Book Review: All The Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr

All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Between the brilliant blue covers of Anthony Doerr’s All The Light We Cannot See is the story of Marie-Laure, a French girl, blind from the age of six, yet imaginative enough to show the reader,the streets and alleys of Saint Malo in vivid colours. There is a precious blue diamond which, as the legend goes, renders its possessor deathless, but curses everyone else around him/her to endless misfortune. There is Etienne LeBlanc, a traumatised old veteran of the first war, who hides himself in an attic and transmits his brother’s recordings of science lessons for children, not knowing that thousands of miles away in Germany these recordings pique the curiosity of an adolescent orphan boy Werner Pfennig and his sisterJutta, animating their little world. There is, however, a war brewing in the background, the greatest and the most terrible that the world has ever seen, which tears their worlds apart, but somehow ties them together in mysterious ways.

Some books are like your childhood’s favourite ice-cream. You love it, you want to go on eating it, yet you take as little spoonfuls as possible, for fear of finishing it too soon. This is one such book. You love it; it is so compelling that you want to keep reading till the last page. Yet you do not want it to finish, so you slow down, taking your time to savour it page by page, sentence by sentence, word by word. And when you finally do read the last word, there is that inevitable sense of loss that one feels after completing a really good book. Doerr paints each sight, event and experience like an artist, capturing even the smells and sound associated with them. His sentences are short, but they convey a lot more than one would expect so few words to say. This is a book to not just read but also to experience, and one I would love to return to, years later.

View all my reviews

– Harsha

Book Review: Daughter of Fortune by Isabel Allende

Daughter of Fortune by Isabel Allende
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is my second Allende novel, the first one being Of Love and Shadows, which I enjoyed very much, in fact, so much that, when part of the author’s name peeked at me from beneath a pile of books at the local used-books store, I did not hesitate even a second before extracting it out despite all the dust and my notorious allergy.

The novel begins in Chile in the 1840s, where a young foundling Eliza is raised in a Victorian English household by siblings Rose Sommers, Jeremy Sommers and the mostly-absent sea-captain John Sommers, as well as by the native housekeeper Mama Fresia. This mixed upbringing means that she has been taught in the Victorian English morals and way of life by the Sommers as well as the native Chilean culinary arts by Mama Fresia. She falls deeply in love with Joaquin Andietta, and after a short, passionate affair, Andietta leaves for California, gripped by the Gold Fever that had gripped the entire continent at the time. Eliza discovers she is pregnant, and with the help of her Chinese friend Tao Ch’ien, she smuggles herself into a ship and sails to California, a land ruled by unruly men lured by the glitter of gold. Apart from Eliza, the only other women there are prostitutes. Shedding her corsets and gowns and adopting a man’s clothing, she embarks on an impossible journey in search of her lover, a quest that later turns out to be that of self-discovery and finding freedom.

The novel is quick paced and easy to read, and I must confess I have read better prose (perhaps the prose is better in the original Spanish). Yet the novel is special because of its characters and each of their stories that resonated with me. It is special because of Eliza, and how her character transformed during the course of the journey, from the innocent young girl who grew up amidst all the confinements of a typical 19th century ‘respectable’ household to a free woman: “I am free” she says to her dearest friend Tao as the novel concludes. Not only am I eager to read the sequel Portrait in Sepia as soon as I can lay my hands on it, but I would also love to revisit Daughter of Fortune when I am more at leisure, hopefully sometime in the near future.

View all my reviews

Book Review: My Heart is Your Brothel by Namitha Varma

My Heart is Your Brothel by Namitha Varma
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

There are love poems that leave you starry-eyed and smiling, and then there are love poems that leave you with a slight throb in the heart.

Namitha Varma’s poems in My Heart is Your Brothel, I feel, belong to the second category. This collection of micropoems “dedicated to infatuation”, takes you on a journey of love, right from the beginnings to the intensities. Succinct and straight, the poems are full of fiery passion, bittersweet longings and intensity. Love burns bright in each poem, and the sharp words bare out every feeling, every desire unabashedly and unapologetically. They come right from the poet’s heart, and cut right through into the reader’s heart. A great, quick read, that is also quite worth a revisit! 🙂

View all my reviews

This poetry collection is available as a free ebook here: http://papyruseditor.com/b/13483/My-Heart-is-Your-Brothel

