As I'm facing my first real winter, I find myself gravitating towards fiction that explicitly features ice, snow and severely cold climate. Spinning sAs I'm facing my first real winter, I find myself gravitating towards fiction that explicitly features ice, snow and severely cold climate. Spinning silver had all of this and more. I've always found fairytales incredibly fascinating, and this Rumpelstiltskin retelling was not only satisfying, but also sexy. I am so in love with the male protagonists of the book, they made me swoon. This is how you write good male characters. As though that wasn't enough, the female characters were fierce, courageous, ambitious and oh-so-feminist. It's rare to see such characters and character development in SFF.
I loved the playful duality between good and evil, or more precisely, the duality between comfort and danger in this book. Are they sharp jaws or soft, smooth pillows? Should I kill my husband or make love with him? It's also interesting that the characters in this book truly started living when they knew how they'll die. Something about fairytales in general taps into the collective consciousness of humanity, and this book was not an exception. We relate to all of the characters, understand them and live through them. Because we know how they'll die. Novak drew this book like a blade from a sheath, smooth and sharp....more
This is apparently a feminist fantasy book, "a feminist successor to the lord of the rings" one of the reviews featured on the back cover of the book This is apparently a feminist fantasy book, "a feminist successor to the lord of the rings" one of the reviews featured on the back cover of the book says. I suppose it's feminist in some ways. Except, I don't understand why dragons had to be the villains, you can't even claim historical accuracy on this one. (This isn't a spoiler by the way, you read about this right in the beginning. In fact, I read on to see if the dragons are not the actual villains.) I mean, you have dragons at your disposal and you make them villains? I also don't understand why the only other villains in the book had to be power hungry women. I guess it shows women are just as bad as men when it comes to power, and I appreciate that. But the book was very clickbaity .
The author seems to have prioritised romance over individual character development. Not that I ask for character development in SFF. (Wait, I actually do. That's why Ursula K Le Guin is my favorite SFF writer.) But I'm not gonna stick around just for the romance and predictable plotlines. Except I did, and I hated it.
The book was repetitive, reductive and redundant. I just wish it had been at least a bit more recalcitrant....more
My most fulfilling relationships (even more than romantic/sexual relationships) have been my friendships with women. This wasn't always so. FriendshipMy most fulfilling relationships (even more than romantic/sexual relationships) have been my friendships with women. This wasn't always so. Friendship between women are an ugly, complex, infinitely beautiful thing full of envy, greed and love. My early friendships with women had more of those negative feelings because I was a hopelessly insecure teenager, like everyone else, and so more vulnerable to social conditioning. It was only later that I realised that my friendship with women can be pure, wholesome and incredibly fulfilling. Ever since I turned eighteen, I've been fortunate enough to find at least one such friendship at every phase of my life. To this day, when I'm in pain I yearn for my mother and/or my best friend that I met at eighteen. I've met many such women since (even on the internet, right here on Goodreads! Gtfo if you think internet friends aren't real) and it is them I go to when I need comfort.
Part of what connects me to them is our shared experience of having been othered, of not even being othered (woman does not exist they said, we are so far outside the realm of symbolic order that the only impression we leave is that of non-existentence) and so I recognise myself in them, like looking into a distorted mirror at times.
And it is this mirroring through separation filled with anguish and love between Nel and Sula that actually made me tear up. And I will remember this till memory leaves me:
Suddenly Nel stopped. Her eye twitched and burned a little. “Sula?” she whispered, gazing at the tops of trees. “Sula?” Leaves stirred; mud shifted; there was the smell of overripe green things. A soft ball of fur broke and scattered like dandelion spores in the breeze. “All that time, all that time, I thought I was missing Jude.” And the loss pressed down on her chest and came up into her throat. “We was girls together,” she said as though explaining something. “O Lord, Sula,” she cried, “girl, girl, girlgirlgirl...more
In her writing, Becky Chambers is remarkably adept at exploring any conflict through a compassionate perspective that sometimes verges on the overly-sIn her writing, Becky Chambers is remarkably adept at exploring any conflict through a compassionate perspective that sometimes verges on the overly-sugary but also just happens to be something we all need in this capitalist hellscape.This book in particular, focuses on a planet-wide crisis that leaves its characters stranded, isolated and reliant on strangers. Had I read the blurb, I would have been sure it wouldn't work because it's too soon. We aren't desensitized enough to read pandemic inspired science fiction and not get offended by atleast some aspects of it. But Becky Chambers always surprises me.
