Baby Does A Runner by Anita Rani
Baby has had it with just about everything. She's fed up with her job and her colleagues, her love life is permanently casual, she's grieving for her dad and if her mother and the aunties don't stop asking her when she's going to settle down and start having babies, she might just lose it.
When Baby finds some love letters between her grandfather and someone who is very clearly not Baby's Nana, she needs to know more. She's going to go to India, find out why her family left, find out more about the mysterious woman and find out more about herself.
What better time to do a runner….?
About the author
Bradford born and bred, award-winning presenter Anita Rani is one of the most recognisable faces on British TV. She is a lead presenter on Countryfile, hosts Woman's Hour on BBC Radio 4 every week and regularly presents on Radio 2. Anita is well known for her work on Channel 4, Channel 5, the BBC and most recently with Netflix. She is also a Goodwill Ambassador for the UNHCR. Her bestselling memoir The Right Sort of Girl published in 2021. Baby Does a Runner is her first novel.
Find Anita on Twitter and Instagram @itsanitarani
Review
‘Baby Does A Runner’ is a fabulous look at self-identity, family history and how the past shapes us in the present. It was a fun and light read but it does delve into heavy topics that are hardly discussed in the UK. It has the humour and romance but it also has soul, feminism at it's core and a hopeful feel to it. I devoured this book in a day and stayed up until 2 am to finish it!
Baby is scunnered and needs to change her life. She is a young Asian woman living in Manchester with a great job and owns her own flat. But life is boring and she feels flat. She is fed up with her job and being passed over for promotions, her love life is permanently casual and she is grieving for her dad who passed away two years ago. Her mother and her aunties are constantly on her back to settle down, get married and have children. When Baby finds some love letters between her grandfather and a woman she knows nothing about and is clearly not her Dadima. This is the catalyst to travel to India to try and find out about this woman and find out about her history. What better time to do a runner?
Baby is a brilliant character - the new modern young Asian girl who seems to have it all but does she? There is still pressure to perform the ultimate female duty of getting married and procreating, but she has feet in both cultures and is finding it hard to find her own self-identity. Is she British, British Asian or Asian? Where is home? Although this is a fun take of the situation it will have hit home for many Asian readers in a way it won't for others. I adored the relationship Baby had with her Dadima. It was beautiful and heartfelt. It felt very true, as if it was the most important in the book.
I absolutely adored all the history in this book, both Baby’s family history and the section dealing with Partition. Plus, I studied the Amritsar massacre as my dissertation at college and more people need to know about this horrible event. So I always love (weird wording I know) when I see that someone addresses this in their work. It is such a hidden detail of the history of the Raj. I remember standing in that park at age 15 with my mother and raging at the injustice of it all, just like Baby. I also loved the section when they visit the Golden Temple as I had the exact same emotions as Baby. It might not be my religion but I appreciate parts of it and despite being so busy there is this calm to the temple and the pool that surrounds it!
The only criticism I have and it's a tiny niggle at that is the romance side of the book. Baby was on a journey to discover herself and her family's past. Did she really need to rely on a man to achieve this? Don't get me wrong I loved Sid but I would have appreciated the story more if it was just her standing by herself at the end of the story. Content and happy. But it's a tiny niggle as I said and doesn't take away from the brilliance of this book.
Let me know if you pick this one up!
