Santosh travels alone from Mumbai, where he lives with his mother, to Kolkata, on holiday. But he has secret plans to look for his father whom he barely remembers. The train ride brings him into contact with people quite outside his sheltered world — an eventful prelude to another, deeper, journey. With a refreshingly light and honest touch, Just a Train Ride Away explores the emotional dilemma of young boy who craves the space for both parents in his life and faces the bitter-sweet reality of estrangement and belonging. A short, quick-read, coming of age novel.

It’s the story of the dilemmas faced by single parents (how to deal with the missing half) and kids with single parents. Mini Shrinivasan deals with it in a straightforward, no-nonsense yet sensitive way. Neat and sparse, the book (which won the Sahitya Akademi Bal Sahitya Puraskar 2010) is a simple read about how, often, life is not what we’d imagined it to be, and we must make the best of whatever it has on offer and move on. It can… be consumed in a single gulp like a ‘roshogulla’. – GoodBooks