This book captures the simultaneous close-encounter-with and detachment-from the here-now that we experience during a crisis really well, while also incorporating several other themes like a refugee crisis, speciesism, ableism, war, social taboos, motherhood, the unbridgeable gap between us and the other and the extra kindness that our interactions therefore demand. And relief of all reliefs: there isn't a single heteronormative, white, human male character here. Actually, there isn't any sort of human character if you don't count mere mentions.
More than anything, Becky Chambers here shows (shows, not tells) that compassion, understanding and sustainable solutions are possible even during a situation that enforces a collective alienation.
Oh and about that whole debate between Pei and Speaker, I am and will always be team speaker. Don't try telling me that there are no teams. Even here, Chambers brilliantly demonstrates how a position of privilege and power can and will cloud your scope for any sort of egalitarian and objective understanding....more
What could possibly indicate a definite end? The line between differences getting more and more obscure? A dissolution of meanings, perceived or constWhat could possibly indicate a definite end? The line between differences getting more and more obscure? A dissolution of meanings, perceived or constructed? A merging with the foreign other? An odyssey through the different circles of hell - which in the case of this book, is an arid, hostile landscape? Or all of this? A veritable world of shadows, where disparities, in their dance towards unity shine out more than ever? As if pulled in by the centripetal force of their movements?
To me, Makina, the protagonist of this book emulated an androgynous mode of being. Always existing in the border between differences, she also mediated the movements between them. Until she had to cross over, in search of a brother long lost and in a bid to bring him back. And as after passing through the nine circles of hell in Dante's Inferno, Makina has to ask: where is back?
This book, with its simple yet surrealist prose and a very philosophical confrontation with the alien, is simply stunning. Four stars only because I wish it had been longer.
We are to blame for this destruction, we who don’t speak your tongue and don’t know how to keep quiet either. We who didn’t come by boat, who dirty up your doorsteps with our dust, who break your barbed wire. We who came to take your jobs, who dream of wiping your shit, who long to work all hours. We who fill your shiny clean streets with the smell of food, who brought you violence you’d never known, who deliver your dope, who deserve to be chained by neck and feet. We who are happy to die for you, what else could we do? We, the ones who are waiting for who knows what. We, the dark, the short, the greasy, the shifty, the fat, the anemic. We the barbarians....more
Now I know nothing about E M Forster, sadly, I haven't read any of his books yet. I obviously did not read Howard's end, the book On Beauty is based oNow I know nothing about E M Forster, sadly, I haven't read any of his books yet. I obviously did not read Howard's end, the book On Beauty is based on, is inspired by. Yet, I can tell you that most of this book, perhaps even all of this book, is about seduction. All sorts of seduction - sexual, intellectual, the pull of a different identity, the allure of the 'almosts'. And so it's also about all the various characters rejecting, resisting, accepting, reluctantly pursuing, enthusiastically falling prey for these seductions.
Another relevant theme that sometimes just lurks in the background and sometimes just ambushes you full-force, is music. There's a very comical, emotional, confusing concert featuring Mozart's requiem, there's revolutionary hip-hop and spoken word, there's rap, there's Haitian music, there's extremely distressing funeral music and a horribly embarassing, very funny scence featuring a glee club.
There are extremes - political extremes, ethical extremes, academic extremes, racial extremes. You are pulled forward in every direction until you can't help but firmly stay rooted to your spot and scream "Oh my God, leave me alone" in agony.
