Eleanor and Park by Rainbow Rowell: Love in the time of the Walkman and AA batteries

The first thing that runs through Park’s mind when he sees Eleanor is that she looks exactly like the kind of person this would happen to. ‘This’ being getting rejected by every person on the bus who has an empty seat next to them.

Everyone that is, except Park who is most definitely not in love at first sight or even the local do-gooder. Just a social Inbetweener trying to keep the peace.

Also, Rainbow Rowell would have no story if these two teenagers didn’t end up together on that seat of that bus because everything of note to the pain, pleasure and chronic confusion of first love starts right there.

This is probably when I say that this is no ordinary love story, but I won’t. If you recall falling in love with someone at the age of 16, you know it’s immensely ordinary, but that is what makes it extraordinary.

Like the first time Park reaches out and holds Eleanor’s hand and she “disintegrates”, that is one of the most intense, moments in the novel. You forget, in the process of growing up, how intimate early hand holding can be.

Or when Eleanor refuses to borrow Park’s Walkman (it’s set in the 1980s, by the way), instead just emptying out its batteries, and Park goes home and calls his grandmother to tell her that he doesn’t want any presents for his birthday… Just a large supply of double A batteries.

I downloaded Eleanor & Park on a Saturday night with a glass of wine and read it until the early hours of the next morning. I don’t know if it was nostalgia or the wine but I wanted to fall asleep hugging my Kindle that night. It has one of those innocent yet intense first-love stories you just wish was yours, because what makes it so perfect is the knowledge that it will eventually have to end.

Eleanor & Park is a YA novel about young love. But it tells a story that would resonate with audiences across genders (yes, despite all the hand holding) and age groups. It would be one of my top recommendations for anyone looking for a relaxing read that takes you on a wistful journey down… Oh no, I’m gushing, aren’t I?

Anyway, I sincerely hope you will read this book and then return here to share your impressions with me. I would really, really like to know what you think of it!

Recommended Read: We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler

"As part of leaving Bloomington for college and my brand-new start, I'd made a careful decision to never ever tell anyone about my sister, Fern. Back in those college days, I never spoke of her and seldom thought of her. If anyone asked about my family, I admitted to two parents, still married, and one brother, older, who travelled a lot. Not mentioning Fern was first a decision, and later a habit, hard and painful even now to break." 

How do I write about this book without mentioning the one detail that forms the crux of it's beginning, middle and its end? I could "start in the middle" as our narrator, Rosemary Cooke does and take it from there.  But I would still find it hard to write a good enough recommendation that you probably could get from the blurb anyway.

So how do I begin? Do I tell you about Fern? It's impossible to leave her out of this because she's the reason the characters' lives turn upside down. But telling you about her right now would also change the way you approach the novel and influence your judgement right from the start. I'm sure you're not one to trivialise certain details of family life. But if you know about Fern before you get to it yourself, you won't appreciate the bigger picture,

If it wasn't for Fern's disappearance, Rosemary would probably not spend her time and energy avoiding the subject of her family. Their brother Lowell would not have run away from home before graduating high school. If it wasn't for her reluctant abandonment to the jowls of science, their mother would not be prone to depression and would still perhaps play the piano. The family would not have left their sprawling farm house for homes that were smaller and smaller to din out the silence and emptiness of a shattered nest.

How do I begin to describe how utterly beautiful and heartbreaking this novel is without adding spoilers? As you can see, I'm trying... really hard.

So the book starts in the middle, in the year 1996 when Rosemary Cooke's in the 5th year of college. She has a secret and it involves her family. Years ago, her sister Fern was plucked from their lives and never spoken of ever again. Fern or the subject of her, isn't buried. But her fate and the feelings it incited in the family, are.

I think it's okay to tell you that Fern did not die in an accident nor was she kidnapped with a child snatcher. Fowler makes that clear pretty much from the start. That's actually what draws you into the novel because a) curiosity and b) once you start reading it, the book is so immersive, there's no turning back.

I see that haven't written much about it without giving it away, have I? So let me try one last time to do this recommendation justice.

