Book Review // Chronicle of a Love Foretold

Monu Tamang’s Chronicle of a Love Foretold published in December, 2015 is a young adult fiction based in Raichur, Karnataka, India.

It’s the story of the Bhutanese students in India, their initial struggle to blend in with the locals in the south and how they unite as one when necessary. The book is slim and an easy read but packed with themes of love, loss, betrayal, forgiveness and uncertainty of life. 

It definitely takes you back to your college days when life was all about experimenting and trying to fit in and discovering yourself in that process, making you a better person or worse for that matter. It makes you yearn for your younger days when you were experiencing love for the first time ever, in your life.

Kinga Lhendup is a young Physiotherapist at Paro hospital. At the outset, he leads a dreamy life; working at the hospital during the day, reading and writing at night or drinking whiskey. And jogging in the morning or tending to his beautiful flower garden. It’s a completely fulfilling life. Yet, deep inside, he is a broken man. Sleeping pills are the only antidote to his insomniac nights.

Monu takes us to the college days where we discover that a guy and a girl meets, likes each other and falls in love but…but there is a third person. Somebody who loves the girl and that’s when the matters get complex and also that’s when the charm unfolds.

Kinga Lhendup is on a scholarship to study Physiotherapy in a college in India. As a young Bhutanese, fresh out of high school, he has a whole life laid before him like a map to explore. Starting from experimenting to drink and smoke, flirting with girls and playing pranks on his lecturers, Kinga is out on an adventurous roller-coaster life. Until he meets Namsa Lhazin, the girl who sweeps him off his feet.

The book sends a strong social message of the difficulties faced by a child born out of wedlock and how that impacts the mindset of the child as he/she grows up. It also gives an insight into the life of a medical student. In that process, we also learn something about the medical terminologies which helps you understand how important your health is.  

Monu has emerged a contemporary writer and has definitely paved a way for other inspiring writers. He makes you feel ‘hey I can also write a book,’ which is so inspiring! If you have a story to tell, write it. It’s as simple as that.

It’s astounding that 30 copies of this book sold in two straight days soon after its publication at DSB Enterprise, a local bookstore in Thimphu. And word has it that he already ran out of his first printed copies. Such a huge feat in itself.   

While the story is light and can be completed in two sitting, there are certain disappointments. For one, it lacks character development. We never know how beautiful Namsa Lhazin is or how good looking Kinga Lhendup is? Beautiful and handsome as to how? The reader cannot imagine the eyes and the nose of the characters. Thus, giving a full stop to the reader’s imagination of the characters. I couldn’t bring myself to fall in love with the characters, no matter how hard I tried. 

When Namsa is first introduced, she is wearing a black shrug and a frock. What a combo! The writer definitely lacks sense of fashion. A shrug is a cropped, cardigan-like garment with short or long sleeves, worn over a vest or tank top or over a dress. Isolating shrug as a piece of cloth stops the reader from further imagination of Namsa. It doesn’t make you feel invested in the life of the characters, which is so critical in a story.

A light influence of Haruki Muarkami is distinct in the book. The love making scene when its pouring heavy outside is one that is replicated from Murakami’s Norwegain Wood, I reckon.

Gaurapa’s road to recovery is something which we can resonate from the film Munna Bhai MBBS. These are a few examples of an influence from the books and film which I felt had the author influenced, which of course is very natural and forgiving.

However, it saddens me that the story doesn’t live with you, long after finishing it and doesn't make you think about it for days on end. After finishing the book, it doesn’t make you hug it because it stops you from investing in the book emotionally.  

Nonetheless, this is a good start. Monu definitely left me craving for more of such stories. Stories which are distinct in Bhutanese and close to our hearts, stories which would make us hug the book at the end. We look forward to reading more of your stories. Way to go Monu!     

And yes, the design and cover layout is of international standard. Its just so convenient and perfect for a light travel read. 

P.S : I apologise for the honest and brutal review which is done in good faith of course as an ardent reader and a well wisher. I hope the author will take it positively and come better like a phoenix rising from the ash in his next project. 

2015 in books

           

At the beginning of the year, I set a challenge on goodreads to read 20 books. In between lots of travel for work, I was worried I may not be able to complete the challenge but as always I carried books wherever I went and not only 20, but I completed 22 books and I’m on the 23rd book of the year. At this rate, I’m sure I can beat that challenge of 55 books before I hit 30 in life.

