India, Jan. 10 -- In Burns Boy, the unnamed mother of Guru and Aparna says, "Then I thought maybe he [Guru] didn't like my stories, and that thought terrified me, even more than him not liking me anymore." Krupa Ge entangles a mother's steadfast endurance against her child's hatred for her with her writer self's vulnerabilities and fear of rejection. She puts a woman's creations at odds with each other in a family drama that unfolds through three narrators. Fifteen-year-old Guru finds himself in the unusual position of being in a burns ward filled with women victims of dowry demands, suicide attempts. He was raised by his grandmother, who poured love and attention onto him, moulding him to be the man of the house. Yet, when he finds himself in the burns ward, he is the one who needs looking after. Meanwhile, his younger sister Aparna has grown up neglected, often longing for her mother and for love. While most of the others in the ward are victims of violence against women, Guru's accident, in his narration, is part of a pattern of neglect. His mother feels helpless about it; his sister views it as an unintended result of her petty revenge. All this comes together to form a picture of deep family discord, secrets, shame and, vitally, the resentment that fractures their relationship. Ge's description of a Madras of a bygone era with its Sweet Karam Coffee and specific bus routes is visceral, extending to the burns ward: "That overwhelming scent of kerosene from all the other burns patients, the smell of disinfectant, and what would come to be the familiar and soul-crushing stench of dressing for burns survivors, all of it clung to the air, heavy like furniture in that sterile room." Narrated in the first person by Guru, Aparna and their mother, this short novel presents the unfiltered thoughts of somewhat unlikeable characters. There is an ugliness to it all. This is true of Guru's spitefulness as he shames his mother by soiling himself in public. It is true of Aparna's longing for attention and love that manifests as petty actions to incite anger. And it is true of their mother's schemes to get the man she loves to commit to her. Here, the children carry the shame of their mother, who for her part manages her shame by writing stories, creating platforms for alternate realities that could have occurred had she chosen differently. Writing is her passion as well as her purging. Her children resent her for it. Guru complains that his mother is more available to everyone, especially to her writing, than she is to them. Aparna despises her mother because everything she shares with her finds its way into her stories. Their father is largely absent from the scene, which further strains the family dynamic. Amma's section speaks of the relationship between a mother and child; she looks back at her relationship with her own mother as she describes her struggles after childbirth: "Most mothers I've met, aunties, friends, colleagues, grandmas and cousins, admit to being traumatised by childbirth, or its aftermath; if it's not physical, it's mental, if it's not mental, it's social, if it's not social, it's the child's well-being; a pound of flesh motherhood wants, a pound of flesh it extracts. But we dare not talk about it. And our children, they can neither remember their own suffering from those months, nor ours. This is the former's curse, and the latter's blessing." In addition to the burn marks on Guru, the mother-daughter duo burn in the accident too, metaphorically, as is beautifully depicted in Chinmayee Samant's cover illustration. But it is the mother's writing that bears the most scrutiny. Is it fair for her to comment on her children's experiences through her stories or retreat to the mountains to find her voice, leaving them behind? These questions become more pressing when one considers that the children bear no anger towards their father over his absence. They might miss him, but their hatred is reserved for their mother. Ge balances the perspective of a mother's one-sided love for her children beautifully with their ignorance and innocence, which sometimes leads to dire events. This fast-paced narrative with three distinct voices that covers the life of a family leaves the reader hoping the characters grasp individual freedom if not filial reconciliation. It doesn't ask who is to blame for Guru's accident. It merely shows that multiple realities coexist, and that often, no one is to be blamed....