Reflections: Corelli's Mandolin

I have not watched the movie adaptation of this book, so I don’t have any reference points.

Stories of War that deal with both human suffering and enduring love strike that perfect formula to churn a human heart. Love and tragedy go so well together in stories.

This is the story surrounding the wars that erupted between Greece and Italy during the time of the second world war. This is the story of Pelagia, a Greek woman who lives through the many wars amidst love and loss. The harsh realities of war teach her to value the most essential elements of life and understand the meaning and depth of love. There are several interesting and strong characters in the book. Captain Corelli is one of them. The Italian Captain takes over Pelagia’s island, but has a rare mix of personality traits - kindness and compassion coupled with wit and bravery. He hates war, but is attached to his duty. So he does his best to minimize harm and create friendship and well-being between the Italians and Greek (at least those on the island). Pelagia and the Captain fall in love and patiently hope for the war to end while nurturing ideas of their future together. And then the Germans invade, and everything is washed away.

This is a simple story. But a powerful one. It’s mostly about the ravages of war, and the coming of age of an innocent and intelligent woman. Pelagia is molded and hardened by the horrors around her, and her immense strength provides a beacon of hope to the men in her life. During times of excruciating difficulties and atrocities, the human psyche changes in one of three ways - 1) it is deeply, irrevocably wounded and scarred, withdrawing into a reclusive shell, 2) it manages to rise to a positive place of strength, compassion, and constructive action despite the scars or 3) it sinks into an abyss of self-destructive cruelty and negativity due to the festering wounds. The author explores all of these changes in the human psyche through his extremely well developed characters. He fleshes them out as sympathetic characters, each driven to their ways due to the circumstances of war and survival.

In parallel to the above themes, the story explores the nature of different types of love: the one that is dominated by lust, the one that endures after the fire of lust has burned out, the one that is born from loyalty and admiration, the one that is shared between a parent and child, the one that slowly develops between wounded souls that heal each other, the one that is at the heart of friendships etc. At the end of all the destruction and tragedy, the one essential tonic that keeps us humans going is love. It sounds corny when I write it, but the book beautifully brings this out.

There is also a lot of history in this book. It is primarily a historical document. The characters are just used to color the history more vividly. So, the story moves slow. However, the excellent writing makes the reading experience worthwhile. Despite the heavy theme on war, I appreciated the intelligent humour and wit that laces through the story and the characters. I laughed out loud at scenes, smiled through many passages, and loved Pelagia’s dad and the Captain. In many ways, Pelagia’s dad reminded me of my own, and that made it all the more endearing. I was emotionally invested in the characters and lived through their terrors and hopes. I felt Pelagia’s pain and was moved to tears.

With such great things to gush, I did find one thing unsatisfactory - it was the way the story ended. The last hundred pages seemed rushed, and the ending was inconsistent with the raw realism of the rest of the story. With so much beauty and insight that accompanied the rest of the story, I don’t understand why the author ended the story in an over-the-top romantic manner and with the Captain behaving in the most infuriating manner possible. The ending felt flat and deflated. I guess I am too old for romance of this kind.

That aside, this is a book heavy with thoughtful and intelligent commentary on war, survival, and love. The writing reminded me of a serious version of Wodehouse, which has biased me, no doubt.

Reflections: And The Mountains Echoed

I’ve seriously hit a block. I can’t call it  a “writer’s” block, because I’m not a “writer”. But all the non-fun writing and work is keeping my brain constantly fogged and tired. I can barely construct an interesting sentence. However, since my pile of “books to reflect on” keeps growing, here comes a series of shoddy articles, written for the sake of it.

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Khaled Hosseini’s  And The Mountains Echoed starts beautifully. It is not a single story, but several threads of stories weaved within each other. This keeps the book both interesting and exasperating, especially after the reader passes the mid-point. At a certain point, it crosses the line from being thoughtful and intelligent and becomes a checklist of interpersonal and social themes that usually make books sound intelligent; too much breadth with little depth. The book begins with the estrangement between a brother and sister who complete each other and love each other in a way that only soul mates are often talked about. For the most part, the novel’s trajectory follows the life of the sister and the characters that are associated with her. Almost every character’s story is recounted (even characters that are not directly associated with the primary narrative), and by some wave of a carefully constructed spell, they are all indirectly playing a role in the overarching story.