We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves is a novel about a child who is loved so dearly that her disappearance breaks her whole family. But what's truly tragic is that the while Cookes force themselves to give her away believing it was for the greater good which, really, is a matter of perspective but I'll tell you right away that it wasn't.

So for the first time I'm asking you to trust me and just read the damn book because it's good. Like really, really good. It won't change your life. It won't make you bawl but it will make you well up every once in a while. It will give you fresh fodder to analyse things you already know about science, psychology and family life.

Read it because it is very well written and will keep you hooked right to the end. But most importantly, it may not force you to see things you'd rather not but it will make a great case for opening your eyes.

Review: The Dream Thieves (Book 2 in The Raven Cycle)

It started off with promise but somewhere along the way, Maggie Stiefvater's The Dream Thieves, book two in The Raven Cycle series, loses interest in itself.

Perhaps it's in the abundance of imagery that staggers the progression of the story. Or in the forced manner in which Adam seems to be changing, going from a quiet, intelligent and poor but proud boy, to someone seriously whiney and exasperating to read as a character. But really, I think it fails because there just isn't enough meat in the story to justify 453 pages.

The Dream Thieves has an intriguing enough start. We learn that Ronan Lynch can pull things out of his dreams. These are mostly terrible things such as the Night Terrors, dark and evil creatures with beaks for mouths and sharp craws for hands that are out of slash him to ribbons. In the meanwhile, Gansey's search for Glendower is put on hold by the disappearance of Cabeswater, the ancient, magical forest they discovered in the last book. Blue starts to struggle with her feelings for Adam, and realises that she's drawn to Gansey, knowing full well how that's going to turn out after her vision of the two of them having their first and last kiss in the previous book. Noah too seems to be less there than usual, disappearing completely in the second half just like Cabeswater.

The book also introduces a Ronan's formidable nemesis and fatal attraction, the psychopathic Kavinsky who disregards personal and public safety in favour of dangerous drag races and Fourth of July explosions. We also get to meet The Grey Man, a mysterious assassin in search for an object that can invade dreams for the treasures that lie there.

The premise is fascinating and for that Stiefvater's imagination needs to be lauded. It's a pity that the world she weaves in her head reads more like a series of dreams, fascinating when you're penning it into a diary, but lacking in storytelling when you try to put them together.

The novel needed more. Be it more plot connectors or hooks that draw you from one chapter to the next and from this book to the third.

Frankly, I'm going to have to take a break from this series because unlike Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, The Hunger Games, heck, even Twilight, the series isn't immersive enough to keep you hooked from one book to the next.

The Ravel Boys helped the series off to a good start. But The Dream Thieves makes me wonder if Steifvater is just stretching the series on just for the sake of it.

I honestly believe this book was an unnecessary detour to a very promising story, shifting the reader's focus from the real prize, the unearthing of Welsh legend, Glendower.

I'm still going to finish this series because I've committed to it and I genuinely like it. But yes, a break is is order before I can delve into the next one because finishing this book was felt like a chore. And it will take me some time to get over that.

Book Review: Dark Places by Gillian Flynn

Maybe you’ve read Gone Girl. Maybe you watched the film. I read the book during an uninspiring literary week and a whole lot of Oscar hype. I never ended up watching the movie.

Most people I know claim to have had their minds blown by Gone Girl. For good reason too, I realised once I started reading the book. The characters were delightful shades of grey. Some were downright dark and murky. And if you found yourself rooting for one, you soon changed loyalties, or at least caught yourself thinking of it, at some point during the book. But once it was done, and I blame the fact that I read it in the midst of a whole lot of on and offline chatter, I thought it was good, but not mind-blowing. Like, it isn’t on my list of all-time favourites in the genre. It isn’t even in the top 10, to be honest.

What did blow my mind though is Flynn’s second novel, Dark Places. Any book that spends its entirety deconstructing the build-up to a gory night in small-town America – the stuff of nightmares, this -- is not a book you want to pass up. No seriously, I actually dreamed of axes and Satanic symbols painted in blood on walls two nights in a row. Could this be the 21st century version of The Shining’s flood of blood? In my imagination, it totally is!