I cannot help but brag about this achievement of mine. But again I feel truly embarrassed when I see my goodreads friends setting 70 books challenge and completing it. 70? I gape at them. I’m amazed at how they could do it, but again, it’s all about priority and the love for reading. After a while, it becomes an addiction, which of course is good.

If I sum up my 2015 in books;

-The highlight of the year has been discovering Jhumpa Lahiri. I came across The Namesake four years back, but then I just shrugged it off and never gave a second glance. I must have been living under the rocks all this while not to pick up her books again. I restarted with Namesake. I was blown away. 

The buttery texture of her writing is so irresistible. Once you start reading, she keeps you on the hook and I especially love the details in her writing. Coming from a Bengali descent, she mostly writes on the lives of Non Resident Indians in America.

A master story teller she is. I loved her writing so much that I picked her three books; The Namesake, The Lowland and The Interpreter of Maladies.
It was like a discovery of a whole lot of gem.

-I picked up To Kill a Mockingbird a couple of years back but didn’t enjoy it. Perhaps, it didn’t bear any significance in my life that time. I picked it up again this year and loved it to bits. 

Initially, I read The Mockingbird Next door by Marja Mills, a non-fiction, written on the lives of the Lee sisters. It gave me a deep insight into the lives of the Lee sisters and made it so much easier for me to appreciate the timeless classic afterwards. It’s said that Harper Lee was given a year off from work (she worked as a Receptionist for an airline) as a Christmas gift to write a book. What could be more rewarding than that for a writer?

Her recent book, Go set a watchman, a sequel to To Kill a Mockingbird was published after 50 years and won the goodreads award for Best Fiction 2015. However, it was an awful read. I didn't enjoy it. 

- I have been meaning to include non-fiction in my readings. I included The Spinster and The Girl with the Seven Names. The Spinster explores the pleasures and possibilities of remaining single. 

One thing that struck me was evaluating your life in the last ten years. More particularly, it was about taking stock of what I’d gained and lost in ten years’ time. It struck me so profoundly that I actually sat down one night and started writing about all those ten years. It amazed me so much, the level of maturity I exuberated over the years was astounding. 
On the other hand, The Girl with the Seven Names was a killer. More about the book can be found here. 

- A Little Life was the most hyped book on my tbr list and it didn’t disappoint me at all. As I mentioned already, it was the book of the year for me. Though, it drags on quite a lot over 720 pages, but it’s all worth the read. And yes, I confess that I love fat books.

- Speaking of fat books, 1Q84 was a fat book in itself, a trilogy in fact. And my reading list would be incomplete without Murakami. I started with 1Q84 and loved it tremendously that I recommend it to everyone. I even started dreaming about the stories in 1Q84 and one time I was so disturbed that I had to put away the book for a week. 

What is there not to love about Murakami? Dance Dance Dance was the other book and I loved how there’s a nameless character in the book. You cannot help but be curious till the end and like always he leaves you estranged, the best part of him. 

But The Strange Library was a huge disappointment. I paid Nu. 480/- for the 72 pages book with lots of illustrations like a children book and finished reading it in one sitting. For the first time in my life, I was filled with remorse for investing in a book. I couldn’t help but rant about it to him. Heights of disappointment!  

A few other reviews can be found here. 

How was your 2015 in books? I'd love to hear your recommendation as well. 

Book Review // A Little Life

As I turned the last page and closed the 720 pages book, I was sobbing, silently. It had me taken on a tour of the life of an emotionally and physically damaged man, Jude St. Francis.    

Hanya Yanagihara’s A little Life published in March is a story about four college friends who have come to New York to make their way out in the world. There is kind, handsome Willem, an aspiring actor; JB, a quick-witted, ambitious artist; Malcolm, a frustrated architect; and withdrawn, brilliant, enigmatic Jude who serves as their center of gravity.

It is seemingly the story of four friends and their friendship over the decades which is tinged by addiction, success and pride. 

But it’s the story of Jude alone at the end, by midlife a terrifyingly talented litigator yet an increasingly broken man haunted by his insurmountable past.

Jude walks with a limp, suffers from episodes of severe spinal pain and will not say a word about his life before college. He cuts himself. Early on the book, we come to know that Jude cuts himself but one is kept on hold as to know the reasons for self-harm. 

