The Literary Mirror

Contractor's premise is a small provocation: instead of another retelling centred on a major deity, Ledger of Small Gods follows Ratna, the fictional bookkeeper of a minor local shrine, across forty years of donations, disputes, and one long-running argument with a rival temple over a shared well.

The novel is at its best when it treats devotion as logistics — who pays for the oil, who repairs the roof after the cyclone, what happens when a wealthy donor wants a say in ritual he is not owed. It is at its weakest in a late subplot involving a miracle the book cannot decide whether to believe in.

Still, this is a genuinely different angle on ground that has been covered from every other direction, and Contractor's restraint — no god ever fully appears on the page — is the book's most interesting formal choice.

“Contractor's gods barely appear. Her book is better for their absence than most retellings are for their presence.”