Underneath all of this, Rembrandt and his paintings, and visual arts in general, follow us like vengeful spirits. They cast their ever-watchful eye upon us, the readers, as we stumble through the text and try to decide which character's take on art we like best. And just when we think we know, there's that inescapable question: what does any of this even mean?...more
**spoiler alert** Shortlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction, 2021.
I seem to be of a highly unpopular opinion here, so I'm just going to list the r**spoiler alert** Shortlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction, 2021.
I seem to be of a highly unpopular opinion here, so I'm just going to list the reasons why I disliked this book:
1. The forced, in-your-face spirituality (read: religion) : It's not that I no longer find questions concerning the existence of God fascinating. It's that I find it utterly annoying when the answer has been predetermined, decided upon even before the question is given a fair chance at speculation. We know Gifty never really lost her belief, even when she claims to have. We know the book will end with her returning to "God". At least, I knew it for certain. I did not really have a problem with Gifty's obsession with God and the God question, I also did not mind that she would return to God eventually. It's her version of God that I didn't like, to be even more specific, I didn't like this version of God being forced on the readers. In one instance Gifty leaves a spoken-word show because a woman keeps referring to God as 'she'. It was this insistence on the Christian God, the God that is a 'He' and the refusal to envision God as anything else that bothered me. It was this passing off the singular as typical that made the spirituality aspect of the book seem forced. And I'm certain I would have disliked this even if I wasn't an atheist.
2. The barely hinted at bisexuality: This is a blink-and-you'll-miss-it. This is perhaps what annoyed me the most about the book. There are no homosexual relationships, no exploration of Gifty's bisexuality but just short descriptions (just two of them) of Gifty being turned on by other women that felt like it was written for the male gaze. I couldn't ignore the feeling that this was written to just add in the 'woke' element and as a bisexual woman, I hated it. I do not particularly mind if books don't have lgbtq characters, but when an author decides to include an lgbtq character, I want honest representation.
3. No visible character progress: I do not mind morbid books, I do not demand that the characters I read about show any growth. It's okay if they remain broken and traumatized. We watch Gifty suffer and mourn. We read as she isolates herself and shuns the world. And this is okay. What isn't okay is that in the epilogue she is miraculously 'fine', capable of having good relationships and dealing with her trauma. And this comes right after a nerve-wracking chapter in which we are left extremely concerned for Gifty and her mother. If I'm going to read about a grieving, traumatized character and then you're going to show that she'll be okay, I want to know how she got there. I don't like this "one thing led to another" narrative. I don't like this "I know she suffered, but look, she turns out fine." I don't like gaps.
4. Some characters that were just props: Katherine, Han. Need I say more? Especially Han. Han, the guy Gifty miraculously ends up with and we know barely anything about, despite him being a 'lurker' character throughout the book. I wouldn't mind if he was a mere lurker. But Gifty ends up with him in a healthy relationship. So I definitely would have liked to know more about him.
Having said all this, I did like its portrayal of addiction, depression, grief and racism. I loved that its protagonist was a woman of color in STEM. But in the end, the cons outweighed the pros for me....more
Shortlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction, 2021
I want to write so many things about this book, but even now, two weeks after finishing it, I am stShortlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction, 2021
I want to write so many things about this book, but even now, two weeks after finishing it, I am still in awe to the point of speechlessness. The layers of its themes and settings overlap and intersect in ways that left me looking for hints between the lines.
The protagonists of the story, identical twins Desiree and Stella, both try to kill their collective and individual pasts, and so it haunts them with a ferocity that's a constant gnaw at their chests, an unbearable thrum in their veins. Both are driven from the conditions of upbringing and the trauma they experienced to reclaim authorship over their lives, albeit in opposingly different ways.
While Stella exercises volition in shaping her life, Desiree is more impelled by will and its constraints - a will that is burdened with a sense of duty. The difference between what they could be and what they are, what they choose to be affects even their daughters. The past is a burden, a heritage, a family relic that they pass on.
History in this story is an active, live thing. It often turns malicious and is out to choke the characters, even when they least expect it.