The graphic depiction of abuse and physical suffering is so raw and severe in A Little Life. At times, I had to get away from the book, distract myself from thinking it too much, get some fresh air and start from where I left it.

This is one of the books that leaves you speechless and makes it extremely hard for one to do a proper review. I absolutely loved this book and there’s no way that this little review of mine will do justice. I knew even before starting this book that I will be completely invested in the lives of the four friends. I braced myself for the emotional turmoil I will be put through.

Let me tell you what this book deals on. It deals on a lot of difficult subjects including physical, emotional and sexual abuse. If you’re having a bad day or going through a rough patch in life then this is not the right book to pick.

Even before I picked it, I knew this was going to be the book of the year for me. It indeed is! 

It was like knowing that he is going to be THE ONE for you, even before meeting him. Heartbreaking yet a beautiful book on the true meaning of friendship. It astounds me to think how humans can be so brutal yet the same humans can be so loving and forgiving in Jude’s life.

Adult adoption is something I read about in the book for the first time. It’s interesting how Yanagihara immaculately brought about the beauty of male friendship which over time turns to love relationship. I have never read a book where the deep love between two men are so intimately portrayed as in A Little Life. Female characters are less or non-existent for that matter.

Art and photography, legal practices, medical jargons, paintings and architecture are so well detailed in the book. 

The last art by JB ‘Willem listening to Jude Tell a Story’ had me weeping literally. I cannot fathom the pain Jude goes through on seeing the art and later Harold. 

It was surprising to find Bhutan and Punakha, particularly being mentioned in the book. How did Bhutan strike to Hana Yangihara when Jude and Willem goes on a vacation and the vacation happens to be in Bhutan?    

I love it when a book leaves me emotionally draining. That’s when I find the outside world immaterial, and all I want to do is crawl into bed and sleep for days. This is what exactly this book did to me. 

Is there a life after A Little Life? 

Book Review // The Girl with Seven Names

One fateful night, just when she is one month shy of her 18^th birthday, Hyeonseo Lee crosses the frozen Yalu river into China, with little more than curiosity and a rebelling spirit.  The first words of her mother when she calls was “Don’t come back.”

Thus begins a tormenting and gripping story of fear and the uncertainty in which Lee must figure out how to navigate in a foreign country with no money and identity. 

It’s a story of one woman’s terrifying struggle to avoid capture/repatriation and guide her family to freedom.

Lee was born in North Korea, one of the most secretive and oppressive countries in the modern world. At age seven, she witnesses her first public execution and self-criticism sessions were part of her daily sessions at school. Those who did not cry when Kim Il-Sung died mysteriously disappeared.

In this powerful memoir, Lee recounts her life inside the secretive communist brutal regime. As a survival strategy, she changed her name for seven times, thus the title of the book.

In her dire effort to reunite with her mother and brother, she plans to meet her brother arranged through the local broker.

‘Sixty thousand yuan - a fortune representing ten years’ wages at the restaurant-and a week’s imprisonment with the threat of rape, and all I achieved was a three minute reunion with Min-ho.’ 

In 2009, a little over a decade after she left North Korea, Lee gets an opportunity to get her mother and brother out, taking them on a long, extremely risky route through China to Laos where they could seek asylum in South Korea.

I’m aware that there is a ‘situation’ in North Korea. Yet other than knowing the name of the leader Kim Jong-un, I was unaware of the tightly suppressive dictatorship. The movie The Interview  provides a better insight, perhaps. 

I’ve thought that such regimes existed only in Hitler’s Germany. However, I’m baffled to learn that this is happening right under the sky we live in.

I couldn’t stop thinking about the ordeals she went through to escape to South Korea. Lee’s journey is harrowing and inspirational. She is a hero. This memoir is simply unputdownable. What happens next? Will she survive the journey? are the constant questions that looms your mind until you turn the last page. It’s an incredible book.  

The Girl with Seven Names is one of the best memoirs I’ve read so far. And it was terribly hard for me to come to terms that this is not a work of fiction. 

Book Review // La Ama

La Ama (a mother’s call) by Chador Wangmo is a story about one woman’s harrowing journey from a terrible marriage to the past which was equally ruthless and to an uplifting future. 

It’s a story that deals with a lot of difficult themes like betrayal and domestic violence, adultery, LGBT, and the recent popular entertainment culture of drayang.

