Love on the Rocks

- Ismita Tandon Dhankher

My first thoughts on hearing the title of this book was categorizing it to the arena of sappy romantic stories. But surprise of surprises! It is an enthralling thriller with strong undercurrents of love. The first two pages of the book are enough to  make you get up and take notice of the plot line.

In a cargo ship sailing from Japan to America,the Sea Hyena, among with the 24 crew members, the chief officer, Aaron is newly wed and decides to bring along his wife, Sancha on board for the voyage. The husband and wife are blissfully in love but there is turmoil on the vessel. A murderer is on the loose and this in turn causes turmoil among the happy couple too. Everybody is under suspicion for theft and murder. Once the detective authority comes on board, it becomes a vicious cat and mouse game. With the thrill of murders there are also revelations of various key characters and they are not pretty. Sancha even doubts her own husband and doesn’t hesitate to voice these doubts. A gloomy masked presence looms over all this drama.

The narration of the book is unique. Every character explains the proceedings from their own perspectives in their respective chapters. This style may start out to be mildly confusing, but you soon get into the rhythm as you grasp the nuances of each character. There are several mysteries entangled in this story but the author deftly extracts each one and even succeeds in connecting them to each other to form a beautiful large picture at the end.

The mounting suspense predictably climaxes to the finding of the murderer without any twist. But it is then that the author brings out her trump card and reveals the identity of Manna, the mysterious journal writer with the violent past.

One flaw that I observed was the characterization was incomplete. There were some gaping holes in the character descriptions. All the characters have some kind of a past which could have been better illustrated in the soliloquy chapters.

Even through all of this and some mild confusion in the middle of the plot , the book turns out to be a delightful read. It is non pretentious, mature and manages to be practical and true to the characters at all time. An engaging thriller with great description of life on a cargo vessel. Kudos to Ismita!

Rating – 4*

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Love Story

…by Erich Segal.

Oliver, a wealthy guy who goes to Harvard and plays in the school’s Hockey team, meets Jennifer, who is a music student at Radcliffe and her father a baker in Rhode Island, in a library. They fall in love and get married, even though Oliver’s father has objections. After marriage, they go through ups and downs, but live happily with each other. Jenny supports the family as Oliver goes to law school. Once he graduates, he lands a good job in a law firm New York City. With time, they decide to have a baby; but end up having to seek a doctor when they see nothing happening even after months of trying to conceive. That’s when they learn of a health issue that Jennifer has; something that is incurable. What happens next; how they cope with the shocking news – makes up the rest of the story.

I stumbled upon this book during one of my recent visits to the bookstore and since I’ve heard people talking so much about how good it is, I didn’t think twice before picking it up. As I started reading it, I was expecting it to be exceptional, given all the high recommendations I’ve heard over the years. And in the following few hours that took me to finish the book, I was only met with disappointment. This book didn’t do justice to all the hype; it was just mediocre.

In my opinion, the problem lies in the short length of the novel. There wasn’t enough time to develop any of the characters. Everything happened too quickly, which means, as a reader, I couldn’t connect with the depth of the couple’s love or sympathize with them during their grief. I wanted to like the book for the story has potential. But too long a story confined to a short novel brought out neither the beauty of the plot nor its characters…at least not to my liking.

Overall, a quick and easy read, if you have a few hours with nothing else to do; but don’t expect anything extraordinary.

My rating: 2*.

*for the rating scale, click here.

P.S: A book that I liked along the same storyline as this one is A Walk To Remember by Nicholas Sparks…now that one, a sweet romantic novel, left me heartbroken with its tragic end.

The History of Love

…by Nicole Krauss.

Leo Grusky, an elderly lonely person, a retired locksmith by profession, an on and off writer, lives in New York. Originally from a small town in Poland, Leo, as a teenager, falls in love with a girl named Alma and writes a book before they both get separated and flee the country (to come to America) due to the war. When Leo lands in NY, he does everything to find Alma, only to be disappointed to see her married and raising a family. He spends the rest of his life after that yearning for her love, lonely in his apartment, spending time with his friend Bruno, and working on another book every now and then.

Alma, a teenager in NY who was named after a character in a book titled The History of Love by an author named Litvinoff, wants to help her mother find love after her father passes away. She explores ways to make her mother move on when her mother receives a copy of the manuscript of The History of Love from a person named Jacob Marcus, who wants the story translated. Recognizing a chance for her to find love, Alma sets out to find Jacob Marcus and during that quest gets pulled into wanting to discover about her namesake character in the book.

The mystery that unfolds after that, with interference from Alma’s brother Brid, is what makes the rest of the story. Who is Jacob Marcus? How does Alma, the teenager, and Leo come together? What role do the author Litvinoff and his book play? Does Alma find Jacob Marcus? And many other questions are answered in this gripping tale of love, life, melancholy, friendship, misunderstanding, longing, simple pleasures and much more.

Narrated mainly from the point of views of Alma (the teenager) and the elderly Leo, this book made me smile, left me feeling sad, kept me immersed in the story and at the end, brought out few tears. The story in itself is gripping. Many characters, each with its own charm, at first left me confused. But everything comes together as the mystery unfolds little by little in later parts of the novel. Although the story was strong in general, there were parts that were tad unrealistic for my taste, particularly with Alma and her brother Bird. Even with little dissatisfaction here and there, I’ve to admit that I absolutely enjoyed reading the book from start to finish.

One of the points I was attracted to the most while reading this book was the prose – the words that poured like poetry, giving life to even the most heartbreaking situations. I immensely enjoyed reading the book, especially the parts where the narration was done by Leo. I felt that Leo’s character was the strongest, and had the greatest potential in bringing out the beauty of the story. Honestly, I might’ve liked the book more if it had been narrated by Leo only…but then each and every chapter / character was deep and enriching in its own way, so I won’t complain.

Overall, I would highly recommend it – it’s a brilliantly penned story of compassion that shouldn’t be missed.

My rating: 5*.

*for the rating scale, click here.