The stories are engaging, sensitive, and thoughtful. However, there are just too many characters and too many stories that don’t necessarily tie to the “core” of the book. The primary storyline should have been tightened to bring focus to the book. This book could have served well as a collection of short-stories rather than a novel that covers a spectrum of characters and themes that present themselves over a wildly swinging timeline. More than the volume of characters, I was frustrated with the author’s style of narration that shifts between timelines even within a sentence! Every page, and every few paragraphs has a shift in timeline. The  narrative rocks back and forth between past, present, and future in a manner that is pointless! Although this wasn’t making the story difficult to understand, it was just frustrating and tiring. I understand the beauty of narratives that don’t follow a linear structure, but too much of anything takes away its beauty.

And my pet-peeve - almost all the characters have the same “voice”. They all sound the same, say things in the same beautiful manner, and lack definitive personality. Having too many characters makes it challenging to develop them and give them their “voice”. Some characters were expertly fleshed out, though.

The writing faded into the background, because of the breadth of the stories. My focus was on the stories. The writing propelled the story, but didn’t strike me in any way. It was definitely engaging and easy to read, except for the constant shift in timelines (those sentences were infuriating). There are glimmers of really good characters, good writing, and good social commentary.

One of the things that did strike me as a possible unifying “theme” is every character’s search for something elusive and ephemeral. Everybody has a void and is desperately seeking out to fill that void. Love, self-satisfaction, and self-assurance are some of the things that people want to find, but struggle to understand its nature and challenges when they do come near it. The stories also present the strange and bitter dilemmas posed by Love. Many times, Love brings us to crossroads of decision making wherein every option is equally, painfully difficult to take. Having taken a path, we live the rest of our lives trying to reconcile with the loss of a part of us that died at the time of making a decision, and that we never seem to find in us again, leading us to be eternal seekers of something that cannot be named.

So, all things said, I think the author overdid a few things - his frustrating narrative style of constantly shifting time periods, too many characters with the same voice/style of narration, and  too many themes (from homosexuality in Afghanistan to adoption to parenting to immigrant experience in the US). If the book had focused on just a few core themes central to the primary storyline, it would have worked really well. It is still an engaging read that is hard to put down. But it doesn't stay with you for long.

Reflections: The Museum of Innocence

Kemal is a young and wealthy Turkish man educated in the West.  He is soon to be engaged to Sibel, another wealthy and westernized young woman wholly in love with Kemal. But when Kemal chances on Füsun, a poor distant relative, he is hopelessly attracted to her. The two begin an affair that soon escalates into something far more serious and destructive than they could ever imagine. Through a detailed narrative of Kemal’s relationships with Füsun, Sibel, his family and friends, Pamuk lays out a comprehensive account on the nature of love, romance, and relationships in Turkey’s patriarchal society.

Obsessions are comforting in some ways. The regularity of faithfully doing something with a mixture of helplessness and dogged determination, oddly enough, imparts a higher meaning to those lives that struggle to anchor onto something. It sometimes elevates the otherwise mundane and unimpressive qualities into something profound and sublime. And that is essentially what happens with Kemal’s life story. It is a story that is at once supremely shallow, indulgent, careless, and annoying as it is profound, romantic, idealistic, and heart-tugging because of how an obsession is portrayed. That a book can evoke and convey such contrasts and ironies from one simple story is testament to the writing and story-telling prowess of the author. With an astounding sense of perspicacity, Orhan Pamuk meticulously pieces together Kemal’s thoughts and feelings, drawing a portrait that is incredibly detailed and true to reality. Every simple element of human interaction is zoomed in and presented through a micro-analytic lens that helps the reader vividly recreate the atmosphere and characters in Turkey. Sometimes, this microscopic narrative does teeter on the edge of becoming mundane and boring, but the narrative is well paced and keeps you engaged. For example, you wouldn’t realize that you just read several pages of text on how Füsun smokes her cigarette. The writing helps with this as well, for it is unpretentiously smart and lucid, so at least it saves you from rereading overloaded sentences. The story, if one can call that, does crawl at a snail’s pace, but it is not frustrating to read Pamuk’s abundantly rich prose on the subtle and intimate aspects of Turkish culture. And since I love books on culture that are woven around a simple story, the long book was engaging to me.

