A review by kitabae_
The High Priestess Never Marries by Sharanya Manivannan

3.0

It's a collection of 26 short stories. The main theme is melancholic longing. Most of the stories revolve around women lamenting for the love they've lost. The writing is beautiful and there are so many quotable lines but even then, there was still a confusion in my mind about what the story was. A couple of stories were too short to even try to understand what happened. I didn't like the beginning stories at all and I was going to be give up on it and it was only when I read randomly and read the later stories that I actually liked them. The stories didn't focus on anything except longing and sadness and love. I only had a problem with it because I couldn't understand what was going on. And after a while, I just couldn't continue because it got repetitive and I didn't want to read it. The writing is amazing and poetic and you understand what the author is trying to convey but the story-telling aspect didn't work. I haven't read her poetry work but I'm guessing it might be better than this. There are also a lot of South Indian references which I didn't understand but they didn't bother me. My favorites were The High Priestess Never Marries, Sky Clad, Afternoon Sex and Sweet. I would recommend this to people who love reading poetic prose.