Down The Rabbit Hole
The journey is not spurious.
In one fell swoop, you become a devourer.
The magic that is..
I don’t know how he does it every time but Murakami creeps under your skin. He becomes every single person he talks about, peels them gradually and bares the soul. Men without Women translates the agony, grief and happiness of love into seven short stories, each unravelling itself into something palpable, volatile.
22 August 2018
Why Fun Home is actually so.
I am a little frustrated with Alison Bechdel. She is instantly good but also so clinically precise with her tribulations that it makes me feel defeated right at the beginning. Moving on.
17 April 2018
Dive in with Ogawa.
Yoko Ogawa. Now that I have read many of her works, the name itself inspires this vision of utter coolness. I can almost feel a thin sheet of ice on my body as I go through what she writes. This sustained feeling of aloofness and chilly discord never quite leave you till the very end, and perhaps not even after the book leaves your hand.
02 March 2018
Kari, the Lone Soldier
Kari. Not your everyday girl. Kari starts her story by committing suicide, a lover’s plight. Kari was also my first dive into the world of graphic novels. Amruta Patil’s Kari takes us into the deepest layers of a melancholic world, a world belonging to no one else but the protagonist herself, primarily at least.
10 April 2014
The Story of a Em and a Hoom
It is about a boy, his mother, his father and his sister. Or just about a boy growing up with his mother, whichever way you want to look at it. Jerry Pinto’s Em and the Big Hoom first baffles us with the title and then simplifies it in an extraordinary rapture.
08 April 2014
Lo-li-ta, the Book of Fire
Lolita is a father’s sin. Vladmir Nobakov’s undisputedly spectacular novel has been on every reader’s treasure trove. What is it about? Mostly, human nature. Human nature that can erode and corrode lives, destinies and hearts.
03 April 2014
Welcome to the Hotel Iris.
Yoko Ogawa’s Hotel Iris is an irrepressible tale. A soulful tale about sinful lust, if there was ever one. It is the story of a middle aged man and a 17 year old girl, a story of love? Maybe. We can never be too sure of love. A remarkable story? Certainly. You can only brave a fearless story, there are no two ways about it.
13 March 2014
Little Tales of Lost Identity.
It is a strange land, devoid of normal human connections. What is normalcy anyway? We deal with estranged devices, people who are unmasked, lurking in lost identities. Cees Nooteboom’s Self-Portrait of an Other is a terrifying tale of living ghosts, outside and within. When was the last time you remembered yourself?
05 March 2014
When Little Stories are Large.
We have our typical love stories, sweeping novels about happy endings and till death do us part. Very infrequently do we have everyday stories of clandestine love. Ordinary, unremarkable, almost-missed. But is that not how we live?
04 March 2014
Of Intimacy and Other Questions
What about a haunted man? Nothing. He is just another man, diluted, condensed and absolutely imperfect. Is this what Hanif Kureishi trying to imply in this meltdown of a book Intimacy?
02 March 2014