What Maketh A Good Book? ft. Nicotine By Nell Zink With The Incisive Journal

What makes a book, a good book for you? Find more about about how Nell Zink's Nicotine proved to be a reading milestone for me here.

What makes a book, a good book?

This question floated into my brain an early November morning and left me perplexed. I had just put down Nell Zink’s much acclaimed fourth novel Nicotine a few days prior and wanted to review it. But I was just as confused about the book after I was done with it, as I was while reading it. Is this a good book? I was clueless. So, I looked up the definition of a good book and even randomly put this question to some people I know who read.

Google showed me some articles that provided tips to guarantee the flawless book – catchy opening, solid storyline, good characterisation and it went on and on. As to the real people I had approached, the initial replies were mainly suggestions and their type of preferred genre. I made myself clearer. I wanted to know what made a book of any genre appealing to them. What makes them smile after they are done with a book and lock them up in their heads not to be forgotten soon but to be shared among others as intimate suggestions? Though it took some time for everyone to get over the randomness of that question and tell me crudely what made them love a book, they all made sense.

Before Nicotine

I used to prefer, note the past tense, beautiful writing, not too complex that like Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice described by fellow social cataloguer as “language that could be beautiful, ends up difficult to decipher and you find yourself going back to those paragraphs again and again only to be left unsatisfied” or not too simple like say Chetan Bhagat who chews your steak for you. Books with a definite story line – an introduction, the build-up, the climax, not necessarily in the same order. Yes, multilinear and multiple narratives.  Naïve me thought I was an adventurous reader because I was happy with these multi-s in my read. I required humour, philosophy, drama, realism and all in the right proportions for me to like a book.

Age of Nicotine – my forbidden fruit.

But just like how the forbidden fruit changed the course of humanity post the original sin,  Nell Zink’s Nicotine changed it all. It showed me that a writer is not supposed to give a rat’s arse about what the reader wants and the reader is not supposed to tell a writer how to do their job. My reading graph after Nicotine hereby shall be divided into 3 eras – Before Nicotine, Age of Nicotine and After Nicotine and I had not one clue when I purchased it. Nicotine was supposed to be a funny, easy read.

Briefly, Nicotine is about a very young business graduate Penny who loses her very old and rich Dad and is suddenly out in the world without a purpose. Jobless, homeless and suffering from PTSD, Penny is manipulated by her family consisting of her young mother and two half brothers to reclaim their ruined ancestral property now occupied with squatters who have come together by a common love for tobacco, so strong, they name their home Nicotine. The very squatters become her new family and welcomes her to their anarchic, confusing but supposedly driven by a cause life.  It is not the perfect book. It is named after Nicotine but rarely gave much importance to it other than a lot of mentions. It is hard to relate to at times. It becomes the anarchy it tries to portray, may be intentionally. It strays from the path off and on, making the pseudo progressive in me uncomfortable.

The story starts off promising a typical American coming off age movie. As Penny introduces herself as a fellow homeless anarchist to the squatters at Nicotine, you expect the tried and tested trivia of pretences and the attached drama once the truth is unmasked generally towards the end of the story but you are not served what you expect. The truth is revealed to the inhabitants of Nicotine by a third person pretty soon into the book and there are no tears, yelling or talks of betrayal. They all shrug their shoulders and get busy.

Another interesting part is when Amalia, the young mother tries to describe her take on the cosmic snake. Penny is trying hard to make a moment out of it. She wants her mother to make sense. Just like she had just corrected Penny’s assumption that in a sexual relationship between a 16 year old boy and a 12 year old girl, the older male doesn’t necessarily have to be the abuser and it could be the other way just as much. Penny is pretty flawed, confused and lost throughout the story just like the reader I was throughout the book and the ending really doesn’t change that. You could even say that is exactly the type of reader I was with this book.

If you look at other reviews of Nicotine by professionals, like the New York Times or the Guardian, they all seem to say the same thing. The book is a mess. There is no binding story line, the plotline is actually rather bizarre and not very satisfactory owing to the fact that it never really gets anywhere. The characters are fresh but they don’t change dramatically for the good or bad over the time period of the story but rather merely gets by every day. What else could I say about a novel where the protagonist takes up a bank job while conveniently living as a squatter to save upon rent? Where’s the betterment and where’s the redemption? May be this complete lack of reverence to any binding norms is what makes this book so special. It is fresh and it is funny.