Just like Gone Girl, we have again a set of characters who are deliciously dark with shades of grey. There’s Libby, who survived a bloody massacre that brutally killed her mother and sisters when she was 7 years old. Her brother Ben, the only person to go down for the murders even though there were several discrepancies at the murder scene. There’s Lyle, treasurer and spokesperson of sorts for the Kill Club that’s obsessively trying to find out what really went down that night. And a bunch of other very shady characters who have been constructed beautifully to give the plot depth and intrigue.

I really like Flynn’s style of writing and her knack of stitching multiple narratives together. This is actually written from three perspectives. Libby’s voice is in first person and unfolds the mystery in the present. Ben and Patty, their mom, alternate in third person, building up to the fateful ‘event’ over one single day. Flynn also weaves in intricate character details and back stories in a crafty manner that lend her novels a certain X factor that makes them impossible to put down.

Dark Places is definitely a contender for my list of most intriguing murder mysteries of all time. However, I have it on good authority that her first book, Sharp Objects is actually her best. Guess I’ll reserve my judgement until I read that one. But in good time. I want a few months of reads that are anything but fast paced thrillers to really relish this one. Mostly because I really don’t want to overdose on the genre or find myself getting Flynned out.

Buy Dark Places from Flipkart // Amazon

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Review: The Boy who could see Demons by Carolyn Jess-Cooke

There’s nothing ordinary about Alex Broccoli. He lives in a room at the top of his council house that has no heating. But he seems to prefer it that way. He wears clothes he found in a trunk that once belonged to an old man who lived in the house before him. He feels smarter in a jacket and bow tie anyway. He loves onions on toast more than anything else in the whole wide world. Especially, since you can buy a whole week’s worth of onions for very little money. And he also happens to see demons.

In fact, he has his very own demon. His name is Ruen and he comes in three avatars – Old Man, Ghost Boy and Monster -- that switch based on how playful, serious or scared he's feeling at that moment. Alex doesn’t have many friends which is why having Ruen helps. But he also knows that he can’t take everything his demon tells him at face value because he has a penchant for evil. He’s the “evil Alex” if you may.

Yes, there’s nothing ordinary about the protagonist of Carolyn Jess-Cooke’s The Boy Who Could See Demons, but then again, he isn’t a normal boy living a normal life. He’s the child living in what was once, and still threatens to be at times, a very troubled part of the UK. In fact, they even call that dark period in Northern Irish history the Troubles and this story is set in the current generation that’s still suffering the aftermath of all that went down.

Set in the backdrop of present day Belfast, The Boy Who Could See Demons, deals largely with issues of mental health among children and signs of depression in adults. It also adds fantasy to the brew with instances that linger even after the book is over. Like when Ruen ‘composes’ A Love Song for Anya and it happens to be the very same tune that haunts Alex’s therapist, the only person who has seen his condition before from a very close range. How else would Alex know personal, intimate details about her daughter’s life, death and mental health issues?

Of course, these are smaller parts of the book that leave you wondering. What you really walk away with is an insight into a disturbed adolescent’s mind given his environment at home. What you also see here is a beautiful yet dangerously flawed mother-son relationship that has you biting your nails until the climax.

But most importantly, what Carolyn Jess-Cooke paints here is the picture of a Northern Ireland that’s emerging from its own ashes and learning to live in a renewed environment without forgetting about its troubled past.

It’s very rare to find a book you go to bed and wake up reading. A page turner, this one, as the author expertly weaves a tale that is at the same time sad, fantastical, hopeful, at times, and ruinous too.

Verdict: This is the perfect book for readers across genres with a story that gives you some harsh, hopeful and riveting facts masked in the imagery of fiction. 

Review: Illusion (Swept Away Book 1) by JS Cooper

It wasn’t the blurb that convinced me to pre-order this e-book. It was the first three chapters on Amazon.

The only solace with which I walk away from JS Cooper’s Illusion is that I didn’t fall for the whole cliché of ‘girl trapped on a deserted island with a handsome stranger’. The book did have potential. And an interesting plot that could have been made even more intriguing once Bianca London and Jakob No-Last-Name-For-80%-of-the-book found themselves kidnapped and isolated on an exotic island.

It kills me to read books with potential that go bonkers. Truly it does. Why do authors do this to themselves? But more importantly, why do they do this to us?