The most important theme however, is race and race consciousness and how it assimilates in different ways for all the characters. It lunges at them sometimes even as consequences of choices that they did not have the privilege of making. The idea of freedom and freedom of expression is behind every character's actions, and therefore in the writing too.
I considered giving this book 4.5 stars, but the warmth and honesty of Resse and Jude's relationship sealed the deal for me. This is a solid 5 stars book.
Edit: And Early. Early deserves five stars too!...more
Five months into the year, I realised that I haven't read any Indian fiction yet and so I picked up this book. Gods I don't believe in, please save meFive months into the year, I realised that I haven't read any Indian fiction yet and so I picked up this book. Gods I don't believe in, please save me from this 'woke' melodrama. The writing was so milquetoast and even parts of the book that were slightly intriguing were unbearable because of the drama.
And listen, you're not going to get any points for lgbtq representation if your lgbtq character is a misogynistic creeper. Now I know that there are queer misogynistic creepers out there. I just don't know what the author was trying to get at within this book, because clearly we were supposed to feel compassion for the characters, but all I feel is indifference. I don't care what happens to these characters and that's one of the worst things anyone can say about a book....more
Hello there! Are you worried that the pre-pandemic panic (or lack thereof if you're from the US), and the post-pandemic lethargy is here to stay? Do yHello there! Are you worried that the pre-pandemic panic (or lack thereof if you're from the US), and the post-pandemic lethargy is here to stay? Do you find yourself constantly battling with episolatory anxiety and wake up several times in the night to check if you really accepted all those cookies or if you really agreed to engage in mindless labour for Zuckerberg and the likes, but then, when you're just on the verge of slipping into a void of all-consuming fear, you feel a sense of an almost numbing shock wash over you because your high school classmate who you haven't seen in 15 years is getting married and her dog is going to be the ring-bearer and look at all those cute engagement pictures, and now you have to let out an envious aww and go back to sleep. Phew, that was close. Are you worried that the state of emergency invoked during the dire circumstances of the pandemic will not be revoked and so we'll slip into demagoguery and authoritarian populism? Come on, it's for your own safety. What about when you're walking alone in the street at night, don't your paleolithic instincts creep up on you and you're just so sure you're being followed - except oh! This is the 21st century stupid, nobody is following you, there are surveillance cameras everywhere. It's just your primitive brain reminding you of a device in your pocket that's being used to extract everything that can be known about you. Fingerprints? Voice? Sexual preferences? Don't worry, data mining has you covered! However, if you're still the paranoid type and just can't convince yourself that you're only being silly and that they, you know THEY - the 0.001%, are onto you, then Another Now is for you! Just find the nearest wormhole and hop into a parallel universe!
Of course we can't guarantee that it will be any better, but if you somehow do end up in the another now that Varoufakis outlines in this book, then hurrah! Maybe? Well, it isn't the perfect utopia but it's certainly better than what we have here.
In his public appearances, Varoufakis often talks about the twin peaks paradox which is the idea that we're stuck between a gargantuan mountain of idle money (never before has the western world had so much money in its banking systems) and another ever-growing mountain of debts (low investment in social necessities relative to available money.) We seem to be buying into this idea that everything is fine and we're all in this together, when really it's only the money markets that are doing well, really well even, while the rest of the world seems to be facing a crisis. Another thing Varoufakis has often warned us about is techno-feudalism. It seems as though Varoufakis tried to create a world that overcomes both these dangers and splendidly at that, almost.
You might love the other now so much that you'll want to stay or, like me and certain other characters from the book you might discover that utopias are not just stumbled onto, but made. Either way, the world Varoufakis offers is well worth looking into....more
Now that I've read all the books of The Wayfarers series published so far, I can easily say that The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet is my favouriteNow that I've read all the books of The Wayfarers series published so far, I can easily say that The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet is my favourite of the three. While Record of a Spaceborn Few is definitely complex and nuanced (I've come to expect this from all of Becky Chambers' books,) it does not really pack a punch like the first book did.