After Nicotine

But as a writer Nell Zink is the right dose of funny, serious, sarcastic, silly and refreshing. The book is not a treat to my brain who demands a story. But it is unputdownable (add to dictionary) and hilarious, at the same time thought provoking but not preachy. Hell yes, I am suddenly more open to books not conforming to my idea of writing and that I think is our most remarkable achievement as the reader- writer duo and now I am a proud peruser ready to take up more unconventional reads. 

May be this is what books are supposed to do – give the comfortable reader a slap across the face and ask them to stop being so boring, help you evolve as a reader.  Many thanks, Nell Zink, I may not love your book and might not rate it a 5 star if I had to, but I would always be thankful for it.

Ardhra Prakash

26th November 2017

"Exit West By Mohsin Hamid: Refugee Crisis Through Magical Realism"

Find my extended review of Mohsin Hamid's Exit West for The Incisive Journal here. Disclaimer:  This article contains spoilers.  Skip paragraphs 6 and 7 to avoid them.

I am a bibliophile. But what I also am is broke through most of the month. A very normal condition for someone who recently changed jobs, have to pay rent and put food in their tummy while  living a couple of states away from the parents who once did all this for me only to be taken for granted until a brief time away. So, when I came across Mohsin Hamid’s Exit West impacting readers across the world in my Social Cataloging Site and driving Bookstagrammers crazy in my Instagram, I am not proud of it but I sent puppy eyed messages to my loving father asking him to order it for me. And he did. I got back home after a few long months and my father presented me with this perfect welcome back “gift.” Exit West is my first Mohsin Hamid book but certainly not the last.

Let’s forget for a minute, the beauty of the writing, the literary treat the book offers. Relevance is one of the biggest achievements of this book.

According to the UN High Commissioner for refugees, more than 65 million people have been displaced from their country of residence and/or origin, due to social and political conflicts, violence or human rights violations. This is the highest ever since World War II, constituted mainly by 5 nations – Syria, Afghanistan, The Lake Chad Basin, South Sudan and Somalia. The book stands wildly significant for me being from a country where the idea of burning Rohingya Muslims alive is applauded by privileged apathetic trolls bend over their computers and iPhones hurling abuses and threats, wherein we could’ve ended up on the wrong side of the border just as easily, by mere accident of birth. The same accident that lets me complain about being broke while I can very well feed, shelter, clothe myself well in a world where that remains a luxury to many.

In this beautiful book, Mohsin Hamid talks about the fate of millions of Nadia’s and Saeed’s, our protagonists, pot smoking youngsters from “a city swollen by refugees, but still mostly at peace, or at least not yet openly at war” in an unspecified country. Nadia is the independent working woman who chose being abandoned by her family over being a slave to nonsensical societal norms and propriety, daring to earn and live alone while Saeed is homelier and more conservative but when they meet and discover their budding love in a world that was just beginning to fall apart around them, they decided to hold onto each other a little tighter. Their seemingly normal lives are soon shaken by civil war from where magical doors take them to refugee camps across the globe here they need to build their lives from the handful of belongings they could fit into a backpack. These magical doors, guarded by the militants or the military, hard to find and expensive to get through, are a convenient metaphor to un-complicate a complicated, twisted reality, the migratory journey itself.  The story focuses on how the world and the people in it matures around these god forsaken times rather than the journey itself. But beyond the label of refugees, migrants and religion, Saeed and Nadia are human beings, youngsters, just like you and me, excited by that song, a magic mushroom, a tight rolled joint. Like it could’ve been you or me.

And while you relax thanking god for having been spared of these casually yet powerfully conveyed perils of 65 million fellow humans, he tells you, “…. everyone migrates, even if we stay in the same houses our whole lives, because we can’t help it. We are all migrants through time….and when we migrate, we murder from our lives the ones we leave behind.”

It also gets to me how subtly he takes us through the life of the once passionate couple as they grow apart unable to preserve what they had once, to remain unscathed after the tiresome journey that almost consumed them. “In the late afternoon, Saeed went to the top of the hill, and Nadia went to the top of the hill, and there they grazed out over the island, and out to the sea, and he stood beside where she stood and she stood beside where he stood and the wind tugged and pulled at their hair, and they looked around at each other, but they did not see each other, for she went up before him and he went up after her, and they were each at the crest of the hill only briefly, and at different times.”