Bianca is a freelance film writer who has been looking into her mother’s suspicious death when she was 5-years-old after her father died and left her a bunch of papers and a very curious letter. Things start to get scary when she notices a man stalking her at a coffee shop and then again at a pub. She is soon drugged and stuffed into the trunk of a car with Jakob, a man she’s never really met though he did share a table with her at the coffee shop.

Cut to the deserted island. The duo is left tied up on a beautiful sandy beach with no food, water or clue as to why they’re there. They’re disoriented. But obviously not enough to stop them making sexual advances or noticing the other’s anatomy.

Once they gather their bearings after a few bananas, they sit down to talk over why they may be in this situation. Bianca is convinced that she’s there because she was investigating her mother’s murder which involves her billionaire ex’s company. Jakob wastes no time in revealing that he too is a billionaire but he has no connection whatsoever to said ex. Of course, his avoidance of all personal questions thereafter do hint at the fact that perhaps, he isn’t putting all his cards on the table.

This doesn’t stop our Belle from revealing everything about herself – murder investigation, back story, hopes, dreams, aspirations included. After all, Jakob is pretty. How bad can he be, really?  

The first thing that gets my goat is that this dumb woman doesn’t once ask the man she’s stranded with for his last name. Not once! I mean, come on? Didn’t your parents teach you anything other than to barge unprepared into the line of fire of a potentially evil corporation?

Secondly, another character soon appears on the island. He’s named Steve and is just as shady as Jakob though not as pretty. This is somewhat why Bianca sticks to the latter because, I mean, how can she dismiss the time they spent in the boot of the car together? That’s a real connection, right there.

Third, this Jakob character is a real pervert. Sure they’re on a stranded island and clothes will come off what with the heat, sand and the surf. But seriously. What’s with all the inappropriate touching and staring and sexual comments?

And finally: Why is it that most leading men in erotic romances say things like – a) I don’t do girlfriends; b) If you were mine, I would make sure you never thought of another man ever again; c) I’m dangerous. You should stay away from me; d) I can’t help but feel protective about you. Let’s cuddle (or something similar).

I mean seriously? Are these the guidelines they make you memorise when you venture into the genre? Can these men not be totally good looking assholes for once?

Don’t even get me started on Bianca’s character. You start off thinking she’s a bit clueless and obviously naive, even though she keeps reiterating how hard she finds it to trust people. But then she outdoes herself as we see how the presence of pecks, abs and sky blue eyes turn her into coconut jelly.

The book could have worked if Cooper had just focussed on the plot like she initially promised instead of exploring warped male-female sexual dynamics and how they affect the character’s decision making skills. Bad. Very, very bad!

What she delivers however is a plot ruined so totally by forced erotica, you’re left baffled that this is actually just book number 1 of a “series”. Trust me JS Cooper. It may have worked for EL James. But lighting only strikes once.

God help us all! 

Hello Dolly! Now go away | Review of JC Martin's The Doll

There are more kindle singles about demonic dolls than I appreciate or have the ability to resist.

I’m not afraid of dolls the way I am of worms or the deep end of the pool. But I’m not too comfortable in their presence either. A minute alone in a room with a doll, and the walls start to shrink and their dead, unblinking eyes get bigger.

Why then, did I have to download a single about not one, but an entire island of dolls? Because you don’t stop sitting under trees or jumping into pools just because something scares you… even if you are the kind of person who doesn’t look into mirrors in the dark for fear of catching their reflection off guard.

The Doll by JC Martin has rave reviews on Amazon and at Rs 56 it is most definitely worth downloading even if it ends faster than you can say ‘Peek-a-Boo’. Single mom Joyce takes her daughter Taylor on vacation to Mexico where they visit The Island of Dolls which houses dolls in all shapes and sizes, whole and dismembered. Taylor takes to the place immediately, as would any child who hasn’t yet been traumatised by a certain Good Guy who shall not be named. Joyce on the other hand finds herself ill at ease conjuring images of said Good Guy.

