Post-colonialism, post-modernism and many other isms too numerous to relate flit through this flibbertigibbet of a book on Ariel’s wings—not, mind you, Shakespeare’s Ariel, but Sylvia Plath’s. The only thing lacking perhaps are those legendary angels dancing on the tip of a needle, though all kinds of angels and winged things reverberate. Rukmini Bhaya Nair’s first novel is a pot pourri of a literary event—she calls it a triptych—that manages a unique balancing act between Sylvia Plath, William Blake and D.H. Lawrence, fondly called David.