Kemal’s story is a vehicle through which Orhan Pamuk illustrates the dynamics, ideals, and values that shape Turkey’s society, specifically in regards to its attitudes towards men and women. He explains to the reader almost every relevant detail and minutia about the strongly patriarchal culture that struggles to fully embrace certain western ideals whilst holding onto conservative standards on women, notions of propriety, and class-distinctions. What amazed me (I don’t know why it should amaze me) is how identical (well, almost) Turkish society is to Indian society! I could relate to everything the women were going through - the taboos, the prejudices, the subtle mistreatments, the constant reminder of being secondary, the hypocrisy, and how everything comes together to unnecessarily complicate people’s lives. The dynamics between people in a Turkish household is also quite similar to an Indian household, right down to the nosy and gossiping neighbors. It surprised me that even the descriptions of Turkish movies – the stories, the workings of the industry, etc., were exactly like ours! The book also brings to light the all too familiar clash of Western ideals against traditions and socially-conditioned values that are so deeply ingrained, to some measure, in everyone – wealthy, educated, progressive or otherwise. And just as how being educated is different from being literate, the story subtly shows that being “westernized” is different from being truly progressive. But these aspects are Pamuk’s secondary deviations and observations. In this story, he primarily describes the nature of romantic relationships, some of which are universally true and generalizable, and some are specific to Turkish society. There are aspects that everyone can relate to, because that’s how thorough and all-encompassing the narrative is, spanning the entire depth and breadth of what it means to be romantically involved, especially if that relationship is forbidden, elusive, or out of reach.

As the narrator/author often alludes, this is more of an anthropological account of a lovelorn Turkish man in the 1970s, 1980s of Turkey, than a page-turner of a story. But through this subject, Orhan Pamuk delivers a richly ethnographic account of Turkey’s socio-cultural framework. It is an interesting book, for Pamuk’s keen sense of observation and insight makes it an intelligent read. As always, the nuanced writing and insightful portrayal of a culture makes all the difference to an otherwise simple story.

Reflections: The Last Letter from Your Lover

After a serious accident that leaves her amnesic,  Jennifer Stirling returns to an unfamiliar place that everybody calls “her home”, to a strange man that everyone calls “her husband”. As she pieces together her past life and identity, she comes across a passionate love letter that is addressed to her. Only hitch is - the author is clearly not her husband. With the letter as her guide, she is determined to reclaim fragments of her old life that promised happiness and love. Her struggle is presented through the lens of the austere Victorian morals that still gripped London in the 1960s. How does one assess and put into perspective personal freedom against moral responsibility? The book addresses some of these questions through Jennifer’s epic love story.

I had high expectations for this book. I read a couple of glowing reviews for it that made it seem like the book was profound in its discussion of heavier themes on morality. And as predictable as it can get, I was drawn to it like a moth to light. Well, the book attempts to be more than a sappy love story, but it didn’t hit all the points for me. It is very much reminiscent of Anna Karenina in its portrayal of infidelity. The plot seems to have a formulaic approach. Most of its structure is borrowed from popular culture, literature and movies, so everything about the story is trite and predictable. In addition, it leaps and shuffles across time periods without conveying anything much or adding any dimension to the narration. And, I found the book to be far too long for the content it holds.

But there are certain interesting aspects. The author explores infidelity from multiple perspectives - the cheating husband, the cheated-on wife, the cheating wife, the cheated-on husband, and of course the unattached lover. Is it ever justifiable to have an affair? What about children? How important is one’s own personal freedom and happiness when it threatens to affect the happiness of others? Does morality and moral responsibility take different shades with the passage of time and evolution of society’s values? Heavy questions. But only a small portion of the book addresses the questions. For the most part, the story makes the questions seem black and white because it is narrowly presented through the specific contexts of the characters. The author tries to convince the reader that what A does is clearly wrong and what B is doing is clearly acceptable. One is bad and the other is good. The good is eventually favored in a grand twist of (too many) turns, and the bad gets burned. This approach was simplistic to me, and the themes fell apart as the rest of the book took the predictable journey that all romance novels take. Life is full of grey areas, not always happy endings, and serendipitous coming together of ideal circumstances. Although I’m not a hardened cynic that scoffs at happy endings, I do scoff at the heavily contrived ones. Many parts of the story didn't resonate with how reality works. It is just a feel-good, light read.

The book tries hard to make Jennifer’s story epic, but it did not touch me. I could definitely sympathize with some of the characters and I could surely understand Jennifer and her motivations, but the book didn’t leave a positive impression on me. 

