India, July 23 -- Uttama Kirit Patel's Shape of an Apostrophe is a novel which enjoys making the reader aware of the trauma-related baggage that human beings carry with them, their correspondent responses and coping mechanisms, and how it all shows up in the most unexpected ways in the choices we make. The narrative opens with the newly wed protagonist Lina, who lives in the UAE, and is full of doubts about fulfilling what society considers her inescapable biological destiny as a woman - to become a mother. Having recently lost her doting father who raised her as a single parent, she is struggling to express and come to terms with her grief even as she encounters the innumerable ways in which a woman's body is made the subject of constant...