The Bridges of Madison County: Robert James Waller

This book was a 1992 best seller and was made into a movie starring Clint Eastwood and Meryl Streep. I had heard this book being mentioned in some discussions but never laid my hands on it.

This book is about Franseca, an Italian based in Madison County Iowa. She lives with her husband and two kids, but is lonely. She doesn’t like the farm life she is forced to lead after her marriage. Her husband is a rural at heart and doesn’t share her feelings when it comes to romance and other soft luxuries of life. Robert Kincaid visits Madison County to do a feature on the covered bridges of the town. He is a photographer on an assignment for National Geographic and stops  by Fransesca’s house to ask for directions. This triggers off a spark in both their hearts and what follows is an intense romantic affair. This is not so much about the physical relationship but the spiritual and divine connect that two human beings can have. This is what I liked the most about the book.

Robert asks Fransesca to leave her family and go with him. Fransesca is torn between her love for Robert and her responsibilities towards her family. Ultimately, the lovers sacrifice their love for their duties. There is no childishness here. They both know they are losing a great deal, but understand that Fransesca has her own reasons for it. Robert, who turns out to be a real gentleman who cares for his lady’s feelings, comes across as a hero who every woman will fall in love with. I did too!

After the death of her husband, Fransesca tries to reach Robert, but is unable to. She fears he is dead. As a reader, you so badly want her to find Robert and when she gives up her search, you alsmost scream at her. She hears about Robert’s death later and this part is heart breaking. This book is a real tear-jerker and this is where you will shed your tears the most.

This book is not about memorable quotes or good description. It is about a simple, pure love story between a woman and a man which transcends the earthly definition of love. It is very clear there is some divine intervention in this story.

In the book, the author talks about meeting Fransesca’s children and hearing the love story from them. I believed this and was assuming all the while that this is a true story which was turned into a novel, but wiki doesn’t believe so. I liked the book as it is, but liked it a bit more because I thought the characters from the book actually existed somewhere in some place.  I am disappointed that it isn’t so.

The Little Stranger: Sarah Waters

It’s been ages since I read a ghost story, so when I picked up ‘The Little Stranger’ and it said ‘… chilling ghost story’, I immediately decided to read it. Now that I have finished reading it, I am not so sure it was a ghost story.

Sarah Waters is a great story teller. She has all the right ingredients for an interesting story. The setting is just perfect – an old, dilapidated mansion with some disturbing history to it. A family, the eldest has an early death, the son is injured in a war, the daughter is plain – the house has an air of sorrow and morbidity around it. Introduce a narrator, the family doctor, to the scene and you have an interesting story going on.

The book is big but reads quickly. The twists and turns in the story only add to your speed. The tone of the book is gripping. It is gloomy at times, scary at times and sometimes runs a chill down your spine (Isn’t that what all horror stories are supposed to do?). All in all, a good book to read.

Spoiler Alert. Don’t read the next paragraph if you haven’t read the book or plan to read it later.

The book is not so much as a ghost story because you really don’t know whether a ghost really exists in the scene. Sarah Waters describes a scene, presents some hypothesis and leaves the decision to the user. Since the house has a gloomy air, the characters are in a sad state of mind and this could be the reason for their hallucinations. Second hypothesis, the house might have ‘negative energy’ which is causing people to expose their weak point and hallucinate. Third, there could actually be the ghost of the dead little girl (is that why the title is The little stranger?). Finally, the narrator himself is the culprit. I got strong hints to this throughout the book, but I still can’t believe this is posisble. The doctor is narrating the story, doesn’t blurt out that he is the murderer, but still the reader gets it. Brilliant, isn’t it? This, according to me, is the best part of the book.

The Book Thief : Markus Zusak

This book is, hands down, the best book I have read in 2009 so far. Considering the number of days left in this year and the amount of time I get to read these days, this book might remain the best book of the year.

What is the book about? Here is what the publishers say:

It’s just a small story really, about among other things: a girl, some words, an accordionist, some fanatical Germans, a Jewish fist-fighter, and quite a lot of thievery. . . .

Set during World War II in Germany, Markus Zusak’s groundbreaking new novel is the story of Liesel Meminger, a foster girl living outside of Munich. Liesel scratches out a meager existence for herself by stealing when she encounters something she can’t resist–books. With the help of her accordion-playing foster father, she learns to read and shares her stolen books with her neighbors during bombing raids as well as with the Jewish man hidden in her basement before he is marched to Dachau.

This is an unforgettable story about the ability of books to feed the soul.

Words – written and spoken – are central to the book. This book is unusual in many ways. One, the structure of the book is something I have never seen earlier. It is broken up into chapters based on the books that the protagonist steals. Two, the narrator of the book is also unusual. I don’t want to reveal it here because I don’t want to deprive you of the thrill you get when you discover for yourself. Three, the actual idea of putting a book thief in the middle of Nazi Germany in 1940s – who would have thought? The good thing is it works really well. The author maintains the gravity required to describe the burning Germany and the humor and the wit required to captivate the readers.

