Meera Syal has done it again. Fans of the British TV show, Goodness Gracious Me, and the movie, Bhaji on the Beach, will recognize Syal's powerful and on the mark humour in her second novel, Life Isn't All Ha Ha Hee Hee. The novel examines the lives of three best friends, who in their early thirties, are struggling with cultural connections and confusion.

Chila, Sunita and Tania have been friends since childhood. Sunita and Tania forge a friendship in the school playground while protecting Chila from the world and all of its harsh realities. With Chila's marriage to every-mother's-dream-come-true Deepak, their bonds are severely tested. Slowly, their relationships with one another change and in the end, it is the child-like Chila who emerges as a survivor while the others turn inward and question their own life choices.

Sunita, once a passionate and driven student activist, is now a world-weary mother of two with a husband, Akash, who seems to be retreating into his own world of introspection. Akash, the analyst, does not seem to be able to save his own marriage as he does for his patients, and it is only when Sunita makes herself over and her randiness takes on a whole new level, that things start to come together for them. Chila is the naïve, always ready with a homemade meal, and desperate to please homemaker who slowly steps out of that world and into a more self-assured one. Witnessing her transformation is delightful as we see her for all of her wittiness and worldliness that had previously been hidden away. Tania is the James Bond femme fatale who tantalises and teases and plays the part knowingly. Always the embodiment of the exotic, Tania becomes a pariah to her own community as the world of media uses her for her "Asianess" and she ends up hurting the people she loves the most.

Despite the heavy themes of Anglo-Asian identity, spousal relations, sexual frustration, the bonds of sisterhood, and tradition versus modernity, Syal's specialty, humour, is always at the forefront. Her tongue-in-cheek subtleties and outright funniness will keep you reading till the end. Chila, Sunita and Tania represent three very different Asian women; their experiences will ring true for anyone who has ever had to deal with the complexities that arise in a diasporic community. Syal's humorous presentation takes away some of the heavy drama and instead, creates a poignant, often bittersweet, and always hilarious picture of the choices women sometimes have to make.

Life Isn't All Ha Ha Hee Hee works because Syal is able to make fun of her culture's own idiosyncrasies while at the same time, rejoicing in what it has to offer. This cross-cultural irony will keep you laughing with the characters, even as everything around them comes tumbling down. It's no wonder Syal was asked by the musical creating ingénue, Andrew Lloyd Webber, to script his latest spectacle, Bombay Dreams. One thing is for certain; Syal has only just begun.