No, it is not a happy ending for Nadia and Saeed’s romance. But it is a happy ending for the individuality and friendship they share. Of course I did feel uncomfortable reading the ending where the protagonists does not rekindle their relationship and walk holding hands towards the sunset. But that’s just the years of conditioning our movies and literature inflicted on us, reiterating the notion that the boyalways gets the girl. But maybe, it’s not about the boy and the girl and if they end up in each other’s arms at the end of the day. May be it is about how the boy and the girl blossomed into who they are today. Survivors with a journey they could be proud of. Chillingly casual and hauntingly mundane in the midst of the end of worlds, this book is definitely a good read.

Ardhra Prakash(14th Novemeber 2017)

Book Review: Dark Places by Gillian Flynn

Dark Places by Gillian Flynn
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

"I have a meanness inside me, real as an organ. Slit me at my belly and it might slide out, meaty and dark, drop on the floor so you could stomp on it." So begins the third Gillian Flynn thriller I read after Gone girl and Sharp Objects and I am absolutely bowled over.

Narrated from the points of view of the Murdered, the Accused and the Survivor, Dark Places pulls you into that big dark reading chair and even after you realise you're trapped, you don't want to leave before you read the next page and the next and then the next.

7 year old Libby Day is the sole survivor of the Kinnakee Satanic Massacre that left her 35 year old mother and 2 sisters aged 9 and 10 dead, which the world believes was conducted by her 15 year old brother Benjamin Day, also an alleged Satan worshipper and child molester. 25 years later, Libby is approached by Lyle Wirth, a member of the Kill Club, a group that solves murders and mysteries, obsessing over the case and convinced Ben is wrongfully convicted over the testimony from a 7 year old's unreliable memory. Exhausted of the money raised by charity for her support 25 years ago, baited by the lure of money by the members of Kill Club, Libby is compelled to look into the past. And once she embarks on that journey into her "Dark Place", there is no turning back.

Apart from the essential ingredients that make a best selling crime thriller - suspense, grip, sneak peeks of clues scattered through out that your head tries to work up like a puzzle, the book also has a certain poignancy and character attached to it. Like all of the "effortless storyteller's" other characters - Ben, Patty and Libby, The Days, my narrators, leave you hurting for them. All this while always keeping the rein of the story line tight and commanding the parade to a grand finale..
Yes. Yes. Yes. You got the point. Go get the book. 💁


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"Lolita: Pure Perversion or Sheer Brilliance?" With The Incisive Journal

If you have run through my blog before, you would know that I've already published a book review on Lolita. Well, here is another take on Lolita - an article I re worked for The Incisive Journal. Though the base review remains the same, it is a much deeper dive into the book and the characters. Enjoy it below. 

“Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta. She was Lo, plain Lo, in the morning, standing four feet ten in one sock. She was Lola in slacks. She was Dolly at school. She was Dolores on the dotted line. But in my arms, she was always Lolita.” 

Disgustingly brilliant. Pure perversion. One of the best books in modern literature. These are a few among the thousand descriptions you’d find for the book by Russian – American novelist Vladimir Nabokov, among reading circles. As a reader who relies heavily on reviews before picking up a book, the social cataloging website I frequently use for the same, bombarded me with mixed reviews, including one that said, “I never understood when an old friend used to say ‘Ulysses’ was a good book to read but not a good book to “read”. Lolita changed that.” 

And Lolita was all that and much more than it promised to be. It has been one of the most strenuous reads

of my life. A book that never let me lay back in peace, but rather had me cringing at the edge of my seat, worried if I was sinning against the “nymphet” Lolita or Dolores, 12 years, by lending ears to Humbert Humbert, an English professor is driven by desire, wanting his Lolita so badly that it never occurs to him to cum pedophile cum stepfather to the title character. “Humbert is every man who consider her as a human being, or as anything but a dream figment made flesh.” Elizabeth Janeway, The New York Times. 

Yes. Lolita is not human. Lolita is not Dolores. Lolita is Humbert’s desire, his obsession, his vulnerability, his inhumane passion, his excuses. Lolita is an explanation that the protagonist offers not to the reader but himself, desperately trying to a person. Proffered with such passion, it is terrifyingly poignant and untangle himself from the heinous crime of destroying a childhood and thereby, unnerving making you want to constantly remind yourself that it’s all a farce.

