5 Books to Read in One Sitting

Mental fatigue during the pandemic is a real thing. And if you’re like me, or like thousands of others, you might find it hard to concentrate on books right now. Ever feel like you need to turn back and re-read the last 20 pages because you have zoned out? Yes, I know that feeling to. So allow me to introduce you to shorter reads – still novels, but ones that you can finish off quickly.

1. Of Love and Other Demons

The story of 12-year-old Sierva Maria is larger-than-life, disconcerting, and endearing. A metaphor for life right now, her epidemic disease and her cure will seem so much closer to home right now. And what is love anyway, but the cosmic collision of two unlikely forces?

In this book, they come together as exorcist and a suspect demon, but you will not care.

Review: here

2. Mister God, This is Anna

What is it about children that gives them a direct connection to the divine, have you ever wondered?

This book is a life affirming story of a runaway child Anna and her friend Fynn. Anna has a quirky take on life that is innocent and childish; but often profound. Join Fynn in unravelling the Universe as he listens to Anna.

Review: here

 

3. Memories of My Melancholy Whores

This is a challenging book. One that will make you rethink the boundaries in which you think love should exist. A 90-year-old decides to give himself the gift of a wild night with a virgin. And we spend the next 2-3 hrs examining our own prejudices and perhaps dimensions of the nature of love.

A true classic.

Review: here

 

4. Jamilia

Why are all the shorter books about love? I think it is because it is an emotion most familiar to us and requires the least number of words to convey. Jamilia is a young Kyrgyz woman who is left behind in the village as her husband is at war. But she develops feelings for the village war-hero-return. And the dynamics of this forbidden love is told by Jamilia’s young brother-in-law. Read this book for literature from a little known country.

Review: here

5. Praise Song for the Butterflies

A beautiful read and trust me, Abeo’s story will haunt you. Many misfortunes befall this little girl in a deprived West African country. And eventually, she is sent to a cult-like shrine in her country by her own family. Written by a female author, Abeo’s story comes to life through the tortures and trials of her being. It really brings home the reality of life for millions of African women even today.

Review: here

 

Ladies Coupé … a review

I spent Christmas last year at my friend’s. M is an author herself, works in publishing and is one of the most prolific readers I know. So staying over at hers means picking something unusual off the copious bookshelves and coming back with a read or five. This time, I picked up Ladies Coupé by Anita Nair. I never got round to reviewing it at the time, so here goes.

This book follows a life-affirming journey of the protagonist – a young Indian woman named Akhila. She works in income tax, is 45 and single, and has just bought herself a one-way ticket to Kanyakumari. While she is trying to escape her stifling Tam-Brahm (slang for Tamil Brahmin – usually denotes a small-minded, conservative culture) life, she is also travelling towards something. On the train, she is sharing a coupé with five other women.

The reader is looking into a fishbowl in which these characters interact. Each woman has her own story and the narrative takes turn in acquainting us with each. Different themes are explored – physical love, the need (or not) for a man, happiness, and the expectations of society from a woman, amongst others,

I read this book over 3-4 days and it completely consumed me. It is deeper than it looks from the blurb, and explores many nuances of hidden emotion. What will we learn, and will we find any answers? Whilst the reader is drawn to Akhila, there is a remote-ness about her which is unsettling. This is a fine novel, and a great example of women’s literature from the subcontinent.

A personal note here: over the last few weeks of lockdown, a number of friends have casually mentioned this blog. I always think of it as rather personal (always have) and I’m flattered that you indulge me so… thank you.

Monsieur … a review

Lolita is one of my favourite books of all time. It is thought-provoking, jarring, and extremely well-written. Heck, it is one of the best works of 20^th century literature. Now, I picked up this book because reviews described it as ‘Lolita-esque’. And man, did this book have that potential! The author writes about the erotic relationship between Ellie Becker, in her 20s, and Monsieur, a married man with five sons in his mid-40s. Although Ellie is technically an adult, the difference in age means that she is considered a ‘nymphette’ by her lover.