One fateful night Dechen Zangmo runs away from the ‘mad house,’ the house that she once had set her heart in, only to be met with an accident. What’s she running away from? 

From a jealous and an abusive husband who treats her as a piece of furniture.

One is immediately narrated a series of events from the past which led her to the present situation. In that series of past events, it tells us why Dechen Zangmo could never complete high school. The teacher who is revered the most in the society is the reason behind Dechen’s leaving school. The circumstances Dechen faced is still prevalent in many schools in rural Bhutan.

From witnessing her parents separation to taking refuge in her annoying aunt and uncle’s crammed house in Chinese line in Phuentsholing to working in a Drayang for a living until she gets married, Chador Wangmo gives us a vivid and engaging story of one woman’s journey for survival and the triumph over the forces of violence.

It’s a bold book that depicts the tolerance of Bhutanese women to adultery by the significant other for reasons of their own, about how being a gay is a taboo in our society and the large influence of bollyhood in the life of an average Bhutanese girl. 

I felt extremely conflicted at times where I had to put down the book, contemplate and start reading again. 

All in all, it’s a nice read with just 198 pages which can be finished in one sitting. 

An update and a Book Review // Eleanor & Park

Things have never been busy like this before.Between moving houses, relocating to a new office (temporarily), traveling for work and the amount of reports and essays I have been shoving up my face at work is completely draining me out. Literally.

That’s why I have been MIA and this little blog has been ignored for some time now. Man, blogging is tedious sometimes! Huge commitment is required which I’m miserable at. Kudos to all blog buddies who never is on writer’s block. 

Well well,what made me come back to do a little update? My love for books. 

I just finished reading Eleanor & Park. I had to share it with you here because if I don’t, uh…nothing will happen. 

Duh. 

On a recent travel overseas I quickly picked this book on an impulsive shopping spree. Well, I’ve heard of Rainbow Rowell’s books before and had wanted to read Fangirl but this book’s cover caught my attention. I know I’m not supposed to judge a book by its cover. That’s cliché, I tell you. Because I picked this book by its cover, I mean look at the cover, isn’t it CUTE? A red head girl and a boy, sharing a headpiece. So simple yet beautiful. 

I finished the book in two days straight. Why? Because it kept me hooked. I couldn’t go to bed without telling myself ‘Just one more chapter’ and run late for work with large prominent eye bags. I had to shut myself in the room and cut off human contact because I couldn’t put down the book. It has been long since I read a good book. Eleanor & Park, a 2013 young adult novel tells a beautiful, haunting love story of two sixteen year olds in Omaha, Nebraska, in 1986. 

Eleanor is the new girl, the girl with the crazy red hair and strange clothes. She comes from a very dysfunctional family. Every moment at home for her is terrifying as she lives in constant fear of offending her abusive alcoholic stepfather. She shares a cramped room with her four siblings where toothbrush is a luxury and she has to go to school in wet crumpled clothes. 

Park is a half-Korean kid who has a more stable family life but constantly has a conflict with his father. 

Eleanor and Park bond over comic books and music and falls in love on their school bus but deals with domestic abuse, child abuse, racism, bullying and body image. Then the kick-ass plot reveals and immediately I fell in love with the characters. It just blew me away. 

The writing is as soft and silky as creamy butter that melts right away as you put it in your mouth. Like this quote: 

"Eleanor was right. She never looked nice. She looked like art, and art wasn't supposed to look nice; it was supposed to make you feel something." 

The fact that the story is told from both Eleanor and Park’s perspectives makes the character overwhelming. The way they speak to each other, about everything makes me renew my faith in love. It reminds you of your high school teenage love, that’s if you had one. 

Throughout the book, one word that constantly came out of me after each chapter was “CUTE.” Frankly, I giggled all the way towards the end of the book and craved for more. It’s a light read with just 325 pages. Rowell definitely left me craving for more. I wouldn’t be able to pick up another book for a while now. 

Books I've read recently

April has been a quiet, peaceful and a lonely month for me. For reasons unknown, the blossom of spring failed to set my heart aglow as it used to when spring was in the air. 

May started. My heart did not progress well in the happiness index. I continued to grow lonely. I stopped going out of the house except to work and to the grocery store. 

