Tales of erotically ethereal women

In Kiran Manral’s The Moon in the Lining of her Skin, dark fantasy meets creatures of light

- JAIRAM N. MENON

THE MOON IN THE LINING OF HER SKIN
By Kiran Manral
Published by Hachette India

The Moon in the Lining of her Skin’. That’s as good a line as you will get in love poems enlivened by Byronic imagination (it is actually taken from Pablo Neruda). But in any case, the title is a red herring, for this is not the place to look for standard-issue love stories. Here romance, such as it exists, is so star-crossed, so strewn with hurdles, that you will begin to think Romeo and Juliet had a ball. Why would anybody read it then? The honest answer is that when you have had enough of the ‘and they lived happily ever after’ stuff, your taste takes a different turn. You thirst for something different and away from the run of the mills and Boon. Your thirst can lead you to the genre known as ‘dark fantasy’.

Kiran Manral has taken to dark fantasy like a fish to water. There are three female protagonists in the book—all of them equally deep, driven, and at least one of them is carrying on a no-holds-barred dalliance with the devil. They have names like Noor, Rani and Gulab. No surnames, please, they are not of our kind. Forget surnames, I dare say, they don’t even carry Aadhaar Cards. If you can’t tell them apart, worry not. Bewilderment comes with the territory. The characters themselves can barely tell one from the other.