One of the things that I love the most about Chambers' writing is the elegant depth of her characters. They often interact with each other and the plot in ways that delicately blend together to shed light on some intricate issues like immigration, speciesism, war, the anthropomorphic qualities and rights of sentient artificial intelligence, parenting, death and suffering.
The characters of the first book made such a powerful impression on me, that the characters from this book seemed dull in comparison. I did absolutely love Sawyer, but if you've read the book you'll know why I'm disappointed with his character arc. I would never have expected this from Chambers, but Sawyer seemed like a mere plot device to me and his storyline was very unfair. (I know this was what the author intended, I get the irony of my disappointment.)
However, I will always be in awe of Becky Chambers' layered writing, the diversity of her characters and the simple yet heartwarming plot. I am absolutely delighted to know that the fourth book in this series will be published in 2021!
P.S. Enough with the standalones, take us back to Ashby and his crew, Becky!...more
This is going to sound weird, but this book was too optimistic for my tastes. Had I read it at a different time of my life, a time when I looked at thThis is going to sound weird, but this book was too optimistic for my tastes. Had I read it at a different time of my life, a time when I looked at the world around me with gleeful eyes, then maybe I would have liked it better.
To be fair, I really loved the protagonist. She's the type of female character I want to see represented more in the media. Her character possessed so much depth, and earlier in the book, a lot of potential too. But when I finished reading this, I had the same feeling of disappointment that often washes over me when I watch movies with 'strong' female characters that for half of the movie do not want to have any kids, but end up with a dozen of them anyway because they felt 'incomplete'.
Perhaps I'm being too harsh on this book. This isn't like Kafka on the Shore - now if you like that book, I'm going to instantly develop a 5% aversion towards you and I know I'm being judgy. No, I can see why people like this book. I just do not like books that read more like movie/tv series scripts and this was certainly one of them....more
This book feels more like Winterson's love letter to time, its uncertainties and the almost imperceptible irregularities, to the fickle nature of realThis book feels more like Winterson's love letter to time, its uncertainties and the almost imperceptible irregularities, to the fickle nature of reality and to the ephemerality of truth. It can even be read as a lengthy ode, and I am completely besotted with it.
At the crux of the book is the idea that the spacetime we inhabit is a lie we tell ourselves, perhaps even a mirage projected by our thirst for a tangible reality. But reality itself is not static, it is a product of intersections between multiple trajectories, and some of these points appear to be more densely concentrated with truth than others. And so the dog woman and Jordan live through multiple ages, through various phatasmagoric landscapes, bearing witness to the erratic looping and unwinding of time.
Winterson clearly believes in imbuing her characters with an agency, a sense of self that can even be separated from the story. This is very evident in her retelling of the tale of the twelve dancing sisters, where each sister practices an autonomy that is unshakeable in its essence.
The events outlined in Sexing The Cherry happen in two different centuries, perhaps even simultaneously. What's significant is the subterfuge of its characters across all lifetimes, their unapologetic resistance to the sedimentary nature of time, and the homage they pay both to their past and future selves (since all of time is just a single point in this book) while making their selfhoods anew.
With its occasional dark humour and witty commentary on love, sex, gender, capitalism, sin and religion, Sexing The Cherry is nothing short of a masterpiece. The writing style also reminded me of one of my favourite poetry collections, The World Doesn't End. Suffice it to say that I am in love with this book.
My experience of time is mostly like my experience with maps. Flat, moving in a more or less straight line from one point to another. Being in time, in a continuous present, is to look at a map and not see the hills, shapes and undulations, but only the flat form. There is no sense of dimension, only a feeling for the surface. Thinking about time is more dizzy and precipitous. Thinking about time is like turning the globe round and round, recognizing that all journeys exist simultaneously, that to be in one place is not to deny the existence of another, even though that other place cannot be felt or seen, our usual criteria for belief....more
It is said that the socialist flag is red in colour not just because of its links of communism, but also because it's a celebration of the blood of alIt is said that the socialist flag is red in colour not just because of its links of communism, but also because it's a celebration of the blood of all the martyrs who lost their lives for its cause. Rosa Luxemburg was one such brave, badass martyr. She was Polish, Jewish, an economist, a philosopher, a socialist revolutionary, a political refugee and disabled. Most of these things should have kept her within the margins of the society at the time, but Rosa always strode onwards and upwards.