I took a weekend off to go to the village for this ailing heart to heal. It did help for a while. I returned to Thimphu; to my work and to my life hoping for a fresh start. Yet I was there where I left. 

During these months, I escaped to the world of fantasy, sunk into it, away from the harsh realities of life. Between the pages of the books, I found a lovely place to stay. There hasn’t been a night I went to bed before midnight no matter how tired and exhausted I am.So that’s when I got lost in these books:

And the Mountains Echoed: Khaled Hosseini, the author of The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns comes up with another riveting tale about love in his new book And the Mountains Echoed. 

It’s about how we take care of one another and how the choices we make resonate through generations. The tale in this book revolves around not just parents and children but brothers and sisters, cousins and caretakers. 

Hosseini explores the many ways in which families nurture, wound, betray, honor and sacrifice for one another; and how often we are surprised by the actions of those closest to us, at the times that matter most. 

From Kabul to Paris to San Francisco to the Greek island of Tinos, the journey in the book takes us gradually outward, becoming more emotionally complex and powerful with each turning page. A great story teller he is. 

The catcher in the Rye: Published in 1951, J.D Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye remains one of the best books about adolescence ever written. Holden Caulfield, a seventeen year old prep school adolescent relates his lonely, life-changing twenty-four hour stay in New York City as he experiences the phoniness of the adult world while attempting to deal with the death of his younger brother, an overwhelming compulsion to lie and troubling sexual experiences. 

Salinger, whose characters are among the best and most developed in all of literature has captured the eternal angst of growing into adulthood in the person of Holden Caulfield. Anyone who has reached the age of sixteen will be able to identify with this unique and yet universal character, for Holden contains bits and pieces of all of us. 

It is for this very reason that The Catcher in the Rye has become one of the most beloved and memorable works in literature world. I just wish I had come across this book when I was seventeen and yeah I had a hearty laugh over this book. 

The Husband’s Secret: There was much hype about the book and I wanted to know what the hype was. Set in Australia, Sydney, The Husband’s Secret tells the stories of three families: the Crowleys, the Fitzpatricks, and the O’Learys. 

It’s about a letter from the husband which is supposed to be opened only on his death. Just like Cecelia, I would have opened the letter out of curiosity. Curiosity kills the cat. And the real plot unravels leaving the readers at grip. 

The Hypnotist’s Love story: A wonderful friend sent me this book. Patrick must be the best boyfriend, Ellen O’Farrell, the hypnotherapist has ever had. Patrick is attractive, single, enthusiastic, and active and is a Surveyor. But along with this package of his, there comes another complete package; his former girlfriend turned stalker, his eternally young and beautiful dead wife. How is an ordinary hypnotherapist to cope with this sort of competition? 

I loved the fact that Patrick is a Surveyor since I’ve to deal with Surveyors always at work. It helped me to understand him more. It’s an exquisitely spinning and intense unfolding of the viewpoints told from both the stalker and the hypnotherapist. A must read best-seller. 

I am Malala: The story took the world by its grip when the girl who stood for education was shot by the Taliban. Malala tells of that life shattering moment in a fearless riveting memoir I am Malala, co-written with journalist Christina Lamb. 

Educate a man, you educate an individual. Educate a woman and you educate the whole family. In this part of the world, education is taken for granted. I just wish our teenagers value the rights to education and pursue its sweetness and its fruit. This is one book which should be read by every teenager.

Especially towards the end of the story when Malala was reuniting with her family in the hospital, my thoughts choked. I simply couldn’t put down the book. I closed it, went out in the balcony, took a breathe of fresh air and returned to continue. It was a little after midnight that I finally read the last page and fell asleep. I had a dream that night, a dream which was not a pleasant one. 

Norwegian Wood: Last night I finished the Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami.I’m at loss for words to describe Murakami’s writings. And I know I will never find the perfect syllable to describe it. This man amazes me in his writings. I’m in love with his words. 

Norwegian Wood is a nostalgic story of love, loss and burgeoning sexuality. For that nostalgic person in me, this book brought me leaps of joys and faith. At the same time, it left me emotionally crippled. Sometimes I had to put the book down, lie on the bed with my hands supporting my head and get lost in the story. I smiled to myself sometimes and banged my head other times when the plot was going haywire. He is a writer after my own heart. 

Apart from these, I read The Bell Jar and Looking for Alaska. Woah! that’s quite a lot of books. Currently, I’m reading The Happiness Project. 

