A BOOK IN RETROSPECT

A blog about the books I read. I've been reading for as long as I can remember and I owe it to my father who would gift me an annual membership to the library every birthday. To finally blog about something I love doing has been more difficult than I predicted. However here it is - reviews of every book I have read since July 2019. The covers too are a manifestation of my imagination - a cross between what I think the book represents and some clumsy designing.

[weeklylibrary]

'"Safety' is the pretext for confining women to homes; the outcome is to create consent for the domestic servitude of women."

Had to pick up the above quote from the internet because I read this book a year ago on a flight back and forth to Jodhpur, where I was went to shoot a short film for the non profit I worked for back then.

A 6 hour car ride back and forth from the village multiple times over a week, reminded me that even though in all my mannerisms and existence as an Indian girl/woman/other, I am sometimes, somehow still a stranger to the only land I have ever known. It's too vast, the issues faced by women too many, to ever be able to fully grasp in one lifetime.

Then I used to go back to reading and choose that moment to reflect on the issues faced by women and advocated for by Leftist women of the country. The book is easy to read and gives a good account of contemporary Indian politics and feminism. A strong writer, bare in her thoughts, doesn't mince her words and seems like someone I would like to hang out with.

Since the book belonged to my workplace library I don't have access to it anymore, but I do have a photo I took of an excerpt I enjoyed!

"Imagining the nation as a mother and a mother goddess, valorizing and worshipping women as divine goddesses, is fully compatible with treating women as less than human. In fact, the very ideology of worship' for mother and motherland seems designed to disguise and rationalize the restrictions on the autonomy of women.

The real live woman yearns to breathe free-but her desire for freedom is castigated and delegitimized as a betrayal of her role as mother and miniature icon of the motherland.

The unique, specific personalities and experiences of each of our own mothers are undermined and rendered invisible in our culture what remains visible is only bland, abstract, generic 'mothers', each of whom could easily be substituted by another. Womanhood and motherhood, as well as motherland are all worshipped in India-but women and mothers in India are not free."

[weeklylibrary]

"In 1855, Chief Sealth of the Duwamish Tribe, which inhabited what is now the state of Washington, wrote to President Franklin Pierce protesting the president's proposal to buy the tribal lands. The city of Seattle, a corruption of the great chief's noble name, is now built in the heart of Duwamish land. His letter warned of the white man's corruptive, destructive habits:

How can you buy or sell the sky-the warmth of the land? The idea is strange to us. We do not own the freshness of the air or the sparkle of the water. How can you buy them from us?

We know that the white man does not understand our ways. One portion of the land is the same to him as the next for he is a stranger who comes in the night and takes from the land whatever he needs. The earth is not his brother, but his enemy, and when he has conquered it, he moves on.

He leaves his father's graves, and his children's birthright is forgotten.

The air is precious to the red man. For all things share the same breath-the beasts, the trees, the man. The white man does not seem to notice the air he breathes. Like a man dying for many days, he is numb to the stench. . . ."

I just really need to give up sugar in my 30s, and this was worth the read. If I do get addicted to sugar once again, I would revisit this book.

"They take the juice of the poppy and they refine it into opium and then they refine it to morphine and finally to heroin. Sugar is nothing but a chemi-cal. They take the juice of the cane or the beet and they refine it to molasses and then they refine it to brown sugar and finally to strange white crystals."

[weeklylibrary]

The BITCH Manifesto by Joreen

“Bitches have to learn to accept themselves as Bitches and to give their sisters the support they need to be creative Bitches. Bitches must learn to be proud of their strength and proud of themselves. They must move away from the isolation which has been their protection and help their younger sisters avoid its perils. They must recognize that women are often less tolerant of other women than are men because they have been taught to view all women as their enemies. And Bitches must form together in a movement to deal with their problems in a political manner.”

Yes girlfriends, the personal IS political.