This is a marvelous little book, the illustrations are splendid and Kate Evans has put in great efforts to do justice to the various aspects of Rosa Luxemburg's life. What I found to be particularly brilliant was the way in which Evans wrote and drew about complex economic and political theories that Luxemburg developed. Luxemburg was specifically interested in solving the problem of capitalist expansion and was among the first (along with Lenin) to link capitalistic growth and imperialism and she did it several decades before the word 'globalization' was even coined.
Accounts of Rosa Luxemburg's life generally focus too much on her political theories while hardly talking about her personal life, but Evans here has wonderfully, aesthetically portrayed Luxemburg's love life and erotic interests. There's so much attention to details, that this book is certainly NSFW. If you think you can educate your children about Luxemburg's life and ideas through this book, boy, have I got bad news for you.
Luxemburg lived in a deeply patriarchal society but she always rebelled against it, and this is an important aspect that's depicted throughout the book. Luxemburg was also a wonderful human, amazing writer and a cat mother. The illustrations of her cat in this book will leave you smiling with adoration.
I finished this book more than a week ago, but had to collect my thoughts to write this review because I was heartbroken over Luxemburg's execution. If you are into graphic novels, I cannot recommend this enough.
image: [image]
image: [image]
Here's a link to an excerpt from the book in which Rosa Luxemberg explains capitalism using spoons....more
According to a study of 293 of the world's leading port cities conducted by NASA, my quaint little coastal hometoShortlisted for the 2020 Booker Prize
According to a study of 293 of the world's leading port cities conducted by NASA, my quaint little coastal hometown is the most vulnerable of all of India's ports to the effects of climate change. The sea level is predicted to rise by 14.60 cm a century from now. What this means is that by 2100, my hometown will surely be uninhabitable and may go under water.
Although it may seem like an event in the distant, unfathomable future, we are facing its precursors right now. In the past three years, the western coastal region of India has seen turbulent monsoons, increased flooding and deadly landslides.
Amitav Ghosh, in his seminal book The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable published in 2016 made a case for a sub-genre of fiction dealing with climate change. Fiction after all is an important imaginative device, fiction is capable of constructing a bridge between the transitory, ordinary present and the inscrutable, unforeseeable future.
That climate change casts a much smaller shadow within the landscape of literary fiction than it does even in the public arena is not hard to establish. To see that this is so we need only glance through the pages of a few highly regarded literary journals and book reviews, for example, the London Review of Books, the New York Review of Books, the Los Angeles Review of Books, the Literary Journal and the New York Times Review of Books. When the subject of climate change appears in these publications, it is almost always in relation to non-fiction; novels and short stories are very rarely to be glimpsed within this horizon. Indeed, it could even be said that fiction that deals with climate change is almost by definition not of the kind that is taken seriously by serious literary journals: the mere mention of the subject is often enough to relegate a novel or a short story to the genre of science fiction. It is as though in the literary imagination climate change were somehow akin to extraterrestrials or interplanetary travel.
And we do need books that probe into the themes of climate change, overpopulation, post climate change living, disaster management and human solidarity. Fortunately, The New Wilderness is one such book. Unfortunately, it mostly sucks.
I have always struggled with separating unlikeable characters from the story itself. In fact, I have always struggled with unlikeable characters in general. I don't know how fair it is of us to demand that the characters we read of be likeable. One of the wonderful things about fiction is that it represents all facets of humanity. And this story has hordes of unlikeable characters, the foremost of them being Carl and Bea. But while navigating a strange, unfamiliar world even within fiction, the least I expect is a reliable protagonist.
The plot itself is quite boring, some ends seem frayed and the author seems to have picked up certain plot lines on a whim, only to abandon them later.