Humbert, the unreliable narrator here, overtly uses quite a few tools in the process, including a long dead childhood love he could never possess, intentional misinterpretation of Lolita’s helplessness as participation, his vehement attempts in conveying to the reader his good looks and desirability, the reason he believes Lo fell in in love with him just as he did for her. Yes. Above all, he tries to believe he was in love.

Lo isn’t portrayed as a child, but a rather glossy remnant of the paedophile’s memory. But once in a while, the narrator cannot but help l0ok at Dolores as a child he wronged, looking at her suffer and winch in his arms but he quickly tries to shake it off as her mood swing, a tease, Lolita used, to torture him with. His little monster. This is where Nabokov succeeds in making the smartest choice of employing solipsism or less technically put, simply the irrelevance of anything other than oneself. In the narrative, Dolores the 12 year old child is absent. What is offered is only the Lolita he carved out of her, his seducer.

Initially branded an erotic novel, Nabokov observes himself in his afterword that the few initial pages does mislead some readers (I believe, intentionally) into assuming this was going to be a lewd book expecting the rising succession of erotic moments but they are soon consumed by disappointment as the narrative changes form and starts barely mentioning the sexual encounters while focusing rather on the emotional consequences of his actions on Lolita but mostly on himself.

Published originally in English by a writer for whom the language isn’t even his first language, there is undeniable beauty and a concrete imprint left on the reader. As Humbert walks out bloody after murdering Quilty, Lolita’s wrongdoer and drives into the arms of the police, consumed by the guilt of what he had himself done to the child that she had been, one of the rare moments when Lolita is humanized, Nabokov has already drilled a hole in your heart but the head is exploding with compliments for the roller-coaster ride the writer created for you between the pages of this book.

Falling in the category of cult classics and path changers like Lady Chatterley’s Lover, born much ahead of its time, Lolita is that treasure of a book waiting to be savoured by you, if you can handle strain and are not easily rattled.

Ardhra Prakash

(26th October 2017)

#MeToo: Why It Is Hard But Important To Speak Up with TheIncisiveJournal.Com

Happy news, folks! 

Recently, I got invited by The Incisive Journal to be one of their guest writers. They describe themselves as a bunch of misfits with a common love for reading and writing. So, I guess I do fit in with them at the end of the day. 

They strongly disagree with censorship as they believe that "if there is something which bothers someone, maybe that person should walk away from it rather than asking that “something” to be banned or censored, it might be a Movie, a Book, a Painting or a Picture, unless that “something” is not forced down on you."

As if that wasn't reason enough to collaborate, they are "also doing their part to the environment by hosting the site in a server which is powered by wind energy. Renewable sources of energy is the redemption which everybody needs today at this time and age. Climate change is no joke and it is definitely not a hoax perpetuated by the Chinese."

Below is an article written for them. 

When I first saw the #MeToo posted by somebody on my newsfeed, I thought that was another online movement that was going to die away as soon as it came. But in the next 24 hours, it is not inaccurate to say that every second post on my feed was a #metoo or about #metoo.

This hashtag did not start yesterday. It started when activist Tarana Burke used it 10 years ago trying to comfort a little girl who opened up to her about the abuse she suffered from her mom’s boyfriend. But it caught up as a movement just a couple of days back when actress Alyssa Milano tweeted it in support of the brave women coming forward against the latest Hollywood debacle, Harvey Weinstein encouraging all the women who have been sexually harassed or assaulted to acknowledge the problem with a #metoo, so that people could be provided an insight into the magnitude of the problem. And as far as I can tell, it’s gone beyond that to inspire very relevant discussions.

Over 30% of the users who re tweeted the hashtag were men. Some in support for the women who came out with harassment stories but a sizable amount of men came out with their own stories of harassment they faced from men as well as women. This contradicts the sexist patriarchal thought that falsely identifies women as always being the victims while men are always the perpetrators – sometimes so internalized that if a male accepts being harassed, he’s seen as a weaker being, thus left to suffer as silent victims.

Another alarming similarity in almost half of these tweets were that a lot of people who shared the story said the abuse took place when they were kids or teenagers and the abusers were people they’ve known and have been taught to trust. A fact studies have been showing for many years, but the gravity of the situation sinks in very slowly as you move from post to post.