[weeklylibrary]

“Marriage guidance and marital sex illustrate a central premise of Anticlimax: that the heterosexual couple embodies a relationship of power and control, rather than representing a consequence of nature, biology or sexual preference. The setting up of the Marriage Guidance Council, the work of sexologists and the development of sex therapy are all instances of how men’s power over women was to be supported and managed through the regulation of marital sex.”

After reading this book the only thing I could think of was why we need to bring back anticlimax -  1. Women have been made to believe getting naked is empowering - Anticlimax covers why it is essentially pointless 2. Increased in dating tips and advice for young women from other young women - notice how it is specifically more in the case of heterosexual couples basically the therapy and solving of issues as laid down by Sheila has not stopped but increased indefinitely.  3. The glorification of stay at home women and becoming a ‘housewife’  I have loved reading this book and simultaneously going online and being flooded with women yapping about their heterosexual problems out loud. Its just made everything so much more entertaining and engaging. Eye opening really. Must re read in a few years. Coming back to my general word of advice to women out there - Stay single. Stay safe. In 10 years of active dating for both my friends and I, giving advice has started to tire the hell out of me. I’m only 28, but when it comes to romantic heterosexual relationships, I’m an old woman. Im tired, I’m bed ridden. I require oxygen masks to be able to actually hear what one is saying. I read all these instances of emotional abuse and for me it’s just another day on the farm. This book has been like a guiding figure in all of this hetero shit storm. It’s got so much to give, if you’re open to taking. 

An icon, a pioneer, a visionary - Sheila Jefferys Anticlimax is an essential read to understand where we are with feminism currently. 

“Marriage guidance and marital sex illustrate a central premise of Anticlimax: that the heterosexual couple embodies a relationship of power and control, rather than representing a consequence of nature, biology or sexual preference. The setting up of the Marriage Guidance Council, the work of sexologists and the development of sex therapy are all instances of how men’s power over women was to be supported and managed through the regulation of marital sex.”

[weeklylibrary]

“Every boy wants to imitate his mother, be her, fuse with her, but Daddy forbids this; he is the mother; he gets to fuse with her. So he tells the boy, sometimes directly, sometimes indirectly, to not be a sissy, to act like a “Man.” The boy, scared shitless of and “respecting” his father, complies, and becomes just like Daddy, that model of “Man”-hood, the all-American ideal – the well-behaved heterosexual dullard.”

A really articulate fun afternoon read. It’s a quick paced, humour filled book that sticks to it’s subject - men. The author is controversial and I haven’t formed an opinion of her yet but as I saw on the internet recently - I support Womens Rights, but I also support Womens Wrongs. 

Keeping my review short and simple, in tune with the book. 

“Our society is not a community but merely a collection of isolated family units. Desperately insecure, fearing his woman will leave him if she is exposed to other men or to anything remotely resembling life, the male seeks to isolate her from other men and from what little civilization there is, so he moves her out to the suburbs, a collection of self-absorbed couples and their kids.”

[weeklylibrary]

“As in most fiction, the female characterization is synonymous with an ap­ praisal of the figure’s beauty, its type, and most impor- tantly, its effect on the male figures in the book”

Woman Hating is a revolutionary book as can be expected since Dworkin is a radical feminist. She starts off by dismantling fairy tales and goes on to talk about foot binding and the burning of witches. She keeps it short and to the point. 

Took me a while to finally sit down with this book, and I had been wanting to do so for a very long time. Once I did, I finished it in a day because it requires your complete attention. She demands the reader to think for themselves. An important, essential work in feminism. 

“The Catholic objection to abor­ tion centered specifically on the biblical curse which made childbearing a painful punishment—it did not have to do with the “right to life” of the unborn fetus.”

[weeklylibrary]

And it came to me then. That we were wonderful travelling companions, but in the end no more than lonely lumps of metal on their own separate orbits. From far off they look like beautiful shooting stars, but in reality they’re nothing more than prisons, where each of us is locked up alone, going nowhere. When the orbits of these two satellites of ours happened to cross paths, we could be together. Maybe, even open our hearts to each other. But that was only for the briefest moment. In the next instant we’d be in absolute solitude. Until we burned up and became nothing.”