But what I take an issue with is the premise itself. That human beings when left amidst wilderness will turn savage themselves and only live within a communal structure that relies on a brutal, teeth-baring alpha figure. That it's in our nature to resort to duals and animalistic fucking to settle arguments that's reminiscent of our supposed nomadic past. I think it's fair to conclude that we've come a long way from that and when trying to survive in an unknown territory as a group, would still rely on well organized structures.
At the heart of this story is the supposed complication of a mother-daughter relationship. It's mostly a story of mothers doing things secretively to protect their offspring, and daughters being eternally wary and vowing to never turn out like their mothers. But alas, we cannot escape the trappings of our genetics and so eventually we do end up like the mothers we scorned and finally understand them. Seriously, writers need to stop milking this thematic cow.
I’ll tell her this story and the others with all their complications and confusions because those complications and confusions are what make them true. It feels at times like the only instinct left in me. It’s the only way I know to raise a daughter. It’s how my mother raised me.
Although I did not particularly enjoy this book, I will acknowledge its importance. It covers important themes that need to be discussed and normalized. Our news channels should be dedicating entire prime-time slots for many of these themes, so people can understand the threat of the disasters looming over us and the need for an immediate solution.
I worry for the people of my hometown. For my parents, neighbors, friends, extended family. I suppose I could just ask them to sell their houses and move.
I have been on a lookout for fiction that exclusively deals with the theme of climate change ever since I read The Great Derangement. I've had Flight Behavior that Ghosh praised in his book on my radar for a long time now. If you know of more books, please do let me know. It will be greatly appreciated....more
This is not my usual cup of tea. But then again, I don't drink tea so I really ought to say this is not my usual cup. But then again, a cup is topologThis is not my usual cup of tea. But then again, I don't drink tea so I really ought to say this is not my usual cup. But then again, a cup is topologically equivalent to a doughnut and I do like doughnuts so I thought, meh why not have a bite. Folks, let me warn you binge reading on the basis of capriciously formed excuses is as caustic as binge eating, and this is not a rabbit hole you want to be falling into.
Also, the recommendation for this book came from an unreliable source (my boyfriend) who is infamous for picking books on a whim without sufficient research (I abhor that. Who was the wise soul who proclaimed 'so many books, so little time' ? Nevermind, it's the truth of the statement that matters.), so the title of the book is the very question I expected to be asking myself while reading it. Well, here I am with my four stars rating surprising nobody.
And, I thought I deserved a break from the heavy literature of war, death and grief I've been reading lately (The Enlightenment of the Greengage Tree and Apeirogon) and although I find both of them thoroughly engrossing, there's only so much I can take at a time before the morbidity gets to me. And it turns out that I was right. This book was a chuckle riot. And I learnt a new word: thingamabob. Honestly now that I know of it, that's all I aspire to be. How could you be hiding from me for all these years, oh aim of my life!
The protagonist of this book, Money, has to deal with a missing cat, a drug addict daughter and a son who is in police custody as part of a witness protection program all while working as a Hollywood scriptwriter, a job she is steadily growing wary of. So she resorts to talking to herself and rearranging, painting and fixing various objects (that do not need any sort of alteration) around her house.
I say to myself, “You’re not thinking right, you’re not thinking clearly.” I say, “You’re thinking, thinking, thinking, but most of it is gobbledygook.”
She also has a very interesting best friend who deems it appropriate to toot his insouciant little horn at all times while still pining for his ex-wife. Although as a character, he is a lovely addition to the plot, and strives his hardest to help keep Money sane.
Now he and I are watching as some charitable organization pleads away on the television. The spokesperson says that without our donations many Third World children will go blind. “Where the fuck is my government?” asks Hollis. “Why should this be left up to me?” He says, “Suppose I don’t have any money to contribute?” I don’t want to hurt his feelings or make things worse but I have to say, “That, is not too big a suppose.”
While it has its dark moments, this book mainly functions as feminist story, with a strong, outspoken, flawed, hilarious protagonist.
