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Jan 22, 2024 | 
thecommononline.org | Celina Baljeet Basra
Everything about Happy Singh Soni, the titular hero of Celina Baljeet Basra’s stinging first novel, is unlikely. He is the son of Punjabi cabbage farmers, but he fancies himself a screenwriter and prospective movie actor in the mold of Nouvelle Vague darling Sami Frey.
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Nov 16, 2023 | 
largeheartedboy.com | Celina Baljeet Basra
In the Book Notes series, authors create and discuss a music playlist that relates in some way to their recently published book. Previous contributors include Jesmyn Ward, Lauren Groff, Bret Easton Ellis, Celeste Ng, T.C. Boyle, Dana Spiotta, Amy Bloom, Aimee Bender, Roxane Gay, and many others. Celina Baljeet Basra’s Book Notes debutHappy is one of my favorite novels of the year, a book that redefines the coming-of-age story with empathy and grace.
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Nov 14, 2023 | 
thefreelibrary.com | Celina Baljeet Basra
* HappyBy Celina Baljeet BasraLiterary FictionHappy Singh Soni is not, well, happy: He is longing for more. And, given his condition at the outset of Celina Baljeet Basra's debut novel, why wouldn't he be? His home, a Punjabi farming village that is being steadily encroached upon by an expanding theme park, is no place for a young man with ambition--of which, make no mistake, Happy has a bountiful platter.
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Nov 14, 2023 | 
bookbrowse.com | Celina Baljeet Basra
PrologueI am Happy. Happy Singh Soni. A Punjabi currently based in Italy, I am working full-time on Europe's largest radish farm. I am well experienced in all tasks related to radish farming: i.e., sowing radish seeds, transplanting radish sprouts, tending to the growing plants, injecting weed killers most expertly, spraying to death the ugly ones and caring for the beauties. By eradicating all uncer- tainty, the harvest is bountiful, always. First and foremost, my labor is a labor of love.
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Nov 13, 2023 | 
nytimes.com | Kathryn Ma |Celina Baljeet Basra |Astra House
HAPPY, by Celina Baljeet BasraA friend recently told me he’d read an article in this paper describing the money to be made supplying migrants in their journey from South America to the United States. “Made me realize I don’t have any real understanding of the immigration situation,” my friend said. Ain’t it the truth?
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Oct 1, 2023 | 
booklistonline.com | Celina Baljeet Basra
Nov. 2023. 272p. Astra, $26 (9781662602306).
REVIEW.
First published October 1, 2023 ().
In spite of his name, Happy Singh Soni, tossed around by life’s turbulence, is anything but happy. The son of destitute Indian Punjabi farmers—the family’s fortunes suffer after a moth infestation of their cabbage crops—Happy initially takes on odd jobs at a theme park in Jalandhar, the nearest large town. But Europe beckons through a suspicious agency that promises Happy work if he can manage to get there.
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Sep 25, 2023 | 
publishersweekly.com | Alice Pung |Rosemary Hennigan |Celina Baljeet Basra
In the nuanced latest from Australian writer Pung (Laurinda), a teen mother-to-be reflects on her ill-fated pursuit of freedom in 1980s Melbourne. Karuna Kelly, 16, lives with her unnamed mother and carries on a clandestine relationship with Ray, a slightly older boy who’s also her homework tutor, until she gets pregnant by him.
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Sep 22, 2023 | 
publishersweekly.com | Rosemary Hennigan |Celina Baljeet Basra
Elizabeth Mavor. McNally Editions, $18 trade paper (224p) ISBN 978-1-946022-68-4This vibrant and resonant story of love and sickness from Mavor (1927–2013) was shortlisted for the Booker when it was first published in 1973. Hero Kinoull, a bookseller and admirer of cultural artifacts (“I have the Great Sickness... that love affair, sexual almost, with the lost past”) is content to be the mistress of Hugh Shafto, an upper-crust art historian of the rococo.
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Sep 21, 2023 | 
publishersweekly.com | Rosemary Hennigan |Celina Baljeet Basra
Millie Bobby Brown, with Kathleen McGun. Morrow, $28.99 (320p) ISBN 978-0-06-333577-6Stranger Things star Brown sets her emotionally layered debut in 1942 East London, where 18-year-old protagonist Nellie works as an assistant to the mayor of Bethnal Green and struggles to keep her tight-knit family and friends safe during nighttime bombing raids by the Nazis.
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Jul 6, 2023 | 
publishersweekly.com | Rosemary Hennigan |Celina Baljeet Basra
Ben Fountain. Flatiron, $30.99 (544p) ISBN 978-1-250-77651-8Fountain’s first novel since his bestselling Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk is a sprawling, fierce exploration of violence and corruption in the Caribbean. In 1991, when Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide is deposed by a military junta, American expat Matt Amaker and his Haitian partner, Alix Variel, see their scuba diving tourist business dry up and turn to recovering brass cannons from a shipwrecked conquistador galleon.