Book Review: Aarachar by K R Meera

ആരാച്ചാര്‍ | AARACHAR by K.R.  Meera
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Aarachar by K R Meera is the first Malayalam language book I read in a few months, and must say this has been an unforgettable read. It is dark, morbid and appalling and as the title suggests, death lingers in every page of the story. Chetna Grdha Mallick, the main character of the story is among the last descendants of a Bengali family of executioners, whose ancestry, according to her grandmother, could be traced back to years before Christ. By some twists of fate, Chetna is appointed as the official Hangwoman of the state- the first female to take up the job after Chetna’s own ancestor centuries before. The novel reads like a legend, with the narrative constantly switching between past and present, recounting tales from the centuries long history and myths surrounding the Mallick family. It is also the story of the sheer power and defiance of a woman in a man’s world and in front of his pride. The way the author has entwined the history and socio-political scenario of Bengal, and the way she has described the tiny little details of Kolkata are commendable; I sometimes felt I was reading the translation of a novel written by a Bengali author. Undoubtedly one of the best works I have read in Malayalam.

View all my reviews

Book Review: Those Pricey Thakur Girls

Those Pricey Thakur Girls by Anuja Chauhan
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Rating: 3.5/5 (how I wish Goodreads allowed half-stars!)

Firstly, I have to state that rom-com is not my favourite genre when it comes to books, and so it is quite sceptically that I pick up a book like this to read. But I must say, after three rather gloomy reads, this came as a breath of fresh air. This is my first time reading Anuja Chauhan and certainly not going to be the last.

Set in the late 80s New Delhi, it is the story of 23 year old Debjani, fourth of the five beautiful daughters of retired judge L N Thakur. Debjani is the newfound celebrity newsreader of the government-owned DD, India’s only TV channel at the time. She has to cope with her sudden rise to fame, her quirky family, the pressure of being the next-in-line for marriage and most importantly, her growing attraction towards her handsome journalist neighbour, Dylan Singh Shekhawat, with whom she has shared a few awkward moments.

It is a light, breezy and fun read. The plot and language are simple, with that lovely flavour and intimacy of the good old 80s-90s times, or the DD era as I like to call it. The political environment of the times is integrated into this love story which lends the plot a certain authenticity and makes it interesting. Anuja’s writing is certainly witty and is sure to make the reader chuckle at least a few times while reading. Overall, a quick, fun novel that is sure to make you smile.

View all my reviews

Review: Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn

Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I’m not quite sure how I feel about this one, so won’t be going into a detailed review. The book started out slowly and didn’t engage me instantly as I expected, but it got very intriguing about halfway through.

It is about a married couple- Amy and Nick Dunne whose marriage is slowly disintegrating. On the day of their fifth anniversary, Amy disappears under mysterious circumstances. It is hinted that she has been abducted and possibly killed, with all clues pointing towards Nick as the prime suspect. What has happened to Amy? Is Nick really behind his wife’s disappearance?

I read it as part of a group read and had seen comments of other readers saying how the book was full of suprises. I had conditioned my mind to expect any twist, but still was not quite prepared for the way the story turned out to be. It was dark- a psychological thriller that has managed to leave me absolutely baffled at how complex human mind can be, and for that I have to give a four star rating eventhough the first half was a bit dragging for me. Overall, it was very enjoyable and quite unlike any novel I’d read before.

View all my reviews

Book Review: A Constellation of Vital Phenomena by Anthony Marra

 

A Constellation of Vital Phenomena by Anthony Marra

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

No one deserves peace more than an innocent child, and I feel there cannot be a more apt time to say this. Imagine being a little child born and growing up in the middle of a war, when each day of your life is marked with death or disappearances of familiar faces! Imagine a father who has to teach his six year old daughter how to load and aim a gun for her own protection, at an age when he should actually be teaching her how to fly a kite; or a lone surgeon of the only standing hospital in a war-torn city, whose daily activity includes performing amputations. Or the village doctor, a better artist than a doctor, who makes portraits of the people who went missing during the war and leaves them for their relatives to find; often the only memorials they might ever get. These are a few characters of this novel which broke my heart, and yet managed to put the pieces back together by the time I finished reading it.

Havaa in Hindi means air, and while it is unlikely that Dokka thought of the Hindi meaning while he named his daughter, that is how I perceived the child. She is like a delicate breeze; gentle but strong enough to blow away the veil of indifference that the cold surgeon Sonja had built upon herself. She loses her mother to death and her beloved father is taken away by the federal forces while she had to run away to avoid capture, ending up in the reluctant care of the surgeon Sonja. Despite having seen all this, the child still carries an air of innocence around her that endears her to the reader greatly.

