Tag: reader

The Stranger: A Book Review

Buy The Stranger ALBERT CAMUS (Vintage International) Book Online at Low Prices in India | The Stranger ALBERT CAMUS (Vintage International) Reviews & Ratings - Amazon.in

Someone said many years ago, “no man is an island”. Humans need human contact to exist, to continue and to be happy. However, authors, poets and philosophers have often used isolation and the idea of being broken as chief plots of their story.

Camus gives life to an indifferent and emotionally detached Meursault who is introduced as a character who refuses to cry at his mother’s funeral. One thing after the other, that also demonstrates his lack of empathy and emotional connection leads to a murder he commits. In the prison, he refuses to go to god, and speaks about his perceived understanding of life, death and human actions. He, in his last days, understands his mother’s feelings while she would have seen an imminent death. And that he shall no longer be lonely as a large crowd shall be seeing him die – each getting rid of its loneliness. And there the story ends.

The Stranger is a classic in both philosophy and Algerian French literature. Meursault is a truthful and emotionally detached man – something that scares those around him, the established judiciary and the lawyers. He frequently exclaims how he lives in the present and refuses to live in the past or the future. All these traits are so odd for the people around him that he becomes the stranger in the story.

It is an excellent book, originally written in French and is the recipient of the Nobel prize in literature. But it is full of monologues and might not exactly be to the liking of thriller lovers. However, story telling and philosophy build up this novella as one of the best to read.

Hope you like reading it, happy reading!

The god of small things: A Book Review

Buy God of Small Things: Booker Prize Winner 1997- English Book Online at Low Prices in India | God of Small Things: Booker Prize Winner 1997- English Reviews & Ratings - Amazon.in

A broken marriage can mean a lot of things to a family. Marriages can be broken by a lot of things including laws defined by societies about whom to love, whom to marry and whom not to.

The god of small things is a caricature of human pain and life built on the layers of political leanings, the realities of Indian conservative societies, casteism and of course on how other people exploit it just to feel away and free from their own realities.

A multi-generational family lives in a small village in the state of Kerala – a communist stronghold. A woman from the family falls in love with an Irish priest, despite the opposition of her father, but failing to get any near him, is left bitter and becomes the antagonist of the narrative. Two twins witness a rape and murder wherein this lady, their aunt, the one who once loved an Irish priest is almost implicated for lying about the criminal and she tricks the poor children into blaming their servant. All this happens in the backdrop of a violent and turbid communist politics of which the servant who dies due to police beating turns out to be a member of. The aunt hates the communists because they once forced her to weave the red flag while forcible stopping her car on the road. To save herself of any implications, the lady gets rid of the children – blaming them of the death of the raped girl and the servant, breaks down their family – the mother dying at 31 and the father never really bothered. The twins grow broken, traumatized and never really heard or cared for. And the climax of the story just leaves one crying when the two twins finally meet at 31 – the age their mother died. The girl twin no longer speaks and the boy is just a lost one. They, for the first time realize the meaning of love and warmth and that it is them alone who share it with each other.

This review will and any review will, as a matter of fact, fail to capture the perfection Roy has achieved in this book. The 1997 Booker’s Prize winner is a masterpiece of storytelling and narrative. And it is a wonderful critique on politics, religion and casteism.

Happy reading!

arundhati roy
Arundhati Roy, who might be in news due to her remarks in the present day has penned a beauty.

Metamorphosis – Book Review

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Gregor Samsa is a salesman who wakes up to find himself transformed into a monstrous vermin. Lying on his bed, he worries about himself and while he has time, contemplates upon the consequences of his metamorphosis. He wonders about his life, his family and the way in which his life and career has turned out to be. He thinks about he is struck with his job only because of his father’s debt and that no relationship in his life ever came from heart.

His family is horrified when they learn of this transformation when the office clerk pushes his way into Gregor’s room. The family, no longer financially stable decide to get jobs and when they do, they start neglecting Gregor more and more only to end up using his room as a store room and giving away a room in their house on rent. Gregor’s sister is the only one willing to give him food in all this while. One day, when Gregor’s sister accidentally breaks a bottle of medicine, his father hurls an apple on him, which gets struck in a sensitive spot on his back and he lies in his room in agony. And one day, he scares the tenants who threaten legal action over the unhygienic conditions of the house.

Grete, Gregor’s sister realises that Gregor is but a liability and asks her parents to get rid of “it”. Hearing the conversation, Gregor goes into his room and dies before sunsrise. The family rejoices his death by taking a day off and ride on a ferry down the countryside. Gregor’s mother exclaims that Grete has grown beautiful despite all problems and they must find her a good husband.

Kafka’s metamorphosis is considered to be a classic in literature. It is a story of a changing society and how necessities cause a metamorphosis in households and in society in general.

When are you reading this tale of humanity?

The Secret Garden: A book review

A girl is born to a rich household of a British officer in the times of the Raj. As customary to apparently the then tradition of rich households in British India, the child was raised by the local servants. The father and the mother never really bothered to spend some time with her. However, a deadly plague breaks in and everyone dies. Everyone, but the girl child who is now a bitter, unkind girl who has spent a large part of her growing time simply commanding people and repressing her emotions and has a habit of being fed, and bathed and clothed – all by others. The death of her family means she has to now live with her uncle – a lord in the British Isles.

In that cold, dead and open manor, she discovers the meaning of work, expression, friendship and love – not only nurturing back his cousin to health, but also helping her uncle rediscover happiness and let the garden where her wife passed away – the secret garden with no doors open to anyone.

The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett - Land of Tales

The secret garden – a British children’s classic for more than a century now – is some of those books which one might not necessarily complete in one go, but would be pressed innately to return to it. The story is very much of a child but it builds up in ways that often evade even adult and contemporary literature. Imagination, revelations and most importantly the fact that the protagonist is but a child – all of it is simply touching. A movie was made on the book in 2020 starring Collin Firth and Julie Walters.

The Secret Garden (2020 film) - Wikipedia

Remember to give it a read!!!