A Compendium of Supernatural Entities Found in the Government Girls Higher Secondary School
By Kuzhali Manickavel
- A Compendium of Supernatural Entities Found in the Government Girls Higher Secondary School
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Author: Kuzhali Manickavel
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Publisher: Angry Robot
- ISBN: 9781915998866
- Published: October 2026
- Pages: 172
- Format reviewed: Paperback
- Review date: 05/11/2026
- Language: English
Not all books have to be linear or simple reads. There are enough books already like that so when something experimental like Kuzhali Manickavel’s A Compendium of Supernatural Entities Found in the Government Girls Higher Secondary School lands on your doorstep, as a genre reviewer you are going to have to read it. Step into Thamarai’s world. A new town, a new school. Everyone seems to go about their lives as normal, but Thamarai sees strange creatures all around the place and has found a secret First Floor in the school that no one will acknowledge will exist.
The Compendium of Supernatural Entities Found in the Government Girls Higher Secondary School is a book that keeps reappearing in Thamarai’s school bag. Others just see a school textbook, but to Thamarai it is filled with information about the various supernatural entities that exist in her town. Not just monsters, but mundane items that are more than they appear. Not only does Thamarai have to deal with all these, but also the real world full of combative schoolmates, pervy teachers, and encroaching exams.
Compendium is a hard book to get your head around and it is deliberately so. In places it feels more like a poem, or a fever dream, than a novel. The story as it stands is interspersed with snippets from the compendium, some of which effect the stories, others do not. A lot of the book is colour; it is about exploring the strange for no other reason than just to see.
The supernatural elements feel otherworldly and, in many ways, so does the setting. Set in India, in an all-girl’s school, it is not the place that most genre fiction is written, or somewhere that your average genre reviewer will know much about. It feels that Manickavel knows this world well. The author applies an authenticity to this strange world of constant exam talk and mean streets.
The juxtaposition of the supernatural and the real world is a heady one, one that can leave the reader feeling uneasy and a little confused, but it feels that this is the state that Manickavel wants us. There is a central narrative to follow, it just meanders around strange characters and events. How will Manickavel do at school, does she even care?
Compendium is a genre novel for fans of experimental fiction that goes places most fiction would not. It is not something that you will pick up as a first time Urban Fantasy reader, but if you read a lot of Science Fiction, Horror, and Fantasy, then this is the type of challenging book that is something you want and need to read on occasion just to get a feel for where the boundaries of any genre novel could be.
Written on 5th November 2026 by Sam Tyler .
Topics and themes
Tone & Pace
Themes
Setting
Content/Warnings
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