This book, funnily enough, was titled Mister when written originally in French. Anyway, the two characters bond over erotic poetry and as winter creeps in on France, they become involved in clandestine sessions in a hotel room. By this point of the book, I was loving it. It was very lyrical, the sexting kept it relevant to modern times, and I was quite warming up to it. Some of the lines are beautiful:

Even the fingers lingering on the back of my neck felt clothed, elegant, and relaxed. For a few minutes they fluttered all the way down to my spine, caresses I had never experienced before, disturbingly reaching for the depths of my soul.
Paris held its breath.

At some point, however, the narrative kept going steadily downhill. The emotions were repetitive; the characters were not feeling enough to warrant all the pages and it just got dragging. For a while, when the man disappears and Ellie becomes obsessed with his wife, I thought something interesting was going to happen, but nothing did.

And finally, they ended their relationship and I was quite relieved. The erotic bits of the novel started out wonderful as well, and then just became annoying and kind of gross. If you do read the book, you’ll know why I say that. And it was pointless gross, it added nothing to the narrative. The author is Emma Becker and the protagonist is Ellie Becker, I did find that slightly odd as well.

Anyway, towards the end, I was definitely annoyed because the book was being compared by people (idiots) to Lolita, and this book doesn’t hold a candle to that masterpiece, I tell you. Clearly, not a lot of people understand Humbert, or Nabokov.

Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage … a review

So I moved and obviously, now I have a new library. I found the latest Murakami and was very pleased. Of course, I’m not pleased now that he didn’t win the Nobel But that’s a separate post.  This latest book, about Tazaki’s life and how he has to face the ghosts of his adolescence when he’s spurred on by his girlfriend, is a very different read from the usual. There isn’t even a cat!

Of course, there are dreams, and strange unrealities, and a parallel Universe, but they are not the crux of the plot. There IS an actual plot, so that’s quite a change as well. Murakami is a very versatile author and he seems to be experimenting a bit here. It worked for me. The storyline takes the protagonist into the deep recesses of his past and through in the future to Finland. There is a strange familiarity in the style of writing, like a cup of tea with an old friend. There is also the slow paced suspense of finding out how someone’s life changes based on which way the book goes. I really liked the character of the girlfriend – she is kind, compassionate, organised, and fun. I think I identified  with her a bit.

The end is quite open, but depending on who you are as a person, your mind is bound to lead you one way or another. The author sort of hints at a possibility and leaves you, as a reader, to make up the rest. I liked this book 🙂

The Crimson Petal and the White … a review

I couldn’t remember reading a tome of a book since I read Lord of the Rings six years ago. I had quite forgotten how satisfying it is, and I such a different way, to be lost amongst characters and places and plots for days together! This Michael Faber book  is quite the tome, with 900 pages of narrative about a prostitute Sugar, her life in Victorian London, and her rise in station with the help of her lover and benefactor William Rackham. This book was recommended to me in passing, by M, and I picked it up thinking that I has a few weeks with minimal travel, so it’s good to be reading something heavy (physically).

The book is well-written. The narrative follows a pattern that I’ve never read before, with the author leading the reader on behind characters. The effect is remarkably potent, it gave me a feeling of winding through narrow backalleys of London, into damp and cold quarters of the fallen women. While the author shrugs off this style soon enough, it is still a brilliant way to introduce the prime characters of the novel. The books also contains romantic elements – the faithlessness of a marriage, the intermingling of the upper and lower classes, adultery, the deification of the beloved, and the ironical faithfulness towards the other woman.

Rackham, a perfume company tycoon is surrounded by three women. Agnes, his frail wife, suffers from hallucinations and delusions and is frequently unable to discharge her duties as wife and mistress of the house. Sophie, their infant daughter, who grows up to the age of seven in the novel, without the love of her mother or the affection of her father. Sugar, his mistress, who brings some form of relief to the other two women. The ending of the book is rather controversial, as it does not leave the reader with a clear idea of the events that ensue. It is open to interpretation, but the way I saw it, it seemed clear enough to me what happened. And I rested my tired eyes with a comforting and happy ending for the woman who had my sympathy and support. Worth a read!