I was molested several times growing up but it took me a long time to realise what I was going through was abuse and that it was not my fault. I have never talked about my abuse stories before. I am not ashamed of it anymore but the first thing that came to my mind deciding whether to share my experiences with people was if there was any need to open a can of worms at this point.  But certain shocking responses by people who couldn’t empathise with these women but instead chose to ridicule them through social media, makes me think the other way. While a number of great many men and women came out pouring support and expressing concern, as always there were people out there calling the survivors “wannabes”, ranting about how social media isn’t the platform and this one guy genuinely seemed to believe that rather than wasting time on Facebook participating in online protests that are going to be forgotten in a jiffy, the victims should be approaching the “concerned authority” for once and all.

I think I must’ve been around 10 when I first experienced sexual abuse. My sister, around 14 then and I were in the midst of the 15 minute walk back after our weekly dance class, when a noble looking man on a motor bike who looked like he was in his early thirties stopped beside us and started asking questions about our private parts.

At age 13, my violin instructor at school would touch my thighs and shoulder unnecessarily. A lot of girls complained of the same but nobody wanted to make a “big deal” of it. Around the same time, I was flashed by a man, on my way back home from school. I remember being very happy that day until that point. I felt confused, nauseated, violated. I blamed myself for looking his way when he tried to get my attention.

I will spare you the stories of when I was leered, jeered and cat called while on the street minding my own business, cyber bullied with obscene comments and pornographic images on social media, being rubbed against and pinched while traversing crowded streets and public transport be it dusk or broad daylight. The other day when I was talking to my roommate of the abuses we’ve had to suffer, the above mentioned activities came out of us as “normal” things. Two proud feminists, discussing sexual abuse, addressing day to day abuses as normal. That’s how deep rooted and insanely prominent the problem is. So much so that it is pretty much a part and parcel of our lives.

What I’m trying to convey is that it is not easy standing up to abuse. I agree, it is necessary. But it is unimaginably hard. Especially when the whole world tells you to ignore it or to not make a big deal out of it. And especially when the perpetrators are people who you’ve been taught as trustworthy and respectable. It is confusing and very, very scary. It takes a lot of courage to come out and talk about what you’ve suffered while being a part of a society that blames the victims or trivialises issues such as these. In my case, it took me a long time to even understand and accept the fact that what I was going through was sexual offense.

It was a month before I could tell my mother about the abuse at the hand of my instruments teacher. I didn’t want to worry her. I couldn’t envision how she would comprehend it. But she understood. She told me that such morons were more common than I thought and that it wasn’t my fault. She said she could come down to my school and take care of the matter. But she’d rather have me face that monster myself because I could. She said she didn’t raise a coward. The next time, I glared at him as if I would pull out his tongue if he came anywhere near me. He never touched me again.

So, I guess the suggestion of the Facebook user, who tried to shame these men and women into reporting their stories to “concerned authorities”, from whose post all you can deduce is that he’s never got a wrong stare or an unwanted arm on his thigh, and is trying to objectively proffer a solution to a problem he isn’t even able to fully contemplate, is technically the ultimate solution. Problem. Report. Happy ending. He makes sense when not taking into account the finer nuances or rather shortcomings of the human mind. That, under the many layers that make us human, we are more than mere binary codes deciding pre – programmed actions and reactions. We and our everyday actions are the product of choices, experiences, thoughts, perceptions, strengths, weaknesses, reflections, reverberations, and vulnerabilities on an unimaginable scale.

On the brighter side, the hashtag has been receiving heartening responses from varied quarters. Be it men, women or authorities. They have come out in solidarity to the victims and have vowed to do their part however small it may be, but nevertheless important. #HowIWillChange and #SoDoneChilling are examples of parallel movements that have been born where men have vowed to stand up for victims, end cat calling, locker room jokes, rape jokes, teach their children to stand up against abuse, teach them to respect the other gender while being kind to their own gender and “do all this without expecting to be congratulated or praised”. The authorities in certain countries have also taken worthy stands. Notably, Kolkata police has sent out a tweet that said that they are perturbed by the startling numbers of women facing sexual harassment and that they would like to reiterate their pledge and commitment by saying that they hear every one of these women. They urged survivors to be strong and very very angry and report any kind of verbal and physical abuse to the police every time. Most importantly, Kolkata police announced that they have already started with Dear Boys initiative as they believe education about the severity of the issues to young boys can be a game changer. So may be, the hashtag wasn’t indeed a soon to be passé phenomenon.