The first and maybe only book I will ever read by Murakami. Sputnik Sweetheart manages to keep the speed up but sometimes I realized it required enormous amounts if energy. However the story line or rather love line is cute and complicated - sums up human relations entirely. 

Murakami is knows for managing to write beautiful books without really giving a concise ending, and I think the same can be said of this novel. His writing style leaves you wandering not exactly sure of where he is leading you. I did enjoy it, but not enough to pick up another Murakami for a while - I don’t think he is my type.

“It’s enough to make me ask the question: how well do we really know ourselves?

The more I think about it, the more I’d like to take a rain check on the topic of me. What I’d like to know more about is the objective reality of things outside myself. How important the world outside is to me, how I maintain a sense of equilibrium by coming to terms with it. That’s how I’d grasp a clearer sense of who I am.

[weeklylibrary]

“I never played the roles a woman is supposed to play. Perhaps they never appealed to me. Or perhaps I looked at my identity as not being dependent on them. If anything, I took the traditional roles of a woman and moulded them to my convenience, my purposes. I played the role of a “mother” to my troops, or “obedient daughter” when I was learning queenship, because it suited me.. Just as it suited you, Sita, to play the traditional role of a wife, mother and daughter under extraordinary circumstances.”

Bhoomika is a story about how Sita, from the Ramayana would have led a completely different life had she not been married to Rama. With the help of a sage, she is led to see visions of how different her life would have turned out to be.

It feels as though this book is a journey of the authors personal relationship with the goddess Sita and how he grew up and realized that though we in India pray to Godesses and celebrate their homecoming all over the country during different times of the year, the Indian woman faces prejudices on a daily basis. 

It is a well written, simple, breezy book. The author doesn’t dwell too much into the Indian epic and even though I think the book is not as great as other books that have taken off from Indian mythology (such as Asuras and The Palace of Illusions), Mr.Iyengar has still done quite a decent job.

For me personally, I think religion has been one of the biggest hindrances to women emancipation. So I may not have been that interested in hearing or reading about this book. However it was given to me by a date and so I’m gonna keep this copy. 

“’You have lived your life entirely by your choices. And yet you have been alone’ I replied quietly. 

I almost hated myself for saying it . Loneliness was a stick that women used to beat other women with. It was less a stick and more a knife that we plunged into each others back. Most of the time, we did so under the guise of compassion or empathy or even pity, which made it worse.”

[weeklylibrary]

“Indeed , humans are the least reliable in this world.”

Botchan is an almost classic novel from Japan. The narration is similar to The Catcher in the Rye, both of these books are fast paced and can be read in a day. There is only one female character with whom he has a absurd relationship - she is his caregiver for years and the only person who ever spoke to him nicely, at least according to him. 

There is nothing great or different about this book, however each character is comical because Botchans perception of things happening around makes for a interesting read.I enjoyed reading this book as have so many others around the globe, because it is really well written, the kind of writing that makes you jealous of the authors talent. The translators note at the beginning also helps set a good background which help in understanding the events of the book. 

Even though I took my time with the book, - a week - and read it on a flight to Bangalore and on the train ride back to Chennai, I think I could sit down and reread it just for the fun of it. 

Botchan is a great light read, that is considered a classis in Japanese literature. The narrative is a lot like The Catcher in The Rye, the main difference being that this book explores a young teachers experience at a school. 

“Now that I thought about it, though, I realized that most people actually encourage you to turn bad. They seem to think that if you don’t you’ll never get anywhere in the world. And then on those rare occasions when they encounter somebody who’s honest and pure-hearted, they look down on him and say he’s nothing but a kid, a Botchan. If that’s the way it is, it would be better if they didn’t have those ethics classes in elementary school and middle school where the teacher is always telling you to be honest and not to lie. The schools might as well just go ahead and teach you how to tell lies, how to mistrust everybody, and how to take advantage of people. Wouldn’t their students, and the world at large, be better off that way?”

