Book Review: The Best Possible Experience (stories)

The Best Possible Experience: Stories, by Nishanth Injam (Pantheon Books, 2023, $25, 224 pages) Review by Skye Anderson.

Eleven stories speak to the universality of human nature, set in India and the United States. . . but with a few word changes, could also portray Italians or Irish or Jewish or. . . .

An excellent book club selection, even for only a few of the short stories, Best Possible Experience will captivate the readers and start many a discussion. Some readers will fill in the blanks and 'finish' the stories that seem to end rather abruptly - without an ending (cliff hangers). Other readers will reminisce about their exchange student experiences. Some will reflect back on graduate school and discussions will ensue about families and laws and immigrants.

Best is well-written though it is obvious the author is not a native-born and raised American. And readers will have fun guessing at some vocabulary: is that the word for a fruit or mother or cart? 

Families

Leo Tolsty's Anna Karenina said, "Happy families are all alike: every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." A comparison of some of the families in Best reveals nuclear families (mother, father, siblings) whose composition differs around the world. We have a grandfather in India raising his granddaughter who returns every summer from her tech job in the US to find more changes in her small village, we have a family newly settled in the US whose son invites a school buddy home for lunch but the family doesn't know what to cook for this very American kid and they want to make a good impression so the mother cooks a practice meal. 

And through it all is a certain foreshadowing of sadness and the belief abroad that America is the land of milk and honey for everyone, which doesn't materialize but the transplant doesn't want to disappoint his family back home with reality. And the marriage to a US citizen in exchange for money, in order to qualify for a green card but first the couple has to answer questions about each other, proving they really know the other. (This situation is also the basis for the movie, The Proposal, among others.)

And the Title is. . . . 

For those readers who focus on the title of books (and read parts like the Acknowledgements) and attempt to find out why a book received that specific title, Best will prove to be easy - it is the book title and also the title of the final story!