Front Cover Friday – 27

This is a book I’ve looked at for months and finally do own it. (Haven’t read it yet, but it’s next on the list) The cover was the first thing that caught my eye. To be honest, I cannot pinpoint what exactly it is about the cover that appeals to me. On the one hand, it looks very crowded and yet, there’s something intriguing about having two cups standing out in the crowd. Almost like it implies that in the crowd of similar people, two stand out most for some reason. And possibly, the story is about these two people. Any way, maybe I’m reading too much into it!

A synopsis of the book according to Goodreads:

Major Ernest Pettigrew, retired, of Edgecombe St. Mary, England, is more than a little dismayed by the sloppy manners, narcissism, and materialism of modern society. The decline of gentility is evident everywhere, from tea bags, to designer sweaters, to racism masquerading as tolerance.

Mutual grief allies him with Mrs. Ali, a widowed local shopkeeper of Pakistani descent who has also resigned herself to dignified, if solitary, last years. The carefully suppressed passion between these two spawns twitters of disapproval in their provincial village, but Pettigrew hasn’t time for such silliness: real estate developers are plotting to carpet the fields outside his back door with mansionettes and his sister-in-law plans to auction off a prized family firearm. Meanwhile, Mrs. Ali’s late husband’s Muslim family expects her to hand over her hard-won business to her sullen, fundamentalist nephew, a notion she finds repellant and chauvinistic.

It’s a testament to Simonson that in this delightful novel, Pettigrew must navigate the tragic, the absurd, and the transcendentally joyful aspects of a familiar life turned upside down by an unfamiliar and unexpected late-life love affair. That two people from opposing and mutually distrusting worlds are able to bridge every gap with unerring respect and decorum serves as a quiet suggestion that larger conflicts might be avoided or resolved in much the same way. Finally, a way forward that Major Pettigrew would approve.

So does it appeal to you? The story and/or the cover?

I’ll put up a review as soon as I finish the book.

Until next time,

Cheers!!!

The Local News

Author Miriam Gershow’s first book features 15 year old Lydia Pasternak: intellectually gifted, bookish, skinny, a social outcast and a nerd. Following the mysterious disappearance of her popular older brother Danny, Lydia becomes somewhat of a celebrity in her small community and is almost neglected by her parents who are consumed with the need to find Danny. At school, she is suddenly popular among Danny’s friends and is almost overwhelmed by the attention and the outpouring of sympathy and grief. The problem is, Lydia herself hasn’t been too fond of Danny. And grief is hard to come by. Despite this, she tries her best to help with his search particularly when her parents hire a private investigator who Lydia finds very interesting and intriguing. What they find in the end, is something everyone, including Lydia is unprepared for. And it continues to haunt her for the rest of her life.

This is an interesting book by first-time author Miriam Gershow. It looks at the manner in which people grieve — publicly and privately. How much is too much? And can you grieve in private if your grief is made a public affair? What happens to a family after a traumatic event? And is there an appropriate way to grieve? What if you felt ambivalent about the person who you lost? What then, is the etiquette to grieve?

Through Lydia, her mother, her father and members of the Fairfield community, Gershow portrays differing ways of coping with loss and evokes the above questions. The book is narrated through Lydia’s point of view — how she sees others grieving and how she herself struggles to find the tears. How she struggles being known mostly as ‘Danny’s sister’. Does she eventually manage to deal with the loss? Or will she continue to be distant and avoidant? I found Lydia’s character to be warm initially and really liked her but then, as the character grew distant from other characters, I felt the same sense…as though she were growing distant from us the reader as well. And yet, it wasn’t a bad thing. It just made it seem a bit more real.

All in all, a good effort for a debut novel.

I’d give it a rating of 4. (Although 3 and a half is probably more appropriate)

Until next time,

Cheers!!

The Vague Woman’s Handbook

… by Devapriya Roy

I first noticed this book in my neighbourhood book store. Fresh new copies were on the shelf. My first impression was it must be a new time pass book by another new author. I have had some bad reading experience with some new authors. The cover art looked light and on a whim I picked the book.

I got immersed in the story of the two protagonists. Sharmila Mukherjee and Indira Sen are two different strata of women. In fact Sharmila or Mil is still a girl. Newly wed Mil is proudly living with her husband, while the long-widowed Indira is an outwardly mature Government officer. They meet in the offices of Academy of literature. And become fast friends. The unlikely friendship blossoms to a great extent, bringing solutions to many problems and great companionship.There is also the very immature but cute love of Mil and her husband Abhi, Indira’s dominating mother, Abhi and Mil’s uncompromising parents, the nosy neighbors and insufferable house owners too!

The beauty of the book lies in the dynamics of the different relations described in the book, estranged mother-child, not-enough-space mother-child, the newly married lovers, the college friends. All of these relationships are described and built to the reader with utmost care. The author puts forth incidents that test these relations and shows us that the relationships deserve to exist and will stand every test. The love of a young couple, the frustration of living frugally in expensive Delhi, the pain after fights, all these leave the reader with a lot of warmth towards the characters. Both the women are slight scatter brains, Mil not possessing minimal direction sense and Indira being prone to apathic Credit card spending. This definitely helps the women to identify themselves very easily with the characters. Even with their flaws they lead very fulfilling lives. There is no drama in what the author writes. The problems faced by these women are hard ones. They don’t have miraculous solutions but over time with some determination and support, they all overcome their problems, managing to get a few laughs out of them and even managing to allow themselves happy endings.

As for the writing, I enjoyed it immensely. The writer is such an imaginative person and the best part is that she can so easily translate that to the written word. The imagery she builds up to describe all the situations and the surroundings is so beautiful that I fell in love with the writing. The fact that I finished the book in one night is itself a testimonial to that.

My only gripe is that though the cover art is interesting, it does not portray the women as described in the book. Hope that changes in the next reprint!

Excellent read. My rating 5*