Hot Water

Winner of the inaugural Pontas & J J Bola Emerging Writers Prize.

In Hot Water, a mother and her children navigate a simmering summer of secrets that threatens to upend the fragile world they've built together. With lyrical precision and emotional depth, Bhavika Govil explores how the bonds that sustain us can just as easily undo us.

It has always been Mira, Ma and Ashu. The three of them-as they sing Simon & Garfunkel in Ma's sun-yellow car, watch TV on the sofa and holiday on the mango farm-are bound firmly together. Yet, beneath this tale of proximity, lurks another story-that of a family in hot water.
Nine-year-old Mira, fourteen-year-old Ashu and Ma harbour secrets. All of them confront questions that have no neat answers. Where is Ma's husband, for instance? Who does Ashu pine for? Why is Mira on the alert?
One long, hot summer, the secrets come tumbling out. And the world Ma, Mira and Ashu have cobbled together threatens to give way.
An achingly beautiful novel, Hot Water traces the ways in which the love we feel for one another can both make and wreck us.

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