Alphabet Soup for Lovers by Anita Nair was a random book that I picked during this quarantine. I didn’t think much of it in the beginning, but certainly, the story intrigued me. It is about a married woman called Lena, and how she has an affair with a film star who has come to the hills just to get away from all the fame. The love between these two is the story.
The narration is vivid and sometimes there are some beautiful lines that you want to remember forever. The structure is easy to follow as the maid learns her alphabets with the help of the Indian food names, so does the reader learn about the characters.
The book consists of just a few characters so it is easy to remember them all. It happens in a hill station that has very few people. The description of Lena and KK are excellent. KK’s coldness and Lena’s complete perplexed self is described elegantly.
The plot is typical of an extra-marital affair, the only difference is that this affair escalates quickly into a lovemaking without all the drama that usually surrounds such kind of stories.
I kept imagining all kinds of ending, but Anita Nair gives a realistic ending with a lot of scope for imagination. In short, Alphabet Soup for Lovers is a quick read, but it simply shows the reality of the society that we live in. It shows that Love can come at any age, and Love doesn’t bother about the consequences. I would give 3.5/5 for this novel.