Hot Water
Ashu has his secrets, but now that I’m nine, I have a big secret too. And I won’t tell anyone at all. I’ll keep the secret in my stomach, deep, deep down in the same place where I keep cake and bad feelings.
It has always been Mira, Ma and Ashu. The three of them—as they sing Simon & Garfunkel in Ma’s sun-yellow car, watch TV on the sofa and holiday on the mango farm—are bound firmly together. Yet, beneath this tale of proximity, lurks another story—that of a family in hot water.
Nine-year-old Mira, fourteen-year-old Ashu and Ma harbour secrets. All of them confront questions that have no neat answers. Where is Ma’s husband, for instance? Who does Ashu pine for? Why is Mira on the alert?
One long, hot summer, the secrets come tumbling out. And the world Ma, Mira and Ashu have cobbled together threatens to give way.
An achingly beautiful novel, Hot Water traces the ways in which the love we feel for one another can both make and wreck us.
Request more informationOriginal Language
ENGLISH (Indian Subcontinent) | Fourth Estate/HarperCollins India
Translation Rights
FRENCH | Éditions de La Martinière
Prizes
Winner of the 2021 Pontas & JJ Bola Emerging Writers Prize
Reviews
"Bhavika Govil uses imagination, insight and humour to craft a tender but unsettling family tale. A charming and confident debut that I enjoyed tremendously." Amrita Mahale, author of Milk Teeth
"Moving and gentle in the way it’s told, the voices in Hot Water orbit one another precariously, revealing a tender mess, and creating an intimate portrait of family life that’s both heartbreaking and heartening." Aravind Jayan, the author of Teen Couple Have Fun Outdoors
"Hot Water is a complex family story, masterfully told. Striking the chords of the heart, Govil is a writer far beyond her years daring to broach the most sensitive and taboo subjects, with delicacy and depth, bringing light to the darkest corners of our humanness." JJ Bola, author of The Selfless Act of Breathing
“Hot Water is an intimate novel about what it means to love your family, even if it’s one you don’t quite understand.” Helter Skelter Magazine
“This coming-of-age story revolves around a close-knit but unconventional family of three, who find themselves in troubled waters, one summer when the children begin swimming lessons. ... The novel invites readers into the intimate and sometimes claustrophobic perspectives of children, revealing not only a mother’s strengths and flaws but also how their own experiences, as siblings intertwine, with her journey.” Platform Magazine