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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