 

Reflections: The Art of Hearing Heartbeats

Julia wakes up one day to find that her father, a renowned Wall-Street lawyer, has disappeared. Just like that.  Rigorous detective traces lead her father’s journey until Bangkok, and then there’s nothing. After a few years of grappling with this mystery, Julia comes across an old unsent letter that her father had penned to a woman in Kalaw, Burma, before marrying her mother. Hanging onto the few details of the letter, Julia finds herself in Kalaw, eager to find answers. In the little mountain-village of Kalaw, she learns about her father’s deepest secrets. Her father’s story awes and comforts her, helping her make peace and gain some insight into the Eastern philosophies of life. 

It is the notion of most spiritualists that the intellect is far more superior to the senses. Debates rage in the scientific and spiritual community over which is better. The most common answer is – both. One leads and informs the other. The intellect cannot develop without the senses, and the senses are empty without a processor. Although the bulk of the book is about a poignant, tender, idealistic romance, the aspect that elevated the book was the portrayal of the development of some of our basic senses to reach deep within one’s heart and soul. A nuanced sensory skill does enhance the intellect or one’s intuition – provided, the body and mind are in-sync. This insight gives one the clarity to understand the world, and everything and everybody on it, a little better. 

The story infuses basic Buddhist principles, most of which are widely accepted by most schools of thought. Seeing is not always believing. It is true that our senses, especially the sense of sight, often muddles our deeper visions. The superficial is more visible than the valuable truths that lie coiled inside layers of the superficial. It takes a special kind of training to tune the senses, to collaborate with all the other senses, to sensitize our probes, to penetrate through all the layers and uncover the essence of everything. Julia’s father learns to see right through to the essence. He uses his senses in the most optimal manner to enlighten his mind and travel to a different place. He shows that the art of intuitive perception can be honed with our army of limited senses. 

But this book is not overtly philosophical. The book’s essence is a beautiful love story. It speaks of a mystical, magical, transcendent love that doesn’t drain or inflict misery, despite any number of pangs and pains. It speaks of a completely unconditional love that only uplifts and multiplies true happiness. Is it possible for such unearthly love to exist between two people? Is it possible that the love that we dig deep within ourselves to enlighten and brighten our inner-selves, can be found through another individual? Could another individual truly complete us – down to our core? The tale says, yes. Once you perceive the essence of love – the true warmth and happiness that it provides, you don’t need to be bound to your rudimentary senses to remain happy. The happiness that you gain is permanent within you, radiating you with energy and good-will.  It is a love without strings attached, but with another kind of deeper, soulful attachment that doesn’t depend on the senses to be activated.  Although it is hard to achieve such a state in our worldly relationships, the story brought back my tucked-away idealism to the fore. And I reveled in it, at least briefly. 

The writing is simple and beautiful. It effortlessly streams with lucidity and insight. It gracefully paints the story and the settings. And the characters are surely memorable. But (there had to be a but), there are questions that are left unanswered, and the questions are significant enough to nag the reader. Why did Julia’s father decide to get married to her mother, is one such a question. Why did he not return to Burma earlier, if he had the clarity and courage to differentiate between social mores and the ways of Nature? Some things don’t add up, especially since the story is set in so much idealism. It taints Julia’s father in a shroud of tarnished uncertainty and cowardice, taking away some of the beauty of the story. 

Despite the nagging questions, I really liked the book. I really thought this would receive my highest rating, but a few things didn’t align themselves in the end.

Reflections: The Ground Beneath Her Feet

This is a saga of love, tragedy, and quite simply, life. I have been tapping my keyboard for 15 minutes wondering how to summarize the book and the tale. I don’t think I can satisfactorily do so. At the heart of it, it is an intense story of relentless love that two men have for the sensual, angelic singer, Vina Apsara. Ormus Cama is a musical genius, and Umeed Rai is a talented photojournalist. Both are friends, and both love the same woman, but she loves only one. Their lives are entwined from their young days in post-colonial Bombay, all the way to New York, where Ormus and Vina create a rock sensation of their own. The tale is about passion and the depths to which arts such as music and photography can sink into our soul and meld within us.