Have you read any of these books? How was it? Any book you’d like to recommend me? I’d love that. A good book recommendation is what I need now.

Book Review// The Bell Jar & Now Reading...

It was in the summer of 2005 that I first met Sylvia Plath during my high school years. Plath’s most beloved and critically acclaimed poem “Tulips” was one of the poems that we had to study as part of the English paper. 

Honestly, I was not a fan of poetry. The complex nature and not so straight-forwardness attitude of poetry troubled me. However, it was a different one when I met with Plath’s Tulips. 

It could be because I was able to relate myself to the poem. Ever since then, my fondness for poetry has known no leaps and bounds.

I was also deeply saddened to learn that such a gifted poet and a novelist struggled with mental illness and committed suicide. 

Recently I met her again. This time, with her only semi-autobiographical novel, The Bell Jar, published posthumously. 

It is amazing how this book, written more than half a century ago still resonates to me today about my personal experiences with depression and suicides, my arguments on gender roles, why only women are the ones left with major responsibility of childbirth and taking care of the child and household etc.

Reading the book, I realized that I’m not alone. I could totally relate myself to Esther Greenwood in the book. It’s even more amazing how humankind remains the same regardless of time, no matter what. 

Throughout the book, I was filled with a sense of fright. I was afraid for Esther. What if she slit her wrists with those boxes full of razors? If she doesn’t want shock therapy, leave her alone. 

It became so gloomy for me sometimes that I thought it depressed me. You may say that I was not able to control my mind. Or I was not able to differentiate between the literal and the real world. Yes, I was. But I couldn’t help it. 

Often times, I wonder how a book can impact the reader. And The Bell Jar is no exception. 

Indeed, it’s not a cheerful read. But if you’re interested, I would highly recommend you know the story of Plath’s life and death before you delve into the book. 

When I realized that The Bell Jar had had quite a serious impact on me, I thought I wanted some lighter read. So I bought Looking for Alaska and I am Malala. I know splurging on books is bad for my savings. I go into a bookshop with just a book on my mind and emerge out of it buying two or more. I hoard the books like a hungry lioness and my reading list is becoming never ending now. Sigh!  

Mentally, I’m not prepared to read I am Malala after this serious read. So I will take a break in Looking for Alaska. Books like I am Malala need some serious and empathetic heart and will power, I presume. 

I’m a huge fan of John Green after The Fault in Our Stars. Who isn’t? I hope I won’t be disappointed by Looking for Alaska. I have just started and I love Miles and Alaska for now. With the recent weather in Thimphu, it has been a perfect time to snuggle in bed with a book and hot chocolate. 

What are you currently reading?

Book Review / Kafka on the Shore

Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami is the second book I’ve read by a Japanese writer. The first book I read was The remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro in my sophomore days in college. Perhaps I was a little too naive to understand the depth of the book which was awarded the prestigious Man Booker Prize for Fiction (1989) that I didn’t quite enjoy the book. 

With the same skepticism in mind, I grabbed a copy from the local book store and set out to read Kafka on the Shore.

My oh my, I was totally blown off.

It was a complete page-turner; I could not simply put it down and I have been consistently late to work for the last few days for staying up late at night just to put it down. I struggled though.

Kafka on the Shore (translated from the Japanese by Philip Gabriel) is mesmerizing, ethereal and surreal that sweeps you out of your way and leaves you puzzled. 

On his fifteenth birthday, Kafka Tamura (we never know his real name) runs away from his affluent motherless home in Tokyo and lives in a corner of a library in a far-off small town.

Fifteen year old Kafka is laid under the omen of his father, a renowned Tokyo sculptor who tells Kafka that he is destined to murder his father and sleep with his mother and sister. This oedipal prophesy is heavy for Kafka and the story centers around it for him. 

Paralleling the story of Kafka is the story of Nakata, an old man who has the ability to talk to cats. As a child in the fourth grade, while on a mushroom-gathering outing with his class he fell into a coma after an unexplained flash of silver in the sky. When he woke up several weeks later in a military hospital, he had lost his entire memory and with it, the ability to read and write. He lives on the government subsidy and earns some commission from finding lost cats in the neighborhood. 