Teaser Tuesday (June 17)

My teaser:

“Sugar leans her chin against the knuckles of the hand that holds the pen. Glistening on the page between her silk-shrouded elbows lies an unfinished sentence. The heroine of her novel has just slashed the throat of a man. The problem is how, precisely, the blood will flow. Flow is too gentle a word; spill implies carelessness; spurt is out of the question because she has used the word already, in another context, a few lines earlier. Pour out implies that the man has some control over the matter, which he most emphatically doesn’t; leak is too feeble for the savagery of the injury she has inflicted upon him. Sugar closes her eyes and watches, in the lurid theatre of her mind, the blood issue from the slit neck. When Mrs Castaway’s warning bell sounds, she jerks in surprise.
Hastily, she scrutinises her bedroom. Everything is neat and tidy. All her papers are hidden away, except for this single sheet on her writing-desk.
Spew, she writes, having finally been given, by tardy Providence, the needful word.“

From ( Mariner Books 2003) of The Crimson Petal and the White.

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

Enjoy!

The Electric Michaelangelo … a review

I bought this book at the book fair because it was an old edition and was selling cheaply. I also read the blurb and saw that it was about the art of tattooing. Since it was something I had never read about before, I picked it up. Right at the onset, I was aware that the style of writing was very very different from ones I’d encountered in the recent past. This was the story of a young boy, who grows up in a seaside town in Northeast England.

You know the deal with Northeast England? It’s very grey… the sky, the waves, the wind, sometimes even the sand… it’s all grey. And this coast it very beautiful in this colour, it looks sad, beautiful, and mysterious. So, at this seaside town where people frequently come to spend their summers, our protagonist grows up. He is used to death from an early age too, the inn that his mother runs is a haven for people with sickly pulmonary diseases, who come to spend their last days here by the sea.

When the protagonist becomes a tattoo artist and later travels to America, what follows is a tale of art, emotion, love, and despair. What is the story of tattoos, who gets them done, who inks them in, who, why, what’re their thoughts… What is everyone thinking? How does art transcend an ocean? Is love like art? Is art love? The writing of Sarah Hall is beautiful, and it took me into tattoo parlours and hearts. I expected this book to end badly… but it didn’t. It just ended.

The only slight drawback is that there isn’t much in the way of action for the longest time and then a set of very action-packed pages! But it worked well for me because I enjoyed the descriptions as much as the events! If anyone has any other recommendations of books that are set against the backdrop of tattoos, I’d love to hear them…

Quote: “By midsummer of 1940 there were one hundred and nine tattoos on Grace’s form, from the soles of her feet to the base of her neck, so that she looked like a most extraordinary tree of eyes. And in retrospect, when Cy would try to relive his journey across her body and remember the revolution of its archaic landscape under his unyielding bevelled brush, perhaps those were the times he was making love to her after all.”

Teaser Tuesday (March 18)

My teaser:

“Dreams come from the past, not from the future. Dreams shouldn’t control you–you should control them.“

From (Vintage 2007) of Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman.

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

Enjoy!

Teaser Tuesday (March 11)

My teaser:

“There are ways of dying that don’t end in funerals. Types of death you can’t smell.“

From (Vintage 2007) of Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman.

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

Enjoy!

Happy Birthday, Gabriel García Márquez!

One from last year…

5 things about one of my favourite authors:

1. He is known affectionately as Gabo throughout Latin America.

2. Won the 1982 Nobel Prize in Literature, and is the earliest remaining living recipient.

3. He practically invented ‘magic realism’, a genre where magic elements are a natural part in an otherwise mundane, realistic environment. It was probably a result of being in close touch with his grandmother. This is undoubtedly my favourite genre of fiction.

4. He began his career as a journalist while studying law at the National University of Colombia. Needless to say, both journalism and law went for a toss later!

5. Solitude and melancholy are two emotions that you will feel deeply if you read any of his works. So deeply, that they will stir out of your depths, out of those years of repressed feelings, that you may have let dust gather upon…