The novel is about so many things that surround a simple love story. Its about life’s hypocrisies, injustices, cruelties, and all the million ironies and unpredictabilities. Salman Rushdie writes evocatively and passionately. What impressed me the most was his insouciant and seamless style of loading a single sentence with so many divergent but related thoughts and topics. He spans a wide breadth of subjects with just a few casual sentences that are most of the time, deep and powerful. His details are sharp, almost pungent, and they kick and punch you with their vividness and imagery. The lines that stayed with me the most from the book are:

“A photograph is a moral decision taken in one eighth of a second, or one sixteenth, or one hundred and twenty eighth. Snap your fingers; a snapshot’s faster. Halfway between your voyeur and witness, high artist and low scum, that’s where I’ve made my life, making my eye-blink choices.
Long ago I developed a knack for invisibility. It allowed me to go right up to the actors in the world’s drama, the sick, the dying, the crazed, the mourning, the rich, the greedy, the ecstatic, the bereft, the angry, the murderous, the secretive, the bad, the children, the good, the newsworthy; to shimmy into their charmed space, into the midst of their rage or grief or transcendent arousal, to penetrate the defining instant of their being-in-the-world and get my f****** picture.”
“In the beginning was the tribe, clustering around a fire, a single multi-bodied collective entity standing back-to-back against the enemy, which was the rest of everything-that-was. Then for a little while we broke away, we got names and individuality and privacy and big ideas, and that started a wider fracturing, because if we could do it - us, the planet kings, the gobblers with the lock on the food chain, the guys in the catbird seat - if we could cut ourselves loose, then so could everything else, so could event and space and time and description and fact, so could reality itself. Well, we weren’t expecting to be followed, we didn’t realize we were starting anything, and it looks like it’s scared us so profoundly, this fracturing, this tumbling of walls, this forgodsake freedom, that at top speed we’re rushing back into our skins and war paint, postmodern into premodern, back to the future. That’s what I see when I’m a camera: the battle lines, the corrals, the stockades, the pales, the secret handshakes, the insignia, the uniforms, the lingo, the closing in, the shallow graves, the high priests, the non-negotiable currencies, the junk, the booze, the fifty year old ten year olds, the blood dimm’d tide, the slouching towards Bethlehem, the suspicion, the loathing, the closed shutters, the pre-judgments, the scorn, the hunger, the thirst, the cheap lives, the cheap shots, the anathemas, the minefields, the demons, the demonized, the fuhrers, the warriors, the veils, the mutilations, the no-man’s-land, the paranoias, the dead, the dead.”

There are better lines in the book, but I don’t know why these bleak, harsh, and strong words (or their essence) stayed with me. This is a long (575 pages long) book that tells a complicated, yet simple story. Too many references, mythical and real, are drawn from mythology, theology, the music industry, the rock movement, history and politics to weave this web of a saga. The one thing that I didn’t much understand the need for, was Rushdie’s typical inclusion of something absurd and fantastical, eerie and magical. The tale could have done without his touch of magical realism. I often don’t get it.

I should also mention something about the zillion characters that show up in this tale. I find it fascinating that Rushdie’s characters seem like caricatures on the surface - very little physical or outward descriptions, but the few descriptions that he gives are so potent that you instantly draw a sketch of them in your mind. With each character, he brings out a persona - a whole range of clustered mini-characters within one gigantic one. He gives the characters a cartoonish absurdity, but this ridiculous absurdity sticks and frames the characters. And of course, the dialogues and slangs and wordplays he incorporates through his characters, are witty and ring true. My favorite character (for his portrayal) is Piloo Doodhwala. His introduction sealed the character in my mind:

“On this golden afternoon or another, bronzer p.m., at this instant or that one, the celebrated Mr. Piloo Doodhwala and his famous “magnificentourage” marched forth on to Juhu’s sands. I was wholly ignorant of his growing citywide renown as a “character” and “coming man” and statewide purveyor of milk; I had no idea that his real name was Shetty-but nobody called him that anymore, because, as he himself liked to say, “milkman by fame, Milkman by name”; I had never heard of the term he had coined to describe the intimate clique of family members and servitors with which he liked to surround himself - a term gleefully taken up by the local rags and much satirised (“magnificentestine”, arrogantourage”, etc.); but Piloo Shetty alias Doodhwala was impervious to satire. I simply beheld a small, plump, white-kurta-pajamaed man in his middle twenties, a young man with so great a sense of his own value that he already looked middle-aged, a fellow with a strutting walk like a peacock’s and plentiful dark hair so sleekly plastered down with oil that it resembled a sleeping mongoose. He carried himself like a king, Caligula or Akbar, monarchs who entertained fantasies of being divine.”

