All about Emotions and Errors

Book Review - 

Most book lovers need no introduction to the author Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, for her book - The Palace of Illusions has received rapturous applause from all quarters, readers world over. That is precisely what made me pick this book - the Unknown Errors of our Lives (stories, a set of nine of them),  my first from the author's desk.

The lure of short stories coupled with an erratic reading schedule I had foreseen for this month made me prefer this book to a complete novel.

The prose beautifully lyrical, eloquent and mostly poignant is a clear strength of this book.  Chitra evokes an emotion she wants in her reader in a manner as easy as eating a pie.

The book opens with Mrs. Dutta Writes a Letter, this reminded me a little of Jhumpa Lahiri; people torn between their mother land and the place they have immigrated to, changes that some fall in line with, some just cannot manage and won't. Even the  concluding piece in the book - the Names of Stars in Bengali is centered around the change in scape, in lands/homes where one lives and in relationships therefore & thereafter.

The second story - the Intelligence of Wild Things strikes a harmonic resonance, but the sheen disappears thereafter, re appearing only vaguely in the 7th story in the collection - the Blooming Season for Cacti, even the titular story is not powerful as usually expected.

The Lives of Strangers is open ended, does allow a lot of thought to flow but the plot hangs loosely with no ends to safeguard it securely, this happens in few other stories too which creates a lull. 

The most disappointing aspect for me is the way the author treats a short story. Taking cues from the preface of an earlier read/an anthology - a Clutch of Indian Masterpieces, the editor in there quotes a definition of a short story as one with a fully developed theme, significantly shorter and less elaborate than a novel. The THEME or an undercurrent is starkly amiss in three of nine stories in this package.

Going by the same preface, it is believed that there are many authors who like Chekhov treat a story just as a 'slice of life' , construct them on events and turning points in life; but even on that ground and being highly lenient in forming an opinion,  6 out of 9 stories in the collection failed to impress me.

'Go with the tide' is my advice, may be pick 'The Palace of Illusions' or even Before we Visit the Goddess as a first, for having picked this book turned out to be a minor (not Unknown) Error in my life.

A Fascinating Expedition

The Globetrotters - Book Review 

A work of fiction that bundles amazing facts with a simple lesson for all of mankind, a pleasurable read woven carefully with great intelligence and skill. 

Arefa Tehsin, the author, in the prologue, introduces us to Hudhud, a brat, a big bully and a merciless prankster studying in class 7 in a school, his pranks and acts earn him a curse from his history teacher, that he must find the answer to a question - "What is the answer to all wrongs?"

Out he must go, leaving his home and his human form, traveling across oceans, crossing continents along with migratory animals as one among them. 

Chapters 1 to 5 that follow see Hudhud transform into a blue whale, a painted lady butterfly, a porcupine Caribou, an Atlantic leatherback turtle and a great Arctic tern and embark upon adventures in air, sea and on land along with his friend and accomplice in pranks, Kilkila. Each chapter deals with interesting facts about the animals, their journeys, the hardships they face and Hudhud's eternal quest for an answer to the question that he mostly forgets battling the perils of each intercontinental journey he undertakes. 

It all comes together in the epilogue section - did Hudhud find the answer, what is the answer to the question? Did he ever get back home, did he become his normal self or did he keep wandering the world as one of the migratory animals, constantly changing form?

A 200 pages long book, a magically real and dreamily factual account of some wonderful inhabitants of this planet Earth. Apt for a read for age group 10-11 yrs+ , this book offers fascinating insight into some very useful information. 

I am going to preserve this book carefully and hand it over to my little one at the right age so that he can read and enjoy this simple, delightful book. 

A Succinct Folktale

It didn't take me long to finish this short and sweet novella, roughly three to four hours grabbed from here and there over two days. 

Don't run , my love by Easterine Kire is a short book, about 120 pages long, with a distinct folktale like flavor. The book describes the events that unfold in lives of two women Atuonuo, a young girl of marriageable age and her mother Visenuo, after a young, handsome man Kevi arrives offering them unsolicited help during the harvest season. 

Does Kevi manage to marry Atuonuo, does he get that maternal love from Visenuo he craved for from birth? Or are there some dark secrets hidden somewhere that push the lives of these two women into a state of emergency that they never thought of? Concise prose, beautifully written and densely packed because even ten pages of space carries lots of details. Also, we get a peek into the lives of farmers in a Naga village, know a bit of their traditions and practices, food and festivals by reading this book. 

A special reference to the section of the book between pages 30 - 70 because this is where through conversations between mother and daughter we get an insight into their life, also the tale catches up pace and energy. The conversations between elders in Atuonuo's family and her mother Visenuo strike complete familiarity.

There are no cons I see in the book, there is definitely some suspense but nothing like 'out of the box' climax. I guess it is more to do with Indian writing where most of the times, much like in movies, the endings are always happy. And if it is not happy, it is really not the end.

