There is a reason why The Tiffin has been listed as one of Quill & Quire's 15 "Books of the Year" for 2011. There is a reason why this book is receiving critical acclaim. And there is a reason why I absolutely loved it. Actually there are many reasons.

Narsimhan's story is crafted around the dabbawallas of modern-day Mumbai, the deliverymen who run hot boxed lunches, or tiffins, to office workers all over the city. This network of runners is so highly organized that only one in six million tiffins never makes its intended destination. However, to the young and pregnant Anahita, who slips a frantic note to her beloved into his daily tiffin, all that matters is that single delivery. And all that matters to young Kunal, 13 years later, is finding out what happened to his mother after it went astray.

Narsimhan writes as one who loves her setting of contemporary Mumbai and no sensory detail is spared. The reader is transported to India, enveloped in the smell of spices cooking in the street and the sensation of cotton clinging to Kunal's back in the muggy heat of the train station. As in the award-winning Tara Trilogy, Narsimhan has set her story in a faraway land but, this time, she has brought to Canadian children's fiction a relatively unexplored but very real setting, fostering an added element of cultural exploration and awareness.

Woven into this story is still the magical, mystical feel that Narsimhan's readers love. While Kunal lives in a very real, very gritty Mumbai, the reader can almost believe he has a fairy-godmother looking out for him. Indeed, maybe he does in the form of Vinayak, the old dabbawalla who takes him under his wing and helps him rediscover family.

In The Tiffin, Mahtab Narsimhan skilfully delivers a beautiful story with that fairy-tale shimmer in a gritty, contemporary setting.

Reason for Reading: I am a fan of the author.

The city of Bombay, India has a 150 year old tradition of delivering hot lunches to business workers in metal tins called tiffins. This is a complicated business and yet it has a reputation of losing only one box per every six million. The opening chapter is a flashback to a story of one such lost box and the rest of the book comes back to the present to show the consequences that lost lunch had for one person. Kunal, who was left with the Seths as a baby, has been raised as their slave working in their restaurant with no wages, beat by the owner and shown no love by either him or his wife. He has one customer, an old man, who is in charge of the tiffin business at the nearby rail station who eventually takes him in and gets him a job at a nice restaurant. Now Kunal makes some friends and can devote his time to finding his real mother and finding out why she never came back for him.

Beautifully written book, with a easy going third person narrative that catches your attention right away. The story takes one down into the underbelly of Indian life where the poor, the orphaned, the down-on-their-luck work and survive and where the mean, nasty and or criminal prey upon them. At times I thought I was reading about Victorian life, but no I had to remind myself this was life today for the poor and just getting by in Bombay today. The story is full of pathos, Kunal has been dealt a hard life and he lives on dreams for a brighter future, for a family. As he goes looking for that family he ends up finding it in the least likely of places.

Not only a wonderful, heart-wrending story but also one with plenty of insight into Indian daily life and culture. I found it very interesting and entertaining. I loved Kunal as a character and rooted for him right from the beginning, hoping for the ending that eventually came to pass. I still find the idea of the tiffins strange. Maybe 150 years ago it was a good idea, but now? It seems a pretty complicated way to get a hot lunch. They must have thermoses and microwaves in business districts in India. Why can't people take their lunch to work with them like the rest of us? If they want it hot, put it in a thermos or microwave it. Tiffins are a very strange concept to this Canadian! A great read and certainly both unique and different from the usual fare available for juvenile readers these days. Well done.