Ardhra Prakash

(21st October 2017)

Book review: The Room by Emma Donoghue

Room by Emma Donoghue
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

'Goodbye, Room." I wave up at Skylight. "Say goodbye," I tell Ma. "Goodbye, Room."
Ma says it but on mute.
I look back one more time. It's like a crater, a hole where something happened. Then we go out the door.' Room is the much acclaimed Man Booker nomination worthy novel from Emma Donoghue about Jack and his Ma.
Jack is 5 and Ma is 26. Jack and Ma lives in the Room with Bed, Rug, Wardrobe, Meltedy spoon, Toilet, Bath and many many things that they fit in their 11*11 square foot prison and this is the story of how they survive it and execute a Grand Escape from Old Nick, who stole 7 precious years of their life. But the most important part of the book, I must say is, after the escape. The story is narrated by the 5 year old boy who has always thought anything other than he and his mother and a few inanimate objects, were not real, but only TV. The book is about how Jack comes into terms with all these new experiences, information and rules he suddenly has to remember and obey to be part of the society.
As I turned from page to page, the innocent observations Jack makes about the various constituents of his new world, like adults, manners, time et cetera cracked me up or made me nod in agreement. A beautiful book through the eyes of a child, his doubts about the world, his love for his mother, his admiration for Dora and above all, how he traverses life though he is not really "scaredy brave" but just scared.
Also, this is special for, brace yourselves, I have successfully completed my #goodreadschallenge third year in a row. 17/17, not bad, eh?


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Book Review: The Help by Katherine Stockett

The Help by Kathryn Stockett
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
My grandmother, M.S. Kamakalshyamma is the best story teller I've ever come across. Better than Tolstoy, I'd say. She used to lie down next to me when I was younger and tell me all kinds of stories. About her childhood, about Ramayana, about Hansel and Gretel.. . I must've heard those stories a hundred times. And I still miss them. I miss them so much I want to cry.
Kathryn Stockett, here, our dear author of this beautiful beautiful book, reminds me of her as she talks about a society "where white women trust coloured maids with their children but not their silver". It is outstanding, funny, heart touching and it has a purpose. As the protagonist thinks aloud to herself, "Wasn't that the point of the book? For women to realise, We are just two people. Not that much separates us. Not nearly as much as I'd thought." Kathryn derives this book from her life. As you go through the final chapter of the book describing her own help growing up, Demitrie, you realise, that the feisty Minny, the wise Aibelleen, the forgiving Louvenia are all Demitrie and this is Kathryn's eulogy for her the woman who taught her life. The women she talks about are well characterised and deep and strong and inspiring.
I'd say don't think twice. Just get yourself the book and thanks to my buddy Anirudh for lending me this gem! 

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Book Review: Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov

Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

"Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta.She was Lo, plain Lo, in the morning, standing four feet ten in one sock. She was Lola in slacks. She was Dolly at school. She was Dolores on the dotted line. But in my arms she was always Lolita. "

Digustingly brilliant. Pure perversion. One of the best books in modern literature. These are a few descriptions you'd find for the book by Russian - American novelist Vladimir Nabokov, a book that can never let you lay back in peace, but rather have you cringing at the edge of your seat, worried if you're sinning against the "nymphet" Lolita or Dolores, 12 years, by lending ears to Humbert Humbert, an English professor cum pedophile cum stepfather to the aforesaid. "Humbert is every man who is driven by desire, wanting his Lolita so badly that it never occurs to him to consider her as a human being, or as anything but a dream figment made aflesh. "
Elizabeth Janeway, The New York Times.

Yes. Lolita is not human. Lolita is not Dolores. Lolita is Humbert's desire, his obsession, his vulnerability, his inhumane, passion, his excuses. Lolita is an explanation, I feel, that the protagonist offers not to the reader but ultimately himself, desperately trying to untangle himself of his supreme crime of destroying a childhood and thereby, person.

Humbert, the narrator, overtly uses quite a few tools in the process, including a long dead childhood love he could never possess, his vehement attempts in conveying to the reader his good looks, which he believes was a reason his Lo, fell in love with him just as he did for her. Above all, he believes he was in love.

Lo isn't portrayed as a child, but a rather glossy remnant of the pedophile's memory. But once in a while, the narrator cannot but help look at Dolores as a child wronged. From where he quickly tries to shake it off as her moodswing, a tease, Lolita used, to torture him. His little monster.

If you aren't easily rattled, get yourself a copy, by all means, a goodread.