This is not like reading Alfred Lord Tennyson but neither is it like inhaling from a bag of glue.
You know, I guess binge reading is actually fine. So if you decide to indulge in this delectable, absurd, hilarious little book, far be it from me to deter you.
Revised rating May 2021(Originally rated and reviewed in August 2020): I still think of this book and I have now realised that it's one of my favorites, absolute favorites even. So five stars....more
“What makes a home a home?” Lucy says. Sam faces the mountains and roars.
This book is a study of landscapes with sLonglisted for the 2020 Booker Prize.
“What makes a home a home?” Lucy says. Sam faces the mountains and roars.
This book is a study of landscapes with swirling blues, greens, browns, blacks and embers of gold as much as it is a story of two sisters. It's a painting. Actually, it's several paintings. Of tigers, of buffaloes, of slow decadence, of myths and legends, of loneliness and of home. Home, a place so vague, an idea so overwhelming, that Lucy swoons every time she tries to conceptualize it. Is it a place she grew up in? Is it the landscape that evolved around her, choked her and also freed her? Is it her Ba's brown, water-composed eyes that she inherited? Is it her Ma's withdrawn, delicate, selfish grace? Is it her sister Sam's stubborn valor? Or is it simply her own thirst for knowledge, for history and for solitude? Is it all of these things?
Still. Lucy never quite escapes that other. The wild one. It prowls the edges of her vision, an animal just beyond the campfire’s glow. That history speaks not in words but in roar and beat and blood. It made Lucy as the lake made gold. Made Sam’s wildness, and Ba’s limp, and made the yearning in Ma’s voice when she speaks of the ocean. But to stare down that history makes Lucy dizzy, as if she peers from the wrong end of a spyglass to see Ba and Ma smaller than her, Ba and Ma with bas and mas of their own, across an ocean bigger than the vanished lake.
Is she of this land that raised her or does Lucy truly belong to the land across the ocean that keeps beckoning her mother? Is she more of her father's daughter or her mother's? Oh how Lucy tries to escape from the sharp claws of these questions. Caught between an identity she can't grasp, a family she can't understand, a history that eludes her and a hunt for gold that ravages her very life, Lucy is not sure what she desires anymore. She inherited her mother's sense for immaculate details. She grew up amidst rot, she can't help but notice the dirt, she wants to leave it behind and she wants to belong. The land that she grew up in is refused to her, because she does not look anything like the people who seized it. Her facial structure, her hair, her eyes always give her away. She does not understand her sister Sam, who never tried to belong, who was content in her alienation, for whom life is one adventure after another.
What’s the name for this feeling? This being parched and quenched all at once. Lucy’s mouth is dry, her lips cracked. But inside her is a sloshing—water, Ma calls her—a sense that the world Ba speaks of is close. Move quick enough and she might puncture the thin skin of the day. Might feel the ancient lake flood her.
When her Ba, after his death, bestows upon Lucy the family secrets and their misshapen identities, Lucy wants to deny all of it. The confusing, evolving mass of her family history leaves her with a festering wound, she finds herself in a complex state of simultaneous love and hate. So Lucy does the only thing she learnt how to do best in the twelve years of her existence, she runs away, pretends to be someone else, tries to belong.
Lucy hides, lies, befriends, and coaxes until she can no longer escape her inheritance, until their call washes out everything else, until Sam shows up in her life again. Then, finally, she knows what it's all about, her life, all of history: salt and gold. When she finally lets the ghosts of her past touch her, when she lets go of Sam, when she abandons her maddening urge to discern the mirage that she grew up amidst, when she breathes and for the first time it is through sheer relief that only comes with acceptance, she belongs.
This is a beautiful debut, with a story that's very subtle yet piercing. A story, that you'll want to frame snippets of and hang in your living room to bask in its gold glory.
What makes a home a home? The bones, the grass, the sky bleached white at its edges from heat—familiar and yet not, as if, flipping through an old book read once upon a time, they find the pages disordered, the colors melted by sun and years, the story misremembered....more
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