Women Who Misbehave

Women Who Misbehave, much like the women within its pages, contains multitudes and contradictions-it is imaginative and real, unsettling and heartening, funny and poignant, dark and brimming with light.

At a party to celebrate her friend's wedding anniversary, a young woman spills a dangerous secret. A group of girls mourns the loss of their strange, mysterious neighbour. A dutiful daughter seeks to impress her father even as she escapes his reach. A wife weighs the odds of staying in her marriage when both her reality and the alternative are equally frightening. An aunt comes to terms with an impulsive mistake committed decades ago.

In this wildly original and hauntingly subversive collection of short stories, Sayantani Dasgupta brings to life unforgettable women and their quest for agency. They are violent and nurturing, sacred and profane. They are friends, lovers, wives, sisters and mothers. Unapologetic and real, they embrace the entire range of the human experience, from
the sweetest of loves and sacrifices to the most horrific of crimes.

'Sayantani Dasgupta's short stories are witty, well-crafted, and
wondrous. Compulsively readable, Dasgupta's stories announce an
exciting new talent in Indian fiction.'

Sayantani Dasgupta's story collection, Women Who Misbehave,
should win prizes. A very fine authority lives in the sentences; the
language and structure are fresh. A reader sees, feels, smells and tastes
the stories as if he/she is inside the scenes. Some of the characters
and plots must have surprised the writer herself-they have that
feel, that quality. On a larger scale, Dasgupta's stories can divine the
uniqueness of a particular community, and as a body of work, they
show us that (as a writer once said), "There is no country but the
heart." Do not pass up this book

'Sayantani Dasgupta's stories are bright, beautiful shards of glass. Each
an experiment in form and narration, they work to carefully uncover
our frailties, our contradictions, unveiling the small yet extraordinary
lives of these women. Sayantani's voice is bold, courageous, at times
wickedly funny, moving easily between the multitude of spaces her
characters occupy, the domestic and familial, the neighbourly, the
workplace, the romantic. These aren't all "nice" women-but they're
real, and honest, and vulnerable, and you come away feeling for them
as you would if you were to know them in real life'

Sayantani Dasgupta is a mesmerizing storyteller, and Women Who
Misbehave captivated me from the beginning. Whether writing about
a contemporary woman contemplating the dark edges of her fate
near the Texas-Mexico border or a pregnant young wife thinking of
Women leaving her husband in the Calcutta of 1948, Dasgupta approaches
her characters with compassion and fearless conviction. Wise and
witty, infused with risk, mystery, loss and desire, as well as a whisper
of horror and a dash of romance, these stories reveal a writer whose
biting insight into human nature grows sharper with every page.
Sayantani Dasgupta is a writer to watch

'Sayantani Dasgupta, in Women Who Misbehave, mercilessly annihilates
the idea of the imaginary, illusive and perfect woman, and resurrects
a species of unconventional women whom I [would] love to call real
because they were born to upset and destroy the status quo. These
women, some of them [appearing to be] deceptive porcelain dolls,
"rely on the everyday minutiae of their own lives" to spin their
worlds, [while] some others seem like bitter roshogollas who mar the
taste of all that you have ever eaten, even as the rest appear to be like
houses you have seen all your life, but who relentlessly guard their
inner mystery. They leave you inspired and challenged, devastated
and thrilled, all at the same time. Sayantani proves that shattering
stereotypes is a dynamic and courageous political process'

'Dasgupta's stories are emotional maps that allow the reader to find
themselves curiously delighted in both familiar and unfamiliar territory.
Women Who Misbehave celebrates the awkward and pretentious roads
we take when we're unsure of the boxes we've been [made to] fit into.
These women are unabashedly loud, confident, insecure, ambitious,
careless and gloriously imperfect. This book is an invitation to jump
time and geography while Dasgupta's adventurously contemporary
prose ensures that we're compelled to find a part of ourselves in each
one of these stories'