I just loved the writing style. It is witty and humorous. Sometimes it is the kind of humor where you are laughing at yourself, unknowingly. I am guessing the author loves colors. He uses colors to describe almost all scenes in the book. In fact, the book starts colors. There were many sentences and paragraphs which made me stop reading and think. Some got a chuckle out of me and some disturbed me. I wish I had made a note of some so that I could quote here. Google came to the rescue and here are some.

First the colours.
Then the humans.
That’s usually how I see things.
Or at least, how I try.

The last time I saw her was red. The sky was like soup, boiling and stirring. In some places, it was burned. There were black crumbs, and pepper, streaked across the redness.

…For some reason, dying men always ask questions they know the answer to. Perhaps it’s so they can die being right.

For now, Rudy and Liesel made their way onto Himmel Street in the rain.
He was the crazy one who had painted himself black and defeated the world.
She was the book thief without the words.
Trust me, though, the words were on their way, and when they arrived, Liesel would hold them in her hands like the clouds, and she would wring them out like the rain.

“… it was raining on Himmel Street when the world ended for Liesel Meminger.
The sky was dripping.
Like a tap that a child has tried its hardest to turn off but hasn’t quite managed.”

If I could, I would quote the entire book here, that’s how much I liked it. Why did I like the book? The writing was what got me initially. The story will tug at your heart. And the characters – Liesel and Rudy and Max and the Hubermanns – each one of them will remain with me for a long time. What I will never forget though, is the narrator.

A Sleeping and a Forgetting : William Dean Howells

I won this book in a giveaway hosted by John Self. I have been following his blog since a long time now and find his reviews insightful. He is one of those readers who doesn’t stop at just ‘I liked it’ or ‘I hated it’, but goes on to tell us what the book is actually about so that we can decide for ourselves whether to read the book or not.

Melville Hose Publishing has come out with a series ‘The Art of the Novella’ in which they aim to publish short fiction or novella – too short to be a novel, too long to be a short story. All the books in the series have the same plain yet attractive cover. These are small, weightless books which can fit into your bag or purse and can keep you engrossed for an hour.

This novella is about a woman who witnesses her mother’s death and is so shocked at the incident that she stays unconscious for a few days and when she wakes up from it, she doesn’t remember the incident. The shock damages her memory and she forgets people, names, faces and incidents. A doctor starts treating her at her father’s request. The rest of the book is about the doctor’s interactions with the patient and this is the best part of the book. I found myself thinking about the exchanges between the doctor and the woman about dreams, reality, memory, character, identity and so on. One particular passage that I found really interesting:

He had always said to himself that there could be no persistence of personality, of character, of identity, of consciousness, except through memory; yet here, to the last implication of temperament, they all persisted. The soul that was passing in its integrity through time without the helps, the crutches, of remembrance by which his own personality supported itself, why should not it pass so through eternity without that loss of identity which was equivalent to annihilation?

The passage might not seem relevant here, but works really well in the book.

I have to sincerely thank John for two things. One, for hosting the giveaway and two, for introducing me to W.D.Howells. If not for the giveaway, I would have never discovered this author. The book was like a treat – short and sweet. It was entertaining as well as thought provoking. If only I could get hold of more books from this series – don’t know how many more gems it holds.

PS: This novella is available online.

The Lovely Bones : Alice Sebold

Almost everybody on my book forum was raving about this, so I had to read it to know what all the hype was about. It often happens that a hyped book fails to impress me and this is so true about this book.

The Lovely Bones is about Susie Salmon, who is raped and murdered by her neighbor. She goes to heaven and looks at Earth and narrates the story about her murder and her family’s plight after her death. The cops are unable to locate her body, but even though Susie knows where it is, she doesn’t have the power to reveal its location to those on Earth. The book traces the lives of Susie’s family, her friends and her murderer for a few years post Susie’s death.

I loved the character of Susie’s father but her mother irritated me. I feel her actions were not justified. Another character, Ruana Singh, Susie’s friend’s mother is mysteriously interesting – was it intentional or the author just left out certain parts about this character? Susie’s grandmom is another person who stays with you for sometime.

The book grabs you from the first page. The initial few pages are disturbing, that is where Susie describes her rape and murder. It is more so disturbing because the tone of the narrator is very plain, emotionless. The pace dips a bit somewhere in the middle of the book and I lost interest there. I could see what was coming and that bored me.

What I liked most about this book is the author’s take on the heaven. She uses her imagination to create what heaven could be like and after you read her version, you feel that is exactly how heaven should be. I liked the storyline, but felt the author could have done better than this. Many people will disagree, so be it.

It is not a must-read, but it is a nice book if you don’t have anything compelling to read.

PS: The book is going to made into a movie. It will be interesting to see how heaven is picturized!

The Angel’s Game: Carlos Ruiz Zafon

After thoroughly enjoying Carlos Ruiz Zafon’s Shadow of the Wind, I couldn’t wait to read his next book. Though his works are available in Spanish, not all of them are translated to English. The first to be translated was Shadow of the Wind and the next one was The Angel’s Game, both of them translated by Lucia Graves. I wonder when the next will be out.

