When I posed Nalini Jones (right) with her sister Radhika (the managing editor of The Paris Review) during the reception before she read from her debut short story collection, What You Call Winter, at the Rubin Museum of Art last Friday night, I automatically assumed that because Nalini is a few inches shorter, she must be the younger sister. Not so, they cheerfully informed me, but I wasn’t the only person to make the mistake. When they traveled to India as children to visit their mother’s family, she told me, other children were always confused as to which sister they should call chota, a Hindi word which means both “young” and “small.” She leaves later this week for a mini-tour of New England, before making another appearance at McNally Robinson in early October.
Later that same evening, I ventured up town, where Matt Marinovich(inset) and friends were celebrating the publication of his first novel, Strange Skies in the basement bar at Amalia. I arrived just in time to eavesdrop as one of Marinovich’s best friends from high school asked if he’d consider stopping in with her sister’s book group, and then we talked about his reading tonight at Rocky Sullivan’s with fellow HarperPerennial authors Shelley Jackson, Rebecca Curtis, and Bryan Charles. And, shows how much I know, Rocky’s actually shuttered its Lexington Avenue locale about a month ago and relocated to Red Hook.