As it turns out, the island is actually a shrine to a little girl who drowned in the lake. Evil lurks there and the dolls have everything to do with it. This evil follows Joyce and her daughter home where things start to get seriously creepy. And then Joyce makes a discovery that takes her back to The Island of Dolls... at dusk.

It isn’t a very long story. Nor is it very erudite, or grammatically sound for that matter. But it’s creepy as hell, especially when the writer links up to the sinister side of Palo Monte, a religion that developed in the Spanish colonies of South America. The bit about the Nganga, a cauldron of bones and ashes in which spirits are said to reside, is my favourite.

The language is like a runny yoke that could have been less casual, but as it’s narrated in first person, not to mention self-published, you may be able to let that slide.

Dolls have been done to death but this story has the X factor. I kept expecting demon doll to spring up at me from under the bed or in the bathroom the night I read this. However, the next morning, after giving it another read, I realized that it isn’t as scary I you initially thought. Somehow, as much as I appreciate short fiction, this is the sort of book that would have made more of an impact in a full-length novel.

JC Martin has a fine flair for storytelling even if her talent is a bit raw. If she puts this much thought and lore into all her scary stories, she's definitely going on my default reading list.

Download The Doll by JC Martin Amazon; Kindle Single 

The Book of Shiva | Namita Gokhale

One of the most surprising and delightful things I discovered when I when to England to do my A levels was that there was an entire A level devoted to Classics. This meant a study of Greek Classical Literature which would include The Illiad, The Odyssey and even the Old Testament. This helps us understand everything from Astrology to Astronomy.

Sadly no such thing exists in the Indian school syllabus. Fuelled by secularism and vote bank politics, neither are taught in school and so we grow up with a basic, and even worse, an altered storyline of our favourite epics and almost no serious knowledge of our mythology. This is a shame because it is perhaps the richest and most complex  in the world. Epics are a way for society to  transcribe our past especially since we have a terrible track record of retracing our civilisation -- the dancing girl does not count. For instance, a study of our Vedas over time will show how our society turned patriarchal and monistic. Our goddesses were pushed aside to make way for gods who had infinite power.

But the funny thing is that our mythology is critical to who we are. As Namitha Gokhale says, "India, with its infamous lack of historical sense of time, with its non-linear approach to ideas and events, has managed to retain a sense of the dynamic and the interactive with reference to its mythology. The gods are still alive in India. "

In my journey to understand Tantra and the gorgeous Kali, it's almost impossible to ignore her aspect of Sati and therefore Shiva, the man she sacrificed her human form for. And for a quick download on Shiva, there's nothing to beat this book. 

Namita Gokhale helps us unravel Shiva, my favourite of all the god aspects. I say 'aspect' because I really don't believe there is a Shiva sitting somewhere, but I do believe there is an energy whose aspect is to create and destroy and it probably loves hurricanes. Shiva fascinates everyone; chiselled face and blue toned abs, what's not to like. The Natraj dances and the earth shakes. 

She begins with a quick introduction and then moves on to summarise various aspects of Shiva in individual chapters, his variety of manifestations, his divine family, an understanding of his erotic and ascetic self. My favourite of course is the Shiva -- Shakti: the reconciliation of Male-Female polarities. Here she clearly talks about a very important conversation between Parvati and Shiva, where Parvati challenges Shiva's misogynistic attitude towards her. Parvati was the first feminist ladies. Namita has a lovely way of recreating philosophical conversations between gods that shaped the thoughts our entire culture rests upon be it the role of Sati, and its warped understanding over the ages, or the role of women in society. 

Her language is technical -- I found myself reaching for a dictionary many times, but its never indulgent. It is tight and refrains from being preachy. It is a classic brief study of Shiva which I will have to read a few more times to understand but I would have been extremely happy if this had been a textbook in senior school.

Buy The Book of Shiva from Flipkart.com

Book Review | 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami

There comes a time in every reader’s life when they are sorely tempted to club their favourite author on the head. With their own book, no less.

My turn came very recently with Haruki Murakami’s 1Q84 which I attempted to romance over a course of 3 months. Forget that this book, desperately trying to be his “magnum opus”, is over 1300 pages long (in paperback) and that it could have done away with at least 1000 pages (the person who edited this book needs a tight slap too); 1Q84 is printed proof that Murakami is officially too full of himself (to put it mildly)!