It’s the story of fish and leeches falling from the sky and a shadowy pimp dressed as Colonel Sanders and an enlightening sex worker. It features un-aged WW I soldiers living in a forest, a transgender hemophiliac, a woman living in the past with an ability to travel through space and time and the unenlightened Hoshino, a truck driver with a ponytail, a pierced ear, and a Chunichi Dragons baseball team cap and how their lives cross each other's path.

I’m not a cat person. However, Nakata’s ability to converse with cat made me give a second thought and it is endearingly written in the book. I developed a love for the old man, Nakata’s character in the book for his innocence, truthfulness, honesty and for his inability to read and write. Of course his ability to converse with cat is exceptional. He was a perfect vehicle to execute the plots which perhaps could have been incomplete without him.

There are many questions unanswered in the book. 

The theory of T.S Eliot’s Hollow Man, Oedipus complex and a lot of symbolic metaphors are sometimes ethereal and makes one ponder until one lets things pass by and sometimes make it utterly empty. 

It filled my head, it consumed me but I loved it. Murakami is reported to have said that his novels are meant to be read again and again, and that it is up to the reader to devise their own thoughts and conclusions. Perhaps I need to read it again to formulate my own thoughts and venture beyond what I need to. 

A brilliant book! I enjoyed it completely. And definitely its one of those 1001 books that you must read before you die. Thus, this quote from the book completely sums me up: 

“The book didn't come to any conclusion, and nobody wants to read a book that doesn't have one. For me, though, having no conclusion seemed perfectly fine.”

                                                                                                          

                                                                                            Haruki Murakami

Book Review / The Book Thief

Set against the backdrop of Nazi Germany, Markus Zusak narrates the story of a young girl, Liesel Meminger in a town called Molching and how her life changes after she begins stealing books. The story is narrated in ten parts through the eyes of Death, which gives uniqueness to the story.  

 

The Grave Digger’s Handbook, subtitled A Twelve-Step Guide to Grave-Digging Success is the first book to her forbidden fruit of reading in WW II Germany. Liesel steals the book from her brother's cemetery and hides it under her mattress in the Hubermann’s home where she lives with her foster parents Rosa and Hans Hubermann. 

Keeping a promise he made long ago, Hans agrees to hide a Jew in the basement of their home as German cities are destroyed by air raids and the waging war. Here, Zusak shows that not every German was a Nazi in Nazi Germany and that there were some who did not worship Hitler like Liesel’s papa and who genuinely cared for the Jews.

Why does Liesel couldn’t stop the strong urge to steal books? Is she stealing to settle a score with life? For the loss of her brother or the disappearance of her mother? One can only know the answers to these questions if you read the book. 

WORDS.

“I have hated the words
and I have loved them
And I hope I have made them right.”

There’s something profoundly moving about the power of words that Zusak brings out so beautifully in the book. The words bring out a heartbreaking story about the strength, love, kindness and friendship of a human race destroyed by one of the most horrific events in history. It deplores human misery yet it celebrates the power of words.

There is so much pain and beauty in this book that it’s hard to put it into words. I’ve doubts if I’m making the right words to capture this stunning story, but I do know that this is a book that has made its stand in my bookshelf and will linger with me for time immemorial. And the book ends with this…

‘I wanted to tell the book thief many things, about beauty and brutality. But what could I tell her about those things that she didn’t already know? I wanted to explain that I am constantly overestimating and underestimating the human race – that rarely do I ever simply estimate it. I wanted to ask her how the same thing could be so ugly and so glorious, and its words so damning and so brilliant.

None of those things, however, came out of my mouth.

All I was able to do was turn to Liesel Meminger and tell her the only truth I truly know.

 [...] I am haunted by humans.’

 The Book Thief, Markus Zusak, Pg. 554

After reading a lot of good online reviews about the book and the recommendation from the book store lady, I’m not disappointed. It will be one of those books that I’ll read again and again in my lifetime and garner different meaning from it. I bet I’ll be more amused every time I read it since the power of words in the book is beautifully crafted and because it tells a story in which books becomes treasures. And you cannot help but agree to it.   

   

If you are a lover of words, or if you have a thing for the study of Nazi Germany or holocaust, I bet you will enjoy this book as much as I did. It’s simply one of those unputdownable books that will draw you emotionally and chill you to the bones. With my heart in the mouth, I’m looking forward to the movie in November. Hope it won’t disappoint my visualization of the characters.