The Angel’s Game is similar to Shadow of the Wind in many ways. They both have literature at the core and deal with characters reappearing from the past. And they both have Cemetery of Forgotten Books. The protagonist of The Angel’s Game, David Martin, is a writer who writes crime thriller series under a pseudonym. He is commissioned to write a novel on religion by a mysterious publisher, Andreas Corelli, who is supposed to have died decades earlier. As David starts uncovering the mystery behind Corelli, he learns a few secrets about his own life. If the last sentence reads like a line out of the backcover of the book, well, that’s the best I can do. I don’t want to include anything here that might turn out to be a spoiler.

A dark tower house with spirits, dead people appearing, a witch, disguised identities and a love story in the middle of all this – the book has all the ingredients that make this an entertaining read, although I didn’t like The Angel’s Game as much as I did the first book. One, the book was too long. I think the author tried to include a lot of things  in one book. Zafon says in his interview that he initially planned to include four stories in a single book titled ‘The Shadow of the Wind‘. But when he realized that the book is going to be huge, he decided to make four books out of it and call the series ‘The Cemetery of Forgotten Books’. Another complaint about this book is, I feel the author hasn’t tied up all the loose strings. When you finish reading a mystery book, you should get the feeling of a job well done. I didn’t get that feeling here. It was as if the book ended too abruptly. And the epilogue is so silly, I don’t know why it was even part of the book.

I wouldn’t highly recommend this book, but if you are into mysteries and crime thrillers, this book will not be a complete waste of time.

Paths of Glory – Jeffrey Archer

Paths of Glory is a fictionalized account of George Mallory, a mountaineer who tried to conquer the Mount Everest in 1924, but nobody knows whether he succeeded because he died during that attempt. It is not confirmed whether Mallory died on the way down (which makes him the first man to have scaled Mount Everest) or on the way up. Many people believe that Mallory died before he climbed the highest point. Jeffrey Archer thinks otherwise. A newspaper in New Zealand called Archer’s book an insult to Sir Edmund Hillary, who is hailed as the first man to reach the top of the world.

This book is Archer’s take on this mystery. The book opens with the discovery of Mallory’s body on the mountain, so there is no need to guess the hero’s fate later in the book. Archer builds up readers’ confidence in Mallory by depicting him as a man with special skills. He shows Mallory as a courageous kid who doesn’t know what fear means. He portrays Mallory’s character in such a way that it is hard for the readers to believe that Mallory can fail at anything.

Keeping the mystery and the controversies aside, this book is an entertaining read. Archer is a wonderful story teller and knows how he should paint his characters so as to please his readers. He knows when to end a chapter to ensure that the reader hops onto the next one without any interval. I have always liked Archer for his gift of engaging his readers in an entertaining story with interesting characters. Reading Archer is like watching a Hindi masala movie – quick, entertaining and thrilling. This might not be the best book of Jeffrey Archer, but it still is a good book to read.

The Unbearable Ligthness of Being : Milan Kundera

I was always curious about Milan Kundera since I heard about him on all book forums I visit. To add to the curiosity factor, the big, bold book title words on plain white book cover (I couldn’t find an image of that book cover) always attracted me. All Kundera books have the same book cover design and there were so many titles to choose from and I wasn’t sure what would be a good one to start with. After reading the synopsis and discussing with some readers on the forums, I decided to pick up The Unbearable Lightness of Being.

The title was intriguing and I couldn’t wait to start my Kundera book. Expectations from the book were high, after hearing strong recommendations and praises for this book. Some readers called this book as philosophical, so I was all the more interested. The book is philosophical, no doubt, but puts across the author’s opinions through a story. This book is fictional but the philosophical passages that intersperse the book are the author’s inner voice conveying his thoughts to the readers and these passages are the best part of the book.

Kundera presents his thoughts on human nature and their quirks through his characters. After narrating a story, Kundera goes on to postmortem some important incidents and puts across his reasons for the behavior of his characters. While Kundera brings into life a few characters with their quirks, I prefer Maugham’s way of describing characters. When you read Maugham, you feel as if you met a new person and are familiarizing with that person.

Did I like this book? I am not so sure. I won’t be running to the library to pick up another Kundera book, but I won’t shun it either if I am given a chance. This book is somewhere on the border – liked some parts of it. The philosophical passages are interesting to read.

Will I recommend this book? With some reservation, yes. If you haven’t tried Kundera berfore, then you should definitely read this book. For all you know, you might love it, like so many people out there.

It’s Tuesday

And that means time for our teaser.

We all need someone to look at us. We can be divided into four categories according to the kind of look we wish to live under.

p. 262, The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera.

Yeah, I am still reading Kundera. Hope to finish it in a day or two. I find this book interesting in parts. I plan to write a review of this, let’s hope time permits. The book is interspersed with philosohical passages like the one above. More than the story, I find these passages interesting.

Teaser Tuesday

I am taking up the weekly Teaser Tuesday meme from this site.

My teaser for this week:

When graves are covered with stones, the dead can no longer get out. But the dead can’t go out anyway! What difference does it make whether they’re covered with soil or stones?

p. 120, The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera.