Ghosh captures the first glimmer of love with finesse. His writing avoids excess and highlights small moments and unspoken feelings. The novel’s strength lies in the way it moves from the personal to the philosophical. The author’s world feels familiar but slightly altered, a place where truth and imagination blur and where relationships are tested by what we choose to believe. He handles these ideas with subtlety, never allowing them to become abstract or theoretical… Ghosh’s prose is measured; he understands silence and gives it space. There are pauses that speak louder than dialogue.

The book is at its strongest when placing its characters against urban settings, playing off the first against the second to convey how life in a city full of people can ironically remain empty. The scenes set against the milieu of young middle-class Delhi are evocative and shot through with a weary, knowing melancholy.”

Despite a sudden turn into speculative territory, Ghosh’s debut novel Lonely People Meet impresses with its intense examination of loneliness… The novel, which has a dreamlike quality at times, tries to untangle these thorny philosophical ideas from Karno’s point of view. Modern technology, with its Icarus-like tendencies, and the impact that can have on the human psyche. The countless ethical dilemmas. Real human connection and artificiality. The nature of love. How, and why, one might want to shed past lives and memories.

For a while, Lonely People Meet reads like a gentle ode to young love. But Ghosh is too ambitious a storyteller to leave his characters in the cocoon of a Delhi romance… Ghosh’s storytelling draws its power from the murky spaces where certainty dissolves. His sharpest insights emerge as he probes the thin, trembling line between who we are and who we wish we could become… Most importantly, it announces Ghosh as a writer capable of weaving emotional depth into speculative landscapes without losing sight of the human heart at the centre… A compelling and quietly haunting first novel, it stays with you long after the final page, not just for the love story it tells, but for the unsettling questions it refuses to answer.”

What starts out as a love story with witty banter segues into the bizarre (and creepy) world of science fiction… Though the subject matter is dark, Lonely People Meet is a lively read from start to finish. Most of the characters are interesting and slightly eccentric, and you can tell that the author, Sayantan Ghosh, had great fun writing it, what with digs at intellectual pretensions, and other tongue-in-cheek jibes. A great debut novel, one that deserves to feature in the top ten of your must read list.

Lonely People Meet seeks to ask many questions about love, and the choices we make for it. The plot follows Karno, an aspiring young novelist and Devaki, both of whom begin to fall in love on the streets of Delhi, as many of us do. Their days carry stolen moments, a certain quiet intimacy, and transforms into a full-blown romance.