[weeklylibrary]

“the Marxists demanded they set up a Central Committee of the Workers’ Republic of Freedomia, which was a bit rich, Amma thought, seeing as most of them had taken ‘a principled stand against the running dogs of capitalism’ as an excuse to not work

the hippies suggested they form a commune and share everything, but they were so chilled and laid back, everybody talked over them

the environmentalists wanted to ban aerosols, plastic bags and deodorant, which turned everyone against them, even the punks who weren’t exactly known for smelling minty

the vegetarians demanded a non-meat policy, the vegans wanted it extended to non-dairy, the macrobiotics suggested everyone eat steamed white cabbage for breakfast

the Rastas wanted cannabis legalized, and a reserved plot on the land out back for their Nyabinghi gatherings

the Hari Krishnas wanted everyone to join them that very afternoon banging drums down Oxford Street

the punks wanted permission to play shouty music and were duly shouted down

the gays wanted anti-homophobic legislation enshrined into the building’s constitution, to which everyone replied, what constitution? 

the radical feminists wanted women-only quarters, self-governed by a co-op

the lesbian radical feminists wanted their own quarters away from the non-lesbian radical feminists, also self-governed by a co-op 

the black radical lesbian feminists wanted the same except with the condition that no whiteys of any gender were allowed inside

the anarchists walked out because any form of governance was a betrayal of everything they believed in”

Facts :

1. I took three days to complete this book

2. The Booker Prize 2019 was shared by this book and The Testaments so shout out to my college library for being up to date .

3. I will read this book three more times for equal parts indulgence and inspiration.

Okay first of all, kudos to Ms. Evaristo for writing such a captivating read where she’s gotten all the Asian characters to the T. I love books that when you read, you feel as though you are talking to yourself. This book has so many cool music and literature references that I want to buy myself a copy and treat this like an encyclopedia. 

The quotes I have written, are about two pages long each , but it would be unfair to leave out those parts because she has the capability of creating the whole atmosphere and energy that the characters might be sharing while exchanging words. Each character is so remarkable and realistic, each shine their own light and each woman takes up her own space. If you are looking for a book that you want to spend reading in bed all day then this is it. 

“Amma closes the window, walks back, re-spreads herself languorously over the sofa, convince me why feminism getting a new lease of life isn’t a good thing, Dominique? isn’t it just what the doctor ordered?

actually it’s the commodification of it that bugs me, Amma, once upon a time feminists were so vilified by media it turned generations of women away from their own liberation because nobody wanted to be denounced as one, now they’re in a lovefest with it, have you seen all these glamorous photoshoots of young feminists with their funky clothes and big attitude - until it’s no longer on trend

feminism needs tectonic plates to shift, not a trendy make-over

Dominique wants her friend to agree with her, it’s a no-brainer, but Amma, ever the contrarian, refuses to see the obvious, you’re being way too cynical and doom-mongering, Dom

I’m being clairvoyant, any serious political movement that relies on beauty to sell it sell it is doomed 

oh come on, the media’s obsession with beautiful women is nothing new, look at Gloria, Germaine and Angela in their youth, brilliant women but hardly ugly ducklings, if women are young, beautiful and fuckable, they get the coverage, whether they’re musicians or pediatricians

pediatricians, Ams?

it rhymes, Dom, it rhymes

and another thing that bugs me are the trans troublemakers, you should have seen the stick I got when I announced my festival was for women-born-women as opposed to women-born-men, I was accused of being transphobic, which I’m not, I’m absolutely not, I have trans friends, but there is a difference, a man raised as a man might not feel like one but he’s been treated  as one by the world, so how can he be exactly the same as us?

they started a campaign against my festival which was taken up by someone with a million followers on twitter called Morgan Malenga who kept up the attack for months, severely damaging my reputation until I backed down