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Book Review: Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I watched two movies based on Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice before I actually read the book. "Bride and Prejudice" was shitty while "Pride and Prejudice" unhooking, though well attempted. And before I began the book, Goodreads threw at me reviews from a mix of readers who either hated it or absolutely loved it. But, being the only book available in my reading app, I started the book and thank god, I did.
It is not addictive. It isn't fast. it isn't the literary masterpiece I was expecting it to be. At least not to me. As a fellow #goodreader commented, "language that could be beautiful ends up difficult to decipher and I find myself going back to those paragraphs again and again, to be left unsatisfied. " But one thing it is is, it is intriguing and subtly witty. And there are these terrific one liners that lights you up. For that, I now pronounce, Pride of Mr. Darcy and Prejudice of Ms. Bennet, who gave meaning to the wonderfully chosen title, a good read.


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Book Review: Chronicles of a Corpse bearer by Cyrus Mistry

Chronicle of a Corpse Bearer by Cyrus Mistry
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Phiroze Elchidana is the second son of Famroze Elchidana, the well respected head priest of an agiary in Bombay. When he meets Sepideh one fine evening in the Doongerwadi, the Parsi funeral ground that houses the much famous tower of silence, he falls irrevocably in love, ready to marry into the sub community of the Khandias, aka the corpse bearers - the ones who "clean and swaddle (corpses) for the banquet of the birds" because of the "squeamishness and ingratitude" of the community, that in turn unfairly treats them like a disease, which if not kept well away, might spread. Outcast by his family and soon after left widowed with a three year old daughter, the book is put out as a collection of scribbles Phiroze leaves on empty pages. About his life and the meaning that the death towers provided to it. About his true love for the woman of his life and the gift she left behind. About how the world around him changed as he put on a few extra years. With writing so beautiful and touching, a good read, definitely.


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Book review: Exit West by Mohsin Hamid

Exit West by Mohsin Hamid
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I got back home to Kerala after a few long months and my father presented me with this perfect perfect welcome back. Exit West is one of the first books of Mohsin Hamid that I have read but certainly not the last.

In this beautiful book, he talks about the fate of millions of Nadia's and Saeed's whose seemingly normal lives were shaken by civil war in an unspecified country from where magical doors take them to refugee camps across the globe. The story focuses on how the world and the people in it, matures around these god forsaken times. And while you relax thanking god for having been spared from these casually yet powerfully conveyed perils of fellow humans, he tells you, ".... everyone migrates, even if we stay in the same houses our whole lives, because we can't help it. We are all migrants through time."

It also gets to me how subtly he takes us through the life of the once passionate couple as they grow apart unable to preserve what they had once, to remain unscathed. "In the late afternoon, Saeed went to the top of the hill, and Nadia went to the top of the hill, and there they grazed out over the island, and out to the sea, and he stood beside where she stood and she stood beside where he stood and the wind tugged and pulled at their hair, and they looked around at each other, but they did not see each other, for she went up before him and he went up after her, and they were each at the crest of the hill only briefly, and at different times."

Chillingly casual and hauntingly mundane in the midst of the end of worlds, this book is definitely a goodread. Thank you @thousandsofpages (Mackenzie) for making me want to pick it up.


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Book review: One Indian Girl by Chetan Bhagat

One Indian Girl by Chetan Bhagat
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Picking up a Chetan Bhagat book is like ordering cheap Chinese when you have had too many gourmet meals. It is cheap, quick and it is easy. The book is no different from its predecessors. It is junk. Neither the content, nor the writing leaves you satisfied. But do I have the right to complain? Not really. He never claimed it to be different
from any of his previous books. Plus the book reviews, as usual, were tight slaps across the former banker's face. So, I am solely responsible for the 4 hours spent on this book that left me with nothing. And no doubt it is going to follow suit and be made into a masala Bollywood movie soon. And I am sure a successful one. How could it be not? exotic Punjabi wedding, enough and more drama in 3 iconic cities, and lots of sex! What else would you require?

About the book! Nothing notable except for the extremely hypocritical and unlikeable protagonist, Radhika Mehta. But then again just because the book is about her does not really mean she has to be perfect. The feminist tag attached to the book has attracted a lot of smirks and rightly so when he hasn't even actually taken the effort to understand what the movement really is about before he tried and defined itbon his own terms. Not cool, Mr. Bhagat.

Would I recommend this book to others? Hell, no. Would I read another book of Chetan Bhagat's? why not? It's not like I would've joined the Red Cross and fed the poor in the few hours that it would cost me.


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