While the mood of the novel is predominantly sad, it also shows how in the gravest of times, hope can be found in the most tender of feelings like love, kindness or the innocence of a child. Anthony Marra’s writing is beautiful and I am quite surprised to find out that this is his debut novel.

Before reading this book, Chechnya was just a name I vaguely remembered seeing in newspaper headlines when I was still a child. I did not know where exactly it was nor had any inkling of its history. However, this never was a problem to me to enjoy the novel at any point. War, after all, is a universal phenomenon and the way it tears human lives apart cannot be very different anywhere in the world.

View all my reviews

Book Review: A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki

                                                           

A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

“..I am a time being. Do you know what a time being is? Well, if you give me a moment, I will tell you. A time being is someone who lives in time, and that means you, and me, and every one of us who is, or was, or ever will be.”

― Ruth Ozeki, A Tale for the Time Being

It took me weeks to finish this novel, and I’m quite surprised at how much I have come to like it.This book is like a time machine, transporting the reader across different time periods and zones, unfolding a moving story in the process.

Ruth, a novelist undergoing a major writer’s block lives with her husband Oliver on a small island near Canada. One day, she comes across a diary and a set of letters in a Hello Kitty lunch box washed ashore on the beach near their home. Ruth starts reading the diary, which belonged to a 16 year old Japanese girl Naoko Yasutani, and is entranced by it. The reader, along with Ruth is taken to Nao’s world by the diary, into which she has poured everything- her life, her sorrows, loneliness and most importantly the story of her 104 year old great-grandmother,a Zen Buddhist nun who lives in a small mountain-temple in a Japanese village.

It is not an easy read- the plot moves slowly and demands patience, but in a good way. The novel touches upon many themes that require pondering upon- poverty, bullying, war, suicide, relationships,environment and calamity, all this with touches of philosophy, metaphysics, magic realism and even quantum mechanics! It might sound a bit too complex, but surprisingly it works! I could empathise with most characters, with Nao and Jiko being my favourites. The relationship between the teenager Nao and her 104 year old great-grandmother is poignant and warm.

I was disturbed slightly by the descriptions of bullying and references of suicide, but not to the extent that would affect my enjoyment of the novel. The prose is compelling enough, and although dealing with serious themes, is mildly humorous. The Japanese setting and the whole Zen Buddhist cultural background add to the richness of the plot and make it an amazing read.

View all my reviews

 

Book Review: The Prophecy of Trivine

The Prophecy of Trivine by Tnahsin Garg
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The Prophecy of Trivine is a science fiction novel bordering on fantasy, written collaboratively by Pulkit Gupta, Sreevatsan Sreedhar and Tnahsin Garg. Firstly, the authors need to be applauded for attempting this genre which is rare in the Indian fiction scenario. I think this is the first time I have read a fiction written by more than one authors and I was quite curious to see if I could find any inconsistency in the writing because of it. However, I am glad to say that I couldn’t find anything like that.

The plot is set in a dense forest of Uttarakhand, and revolves around four main characters- a young hacker Phil aka Red Dragon who has taken refuge in the forest to escape capture by the police, a scientist Siv, an artist Arty and Xona, a member of the alien species of Gucuteps who has been sent to study the human race closely and decide upon its fate.

The best thing about the book is its novel concept, which is enough to rouse anyone’s curiosity. The characters were all relate-able, and the story was compelling enough. The writing is quite simple and easy to follow. However, I do feel that at many places, there were a lot of explanations and descriptions, a lot of ‘telling’ the reader what happens, leaving very little to the reader’s imagination. I could feel my attention wavering at those points and I had to force myself to not skip some parts.

Also, in the first chapter, the author(s) have switched repeatedly between referring to the protagonist as ‘Phil’ and ‘RD’, which can be quite confusing to the reader. While I understand the significance of these two names, referring to him as Phil in one paragraph and RD in the very next for no apparent reason did confuse me and I had to go back and read some parts again to be clear if the authors were referring to the same character or not. However, in the later part when RD returned, it did not bother me because by then the character and his two names had been established in my mind.

Overall, the book makes for a nice read and the authors have done a decent job, considering it is their debut novel.

View all my reviews