Dom, you’re so funny, er, troublemakers? protest? remind you of anyone? we’d have given people hell on Twitter if it was around when we were young, can you imagine? and the trans community is entitled to fight for their rights, you need to be more open-minded on that score or you’ll risk becoming irrelevant, I’ve had to completely readjust my thinking having a ‘woke’ daughter who likes nothing more than to educate me, in any case, I’m sure plenty of these young feministas heroine worship you over there, I bet you’re a babe magnet

I’m not a babe to them, Ams, I’m an old-school has-been who’s part of the problem, they don’t respect me

then you need to talk to them, Dom, and we should celebrate that many more women are reconfiguring feminism and that grassroots activism is spreading like wildfire and millions of women are waking up to the possibility of taking ownership of our world as fully-entitled human beings

how can we argue with that?”

[weeklylibrary]

“The Testaments was written in many places: in the dome car of a train stuck on a siding due to a mudslide, on a couple of ships, in a number of hotel rooms, in the middle of a forest, in the center of a city, on park benches, and in cafes, with words inscribed on the proverbial paper napkin, in notebooks, and on a laptop. The mudslide was beyond my control, as were some of the other effects affecting the writing venues. Others were entirely my own fault” The opening statement in the Acknowledgements section.

I read this book in class, in the library, in different parts of college, on my bed and on the airport and the planes back and to from home. For about 50 days now, around Rs.30 in dues and three reissues later, I have successfully finished reading my first book of 2020. Basically, I read this book over the span of one and a half months. In my defense, it is a really long book which tends to be a bit stretchy and it was the month of December. I saw this book in the ‘New Arrivals’ shelf in college and was the first to borrow it, which may be another reason as to why I held on to it for so long. 

I read The Handmaids tale, the prequel to The Testaments, about two to three years ago. Margaret Atwood gives us a glimpse into what religious domination will do to women. In this case it is Christianity, but considering the political situation in my own country right now (India) I couldn't help but comprehend how fucked up things really may turn out to be and how the first victims will be women and children. The book is harsh, borrowing memories from the pages of history, yet optimistic. We get a view of Gilead from Aunt Lydias perspective which I found very fascinating because she is one hell of a character (both in the TV series and in this book as well). There are also the testimonies of Baby Nicole - nothing to write home about, but still her rebellious and revolutionary personality is satisfying.   

“In that case, i would destroy these pages I have written so laboriously; and I would destroy you along with them, my future reader. One flare of a match and you’ll be gone - wiped away as if you had never been, as if you will never be. I would deny you existence. What a godlike feeling! Though it is a god of annihilation.”

Since the book is about 500 pages long and because I was unable to quote The Handmaids Tale on this blog, here’s an extra quote because it describes exactly how I feel - 

“Once I’d passed my sixth-month examination and had been accepted as a permanent Supplicant, I was allowed into the Hildegard Library. It’s hard to describe the feeling this gave me. The first time I passed through its doors, I felt as though a golden key had been given to me - a key that would unlock one secret door after another, revealing to me the riches that lay within.”

[weeklylibrary]

“British women, along with their men, were forced onto a stage in India. They had the leading roles in the imperial pageant. As long as they knew their lines and did not falter, the Indians would tolerate their rules. After 1857, everyone knew what would happen if the Indians decided that they had had enough. The tiny white minority that ruled with such apparent ease could equally easily be hunted down. Who could forget the men, women and children who had been hacked to death as they left the church at Meerut or the pathetic bodies in the well at Cawnpore. The Mutiny, as it used to be called, did not by itself drive a wedge between the British and the Indians, but it confirmed and accelerated the change that was already taking place. The memories of that time, of the atrocities committed on both sides, poisoned the relationship between the two races until the British Raj finally disappeared in 1947.”

Before I picked up this book, I found a handmade bookmark with the words ‘Read a book, travel the world’ in another book I had previously issued. I picked it up and kept it for myself and ironically the book I used it in was ‘Women of the Raj’ because the book really made me travel back to a pre independent, British governed India. 