In the year 1984, we read into a world within a world in Tokyo, Japan. This world has two moons, something the author can’t reiterate enough, Little People, a cult organisation functioning under the guise of an organic farm and two protagonists whose fates are intertwined by a series of parallel events.

1Q84 is told from two perspectives – Tengo, a Math teacher who moonlights as a writer, and Aomame, a martial arts instructor moonlighting as an assassin. It gets off to a promising start. Tengo is commissioned to rewrite a novel for an inarticulate 17-year-old with a shady past, we’re intrigued already. On the other side of town, Aomame is commissioned to kill Leader (with a capital ‘L’), head of Sakigake, the organic farm disguised as a cult. Some 500 pages in, we’re about to give up, when we realise that Tengo and Aomame have a shared moment from when they briefly went to school together. The two, in fact, are in love with each other’s 12-year-old selves. How romantic! Suddenly, the book has intrigue, mystery and a fatalistic love story that could go either way. Heck, even the two worlds, two moons and the two lives of our two protagonists gain literary momentum.

But another 300 pages in (that’s nearing 900 pages, with 400 to go) we reach, are dragged more like, to a climatic scene where Aomame finally meets this Leader, the chief antagonist of the novel whom you fear and loathe just a little less than Johnny Walker in Kafka on the Shore. A few too many pages of philosophy and un-gasp-worthy revelations in, Aomame “sends him to the other world”; simultaneously, Tengo is the subject of a really weird exchange with the 17-year-old monosyllabic writer whose work he rewrote and you suddenly realise, as a reader, you just…don’t…care…anymore!

Murakami was and still is one of my favourite authors. Kafka blew my mind, while After Dark converted me to Magic Realism. I even started off the New Year resolving to read each and every work published by Murakami!

But 1Q84 has taught me something very elementary about literature and the authors we idolise. They’re not golden geese. Every book of theirs cannot be a work of genius. I experienced this revelation for the first time with Carlos Ruiz Zaffon – loved Shadow of the Wind and The Prince of Mist, hated The Angel’s Game. But I dismissed that as the folly of a writer attempting to promise more mystery and mind blowing awesomeness than his story-telling skills could cope with. But now, with Murakami, I see this very mortal mistake at play once again.

1Q84 was destined for greatness. But it fails because of sheer volume and the author’s need to state, restate and reiterate facts, details and flashbacks he’s already tackled. It’s a waste of a story that could have blown your mind in 500 pages but instead, is stretched out to ridiculous proportions just so one man can have his giant ego printed across 1300 pages (in paperback).

Review | Turbulence by Samit Basu

I once dreamed that I rode a wave to Sri Lanka. If I were a character in Samit Basu’s Turbulence, I wonder what my superpower would be. Amazing surfing skills I hope. Or the power to control natural disasters like tsunamis or earthquakes.

Sorry, I'm getting sidetracked. Turbulence is among the first Indian works in superhero fiction -- no, Indian Superman and Phantom do not count. Passengers on a flight from London to Delhi meet with turbulence, fall asleep and when they wake up – they have super powers related to what they dreamed. Like Vir, a fighter pilot with the Indian Air Force dreamed of flying and can thus fly; Aman a geek who dreamed of aliens and spaceships can access the whole world wide web – behind firewalls and everything – with his mind; Tia who never found time to do anything she loved, being busy and all playing the perfect mother, wife and daughter-in-law, can clone herself at will as many times as she fancies. And Uzma, an aspiring actress with sights set on Bollywood can charm her way out of anything.

But where there’s good, there’s also evil (surprise!). A group of super villains are trying to take over the world. Led by the indestructible Jai, metamorphing half-tiger-half-man, Sher, and every horror film buff’s worst nightmare Anima – seriously cute girl turned seriously scary, Anime style.

It doesn’t take a whole lot of imagination to create any of these heroes and villains – the author admits time and again throughout the book – because they’ve always been done 10 times over. But it does take tact, skill and a whole lot of research to adapt them to Indian characters in a local setting. In that regard, Turbulence is a masterpiece and a well written one at that.

