The book is moving because it is howlingly funny - Em has a kind of enchanted loghorrea - and wholly unsentimental in its handling of the "phenomenal expense of empathy". It's a memorable chamber work, with wide appeal

Independent