Growing up in Calcutta (now Kolkata) and reading this book in Madras (now Chennai) both being British capitals at one point, helped facilitate my imagination surely, that being said Margaret Macmillan manages to recreate the era in a factual and objective manner. Having been to India plenty of times herself since childhood (her grandmother was married to a British officer placed in India) I think she did strike a splendid balance in explaining the situation that was, and me being a product of missionary education all my life I thoroughly enjoyed her storytelling. 

 I would be going to college in my autorickshaw and wondering how many (yet not so many) years ago, a British woman came to this foreign land with her own set of hopes, desire and despair. I on the other hand, felt like I had been transferred to that era for as long as the book lasted. Truly, a book makes you travel the world. 

“Many women stayed on for a few years because their husbands had been invited by the new rulers of India and Pakistan to help with the transition. if their husbands were in business, independence in fact made little difference to their lives. for many missionaries independence was a relief: as one woman missionary said, ‘we were no longer regarded as part of the ruling power but were accepted for what we were’. 

Ms.Tomlinson, an old missionary in a small hill town, paid no heed to the changes at all. She continued, as she had always done, to terrorize the local officials, ordering them to limit the loads that donkeys could carry, sending for them to see the poor who came to her clinic, and scolding them mercilessly. The head of the local administration complained gently to an Englishman: ‘When you British made our country free, sir, ...someone forgot to tell Miss.Tomlinson.’ 

A few women never left India at all. They had nothing to go Home for.”

[weeklylibrary]

“At the temples in this area, Khouy says the soldiers mutilated its animal guards, and either knocked or shot off the stone heads of the gods, riddling the sacred bodies with bullets. After they destroyed the temples, the soldiers roamed the country searching for monks and forced them to convert to the Angkar. Those monks who refused were murdered or made to work in minefields. To escape extermination, many monks grew their hair and went into hiding in the jungle. Others killed themselves in mass suicides. Although these monks maintained and took care of the temples, now they are left to the jungle once again. I wonder where the gods go now that their homes have been destroyed”

At one point while reading this book I realized it was practically impossible for me to finish three chapters without getting welled up. Such an important story, I think what makes it worse is the current political situation in a lot of places around the world. There are wars happening, children dying, refugees growing and terror and fear winning. A very compelling and saddening story told in a straightforward manner, Loung Lou survived the war but she made sure the readers of this book visualize the hell that she went through.

I picked it up because the name of the book rung a bell, later i found out that Angelina Jolie directed a movie in 2016 where during press meets she specifically mentioned that this is their story - the story of the people who lived through the regime of the Khmer Rouge under the leadership of Pol Pot. It really made me shudder as Cambodia is in the same continent that I belong to - the most popular genocide in the world under the Nazis too far for me to really comprehend. This is a story that should be told a hundred times over, a book that should be taught in schools in the hope that humanity learns a way to fix itself and wars are only something we read about in history and fiction.

“This is what the war has done to me. Now I want to destroy because of it. There is such hate and rage inside me now. The Angkar has taught me to hate so deeply that I now know I have the power to destroy and kill.”

[weeklylibrary]

“I am always saying "Glad to've met you" to somebody I'm not at all glad I met. If you want to stay alive, you have to say that stuff, though.”

Been difficult to write my review for this one - it’s perfection! I’m in a way glad I read it now and not before, what with it being so famous and popular. I picked this up because I thought it was high time I read this classic, and boy was I right. The amount of skepticism and exaggeration is not at all overwhelming, it is rather on point. I feel that there might have been an undertone of irritation in his writing, but it feels as though that itself drove him to write. 

Picking quotes from the book for this blog was difficult and just two quotes do not do justice. The sarcasm reeks out of the pages and it is just grand (yes, I did just make up a whole sentence so I could use the word ‘grand’). I thoroughly enjoyed this read, finished it in a couple of days. I honestly want to pick the book up again in a few years and re read this gorgeous, simple masterpiece. Any review will never be enough to appreciate the beauty of this one, you have to sit down for a couple of hours and just loose yourself in the candid narration.

