Reading between the lines

A heartbreaking story based on real events surrounding a murder case in the 1800s with the accused being Grace Marks. The story as told by Margaret Atwood is however a work of fiction retold using the same places and dates as the actual story. As I read the book, I thought of a Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini. The story begins with Grace Marks as a child in Ireland. Her father an abusive alcoholic and her mother bearing children after children, the family is supported to some extent by Grace’s aunt and uncle. Finally fed up of supporting this ever-growing family, the uncle suggests a migration to Canada and to their luck, Grace’s father has been getting into some trouble with the law due to which he takes up the proposition. Unfortunately, Grace’s mother dies on the journey and is buried at sea. Grace later regrets using her mother’s second best blanket to wrap her dead body. Coming to Canada, life gets a bit better as she finds herself a maid in a

This was the first book of Iris Murdoch’s that I read and might be the last. For some reason, Iris Murdoch’s quotes appeared quite a few times within one week (perhaps it was her birthday some day that week) on some Facebook page on literature that I had subscribed to. The book was quite a disappointment set in London among a group of friends and family. Almost like a soap opera, everyone had slept with almost everyone else, and the ones whom they had not slept with, they were deeply in love with. As always, spoiler alert. Stop here if you don’t want to know any part of the story. Not too far into the book, a fairly interesting part does turn up. There are two brothers Lucas and Clement. Lucas was initially adopted by their parents who had given up hope on having their own child. But after several years, they do indeed have their own – Clement. Initially, Lucas was the focus of all their love and attention but once Clement was born, the parents apparently diverted

For some reason I have been putting off reading this book for a long time and I never watched the movie because it seemed so “colonial English”. A lot of the book is quite mundane and about the ways of the English thinking adorably of the “British empire”. The book is a sad story if not an outright tragedy about dedicating your life to the wrong causes and the wrong people. The main character is Stevens who is the butler at Darlington Hall and spent most of his life serving Lord Darlington. The lord eventually dies and the house has been bought by an American as after the second world war, it was the Americans who grabbed most of the spoils. The American doesn’t entertain as often as Darlington did and for that matter spends most of his time in America leaving large parts of Darlington Hall under wraps and with a skeletal staff on duty to maintain the house. Under these diminished circumstances, the butler Stevens recollects nostalgic memories of old times and even

This is a book of Nikos Kazantzakis that I found a bit disappointing but then I guess the book was set in a gloomy time in the history of Crete. An island occupied by Turkey but with Greek ancestry, it is about the freedom struggle of Crete. Crete has seen several uprisings and the book is set probably towards the end of the 1800s or the early 1900s just before the First World War. The book takes the reader through the uprising, how it started, the feeling that culminated in fighting and the foregone conclusion. As usual, spoiler alerts. At the heart of the novel is Captain Michales who is like the Braveheart in this novel. A humorless man, he feels nothing but pain and agony with Crete being occupied. He has fought in a previous uprising and survived. Was given amnesty and safe passage to escape to Greece but refused to go. “Freedom or Death” was his slogan. And eventually his agony causes him to begin the fighting by provoking the Turks. After a few retaliations,

An absolutely brilliantly written book by Coetzee, this is a sequel to the book “Childhood of Jesus”. Set in a utopian land with strong socialist laws – guaranteed employment, lifelong learning opportunities, and you name it, it attempts to break open the cracks in even such a utopian society. As always, spoiler alerts. The main characters – Simon, Ines and David, have come to this strange land on a ship. They first come to a city called Novella in the first part of the sequel. It turns out David is not related to Simon or Ines, but Simon decides to look after the boy David and reunite him with his mother. David’s mother is not Ines, but in a manner similar to Simon, decides to play the role of mother to David. As they try to enroll David in school, they find that David is either autistic or has learning disabilities, and the authorities try to put him in a special school. This is when the imperfections in this utopian society begin to show. Until then, Simon and Ines were given jobs

One of the best books by Philip Roth that I have read - far better than “The human stain” and “Exit Ghost”. "His skull looked so fragile and small now. Yet within it were cradled ninety of the past. There was a great deal in there. All the dead were there, for one thing, their deeds and their misdeeds converging with all the unanswerable questions, those things about which you can never be sure ... to produce for him an exacting task: to reckon fairly, to tell his story without too much error." The book is narrated in the first person by the reclusive author Nathan Zuckerman who in turn hears a narration of a story by Murray Ringold his revered high school English teacher. But the central character of the story is Ira Ringold the younger brother of Murray who was to a large extent Nathan's adopted father. Nathan believed he was Ira's protégé but towards the end of the book he realizes it was the converse - it was Ira who was adopted by Nathan. "