The language is good, the tone extremely witty and the details -- fight and flight sequences -- are vivid. Where the book lacks character is in its dialogue because it seemed awkward and forced. Like the telephone conversation between Aman and Vir in the beginning of the book which just doesn’t flow naturally. It’s like Basu put in a lot of effort to keep the conversation going. Also, in some cases I wish I could have read maybe a hint of an Indianism, twang or slang. But most of the time it’s all just so proper with correct sentences (who knew I’d miss this and complain in a review) that it’s tough to identify with any of the characters solely on speech and dialogue.

Nevertheless, Turbulence is one of those books I’ve keep on my bedside table, ready to open at a moment’s notice if a sequel were to be announced. It’s only prudent of Mr Basu to give us one. This was, after all, just a practice session and I have no doubt that there will be bigger and better to come in the subsequent chapters.

Buy Turbulence from Flipkart.com

Review | Quarantine by Rahul Mehta

It’s refreshing to finally have a book of gay short stories that doesn’t deal with issues such as closets, homophobia and since Rahul Mehta’s Quarantine features Indo-American voices -- displacement and identity crisis. The protagonists in all nine stories are openly gay and comfortably so. They also happen to be young Indian Americans who are creative in one way or another, aspiring to be writers, supported by parents accepting of them not becoming doctors, engineers or academics.

Quarantine, the short story after which the novel is named, features a man who is still bitter towards his grandfather for being ungrateful and insensitive to his mother, the only person in the family who takes care of him. The Better Person, brings gender stereotypes – “which one is the ‘woman’” -- and commitment into focus. The Cure has its protagonist burning -- literally – all his money, while Floating is about a couple making a focused effort not to turn tourists getting fleeced, but have it happen to them anyway.

Interesting stories, these. But the book really picks up in the second half with What We Mean in which we meet Parag, a cheeky young man who has a way with words – aah, another writer – and utterly hilarious. He doesn’t bother with little things like learning his neighbour, or her boyfriend’s name, enjoying instead leaving notes like – “Move your car, S’il vous plait,” “Move your car, Silvia Plath,” “Silvia! Silvia! Silvia!”. Then there’s Yours, in which another writer is secretly jealous and mesmerised by his boyfriend’s ex-lover, Antwon. The layers in Mehta’s writing suddenly come through when the three visit Niagara Falls and Antwon asks him if he ever feels the urge to jump over the rails – not to die, but to be free, to know, even for a moment, what it’s like to fly. But somehow, it’s A Better Life that tugs at your heartstrings as Sanj plays up a fantasy in which he’s interning with Vogue, but is really struggling finding the life he wants to live without the fuel that fired his immigrant father’s belly.

Mehta’s book is a fast and easy read. Good enough to knock one or two stories back and forth on those long commutes to work! The language is simple and the prose flows beautifully. The narrators are identifiable with the battles they face – meaning, purpose and feelings of isolation – but there’s still something missing. More depth to the supporting characters? A longer narrative, perhaps? Clearer endings? More attention to detail?

I’m all for short stories. I live for them. It’s a great way to keep up the reading habit without making a big commitment. But somehow, the stories of Quarantine left me wanting more. I wanted to know, for instance, what the narrator’s parents called to say when he returned to from his visit. I also craved a little drama in Yours, maybe a stolen kiss or Antwon jumping into the falls (Antwon gets irritating after a while). These stories are real, though many aspects are also metaphors. Like in The Better Person, you just know that it isn’t about gender roles, but who cleans up when shit hits the fan. Or when the narrator in The Cure reasons that burning $90 than paying the therapist, it’s because he enjoys the misery of watching his privileges burn to ashes.

Quarantine is a refreshing read, a bold contribution to the genre of gay literature. But it leaves you longing for more. I can totally see book clubs having a field day with its symbols and metaphos, having heated debates analysing the psychology. But hopefully, Mehta is spending quality time right now on a longer, full-fledged novel, with a story that has a purpose and cast of supporting characters much more developed than the ones in Quarantine.

This review was written for Gaysi, a website dedicated all things gay and Desi. Check 'em out! They have stories, experiences, fiction and really cheeky podcasts. 

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