“What really knocks me out is a book that, when you're all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it. That doesn't happen much, though.”

[weeklylibrary]

“Sofia the kind of woman no matter what she have in her hand she make it look like a weapon.” 

 The second time I am reading this bestseller. I picked it up from the library when I had forgotten to carry the book I was reading at that time to college. With it being Banned Books Week and all, this fit in perfectly. 

The first time I read The Color Purple I was only sixteen. I remembering being quite saddened by the book. However when I read it this time around...it was such a different experience. That is the beauty with art, every time you intake it it feels different. This time around the book was funny, hopeful and most of all just beautifully written. Racial discrimination, Jesus and colonizers made more sense to me this time around, I think I was able to read between the lines better. I wish I had more to say but no description will do justice. I completed the book and as I do when I have finished a truly great book, I banged my hand on the table in applause. I know for a fact I will pick it up again in a few years...

“...have you ever found God in church? I never did. I just found a bunch of folks hoping for him to show. Any God I ever felt in church I brought in with me. And I think all the other folks did too. They come to church to share God, not find God.”

[weeklylibrary]

“And wasn't it terrible, how much he looked forward to those moments, so much so that sometimes even a ride by himself on the subway was the best part of the day? Wasn't it terrible that after all the work one put into finding a person to spend one's life with, after making a family with that person, even in spite of missing that person...that solitude was what one relished the most, the only thing that, even in fleeting, diminished doses, kept one sane?” 

The third book of Ms.Lahiri to be read by me, Unaccustomed Earth is a bunch of short stories that are written in her typical beautiful simplistic manner.  Her characters transcend cultures; they may be Americans and close-knit Bengali families. But she manages to strike a chord in her readers by playing with her themes in layers. She makes her characters react to situations. This evokes pathos rather than sentimentality. Even The Lowland and Interpreter of Maladies struck a cord with me, enough for me to want to read some more of her. 

Her writing is not overtly sentimental; yet it grips you. It often dwells on loneliness, illnesses or failing marriages. While Lahiri does not seem afraid to make people cry, her writing never goes over the board into sentimental mush. She sticks to being direct and manages to dust a few things under the carpet. She is a terrific writer, a great gift from our subcontinent and I literally wish I could write even half as well as she does. 

“There were times Ruma felt closer to her mother in death than she had in life, an intimacy born simply of thinking of her so often, of missing her. But she knew that this was an illusion, a mirage, and that the distance between them was now infinite, unyielding.”

[weeklylibrary]

“Wonderful to imagine it, though. The whole appeal of medieval studies - the languages, the literature, the history, the art and architecture - to immerse oneself in that world. That other world. Safely other. Other in almost every way, except that it was here. Look at those fields on either side of the motorway. Those low hills. It was here. They were here, as we are now. And this too shall pass. We don’t actually believe that, though, do we? We are unable to believe that our own world will pass. So it will go on for ever? No. It will turn into something else. Slowly - too slowly to be perceived by the people living in it. Which is already happening, is always happening. We just can’t see it.”

David Szalay’s ‘All that man is’  are nine short stories intertwined together. He takes us through the journey of men in different stages of their lives. Starting from college through middle age and then finally old and feeble. Throughout the journey the characters have consistent personalities - somewhat poignant, reminiscing and even absurd at times, making them very believable. 

A few of the stories are very touching, while some are average. It is a long read and I had to reissue the book twice, but it was addictive enough for me to. His writing style is a lot like Camus - character driver - the characters linger on you. I enjoyed reading this book, it took me into a calm yet wavy zone, which is also how I would describe this book - quite bittersweet. 

“The passage of time. That is what is eternal, that is what has no end. And it shows itself only in the effect it has on everything else, so that everything else embodies, in its own impermanence, the one thing that never ends.”