I will not call it a riveting read. However, surely a good read for its writing is highly meaningful and detailing perfectly appropriate in such limited space. 

PS: The above review also appears in my Instagram account.

Riveting Read!

Daphne du Maurier's The Birds and other stories is the book in for review in this blog post. 

A set of six stories, the common feature they (all barring one) share is an element of thrill, some unknown information that keeps the reader hooked till the end. 

The book begins with Birds, my favorite in this collection. Set against the backdrop of World War II, the story describes how life changes for a simple family in a Cornish seaside town with the advent of winter when birds for very strange reasons turn highly aggressive, cause death and unleash large scale destruction. From an uneasy calm, to becoming increasingly eerie and unfolding into a full blown catastrophe at the end, the writer keeps you spellbound through the length of the story. The story is believed to be an allegory of the Blitz attack on London towards the end of World war II. 

Monte Verita - a good sized novelette, is another great story in this pack, lot of theology and philosophy packed into this one but the two subjects do not bring boredom to the reader. Beautifully written, reading this one is akin to rolling a long rectangular sheet of paper to let its shorter, opposite sides (quite like the start and end of the story) just touch each other. There are many wonderful lines that call for good introspection and below is one such example - 

"Religious teachers disagree when they try to show the difference between good and evil; what is a miracle to one becomes black magic to another. The good prophets have been stoned, but so have the witch doctors. Blasphemy in one age becomes holy utterance in the next, and this day's heresy is tomorrow's credo".

The Apple Tree is about a recently widowed man who cannot wait to settle into some peace and private space, after years of lull, spent with his over-laborious and ever complaining wife, Midge.They say that the usual fortune of a complaint is to excite more contempt than pity, so as the man talks distastefully about his dead wife through the length of the story; piles up hatred against an old, odd-looking, stooping apple tree in the yard, putting every effort to get rid of it, he only leaves a certain acerbity in us towards him. This is a story where the author does not hold the reader's attention tight. 

The Little Photographer carries the trend forward like its predecessor in the book of being unable to hold the readers' attention, a clearly predictable tale with a certain cinematic quality about it. A Marquise's life, laden with riches and comforts and yet her heart searches fervently for clandestine pleasures which gets her into real trouble in the end.Despite that banal plot, I loved the story for the way in which it is written, describing an illicit affair sans obscenity is quite next to impossible in contemporary writing. 

And quite like a turn of the tide, the last two stories pack a powerful punch in a brief space in this book. 

Kiss me again, Stranger is a thriller, highly intact right from start to end, a reader wanders in his/her head to many possible conclusions only to get bowled over by the author in the climax. 

The Old Man is a winner in the end, as brilliant as Birds. Now what does one say of a story where the central points are left in suspense to be revealed only in the last few lines, marvelous isn't it? 

There is an excellent foreword at the start of the book that highlights the differences between the world of writing books and making films based on them, between authors and movie directors, worth a read. 

Reading Daphne du Maurier occurred to me pretty late, but now that I started with this one, I am allured enough to read all her other works.

Book Review : A Man Called Ove

A good book comes like a gentle breeze and leaves behind a waft of fresh and sweet fragrance. 

This book -  A Man called Ove does just that.

I have never rated any book in my head out of 5 or 10 stars, blame it on my inability to translate an overall impression into numbers. But here is a book, that gets a neat 5 on 5 without an iota of doubt.

Why? 

1. Relatability  - this is what I adored the most while reading this book. I could relate to what was written in it, there's a little of Ove in my dad and little more of him in my husband. The RQ or the relatability quotient made me grin, smile sheepishly and secretly nod in approval, quite often. 

2. Perfectly paced - never, not once do you feel the author could have saved a few pages or elaborated little more to enable better understanding.

3. The Story Unfolds in Layers - chapters in this book move from the present to few weeks back in time, and to many years back in time but never is one lost in time and space. Also, each chapter is a short story in itself, catering well to my love for short story format.

4. Detailing of the Protagonist - our understanding of Ove grows through the book, gradually. The author doesn't play it defensive on why is Ove the way he is, never. He evokes different emotions in us towards Ove, never once justifying all he does or demanding pity. 

5. Beautifully translated - most of us fumble for the right words that connect our thoughts,  something does get lost in the process of translation, at times. But this book translated into English from Swedish, leaves one wondering if the author and translator are twins, conjoint in their head and heart.

6. Only a few characters - for a person who has still not gotten over post partum forgetfulness, having just a few characters in the book makes the job of reading and remembering easier.

Reading happens pretty erratically, after finishing all household chores, that are sometimes lined up in an unending queue. My reading time is from 12 to 1 am, where I sink into the sofa, heave a sigh of relief that the day has gone by well and get into the reading mode. 

I am happy that I came across this book, and happier that this book came to me at the most important juncture - when I have gotten serious about getting back to my good, old habit of reading.