Synopsis

Americanized millennial Arjun Chatterjee is a food-truck chef working in a parking lot outside the nation’s capital. He dreams up multiethnic recipes and pursues a young woman toiling in a Kafkaesque office nearby. Building a clientele, he faces life with a sly optimism.

One day he idly asks the sky: “Why am I here?”

Deep Fried is a tragicomic love story wrapped in creative freedom. Its chefs, musicians, and entrepreneurs face a world of oversized dreams and shaky prospects.

They try, fail, and fail better. Will it be enough?

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Review

I found this book engaging and a study of human behavior. The story focuses on Arjun, an Indian immigrant who has followed his passion and started a food truck business. The owners of the other food trucks in their little park create a backdrop of complexity for the reader, and other characters provide even more intrigue.

This story focuses on everyday people with everyday problems. It showcases their strengths and weaknesses, as well as their ups and downs. It all comes down to the choices they make, how their life progresses, and how they react to what life throws at them. They don’t all make good decisions, but they aren’t all bad, either.

I don’t usually enjoy literary fiction, but this novel showcases people we might know or run into in our everyday lives. Watching their struggles with issues that plague many and how the situations were resolved reflects how many might react themselves in our society. This novel encouraged me to think beyond what I know and explore other worlds and possibilities.

We give this book 4 paws up.

About the Author

Mark Doyon received a B.A. in English from the College of William & Mary and a master’s in arts management from the Shenandoah Conservatory. He wrote the short-story collection Bonneville Stories and edited the literary magazine Friction. His work has been featured in PopMatters, The Washington Post, The Daily Vault, Hybrid, Skope, The Absinthe Literary Review, 3AM Magazine, Hypebot, and Riffraf.

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