This is an interesting, but a very long, dense, and powerful read. Parts of it are engaging and intense, but other parts are far too deep. Nothing propels you to pick it up and read it, but when you do start reading, Rushdie’s words pull you into his world until their power sucks your energy out. And then, you would put the book down and watch it gather some dust, until one fine day something in you (perhaps your library reminders) urges you to finish it. It took me 2 months to finish the last 100 pages, but a couple of days to finish the first 300. The book’s charm waxes and wanes, but in the end, it emerges as an interesting read. 

 

Reflections: Eros, Philia, Agape

I was so enamored by Rachel Swirky’s writing that I started reading another book of hers. From the title, I expected this to be another book on Greek mythology, but that was not to be! It’s a science-fiction that looks into the nature of love.

The story takes place in a time way into the future when Artificial Intelligence and Robotics have progressed to a state where one can place a customized order for an Android (down to choosing his/her body parts, brain composition, required aptitudes, interests etc.). Adriana is facing a difficult time in her life and decides to order an Android as her companion and care-taker. Lucian, the android (oh-so-similar to Endhiran ;)) arrives at Adriana’s home and slowly learns to adapt himself and his ways to Adriana’s liking. His consciousness pieces together information like an infant, his neural network strengthens and he finally achieves a level of consciousness and self-awareness to call himself as an individual, who is not merely a machine. But he still doesn’t comprehend who he truly is, and what love truly is. Is he staying with Adriana because that’s what his core system is programmed to be? Is he really in love with her? How is his love for her different than his love for roses or Nature? Is her love towards him different than his? If so, in what ways? He is riddled with all these questions and he decides to find answers to them and to his plaguing question on what is the Self, on his own terms.

Within a few pages into the book, I was pleasantly surprised and was glad to be reading it.  The question of whether machines are capable of achieving a state of consciousness which allows them to attain the self-awareness to know who they are, is a popular question that intrigues AI and Cognitive Scientists. I was impressed that within this short book, Swirsky explores a murky topic from the perspective of  a robot.  The story tackles a host of issues - is “love” or companionship meaningful if mates and companions can be custom-ordered to match our preferences? Is such a companionship long-lasting? Can humans and androids ever be companions?

I really liked the succinct approach Swirsky takes to explore these issues - nothing is overdone or underdone. The story stays together on its own and hints at the answers without the heavy, esoteric arguments which usually clog up such  topics. It was light, yet deep. Her writing was clear and insightful, but it wasn’t as beautiful or poignant as “A Memory of Wind”.

Digested thoughts: I loved the premise of an android who is custom-made as a woman’s companion, slowly evolving in his “thoughts” to wonder what love, companionship and the Self means. It is a short, but an interesting, deep read. 

Reflections: The Bean Trees

Marietta is a level-headed, gutsy girl from Kentucky who gets through high-school and lands a boring, tedious job to make ends meet and support her mom's meager sustenance. She soon grows sick of her town, and her mentally corroding job and craves to reestablish her life in a new surrounding. She buys an old Volkswagen and sets off west with hardly any penny but with loads of good wishes from her mom. She trudges through Oklahoma and stops at a shady bar in a Native American neighborhood. After being drunk on her fear and worries, she stumbles into her car only to encounter a Native American woman plopping a little child into her car's backseat, requesting her to take the child away. In her half-delirious state she tries to protest but the lady disappears. The little girl looked around 2 years old and was staring at her through big black innocent eyes, vacant with fear. Perplexed that someone would abandon a child in the backseat of a drunk stranger's car, she drives to find a place to rest for the night. Quite contrary to most toddlers, the child obediently sits at the back, with not a whimper, despite rain lashing through the leaky windows. Soon, the numerous bruises and scars on the child's body bore evidence as to why she was probably safer with her. She names the child Turtle, for her characteristic behavior was to firmly latch onto anyone or anything with an iron grip. Marietta gives herself a fresh start by changing her name to Taylor, and sets out to straighten her life and that of Turtle's, in the city of Tuscon. In Tuscon, she meets many interesting people; one of them is a single mom on the verge of a divorce, utterly in denial and lacking in confidence. Together, the ladies offer solace to each other through their friendship and fight against the world's queer injustices. The story is eventually about the role of love, faith and friendships in the persistent battle of survival.

Marietta and her friend are polar opposites - the former is ready to take life by its horns, while the latter is paranoid of everything turning disastrous, and fumbles to feel her footing in reality. Through the course of the novel, both women gradually learn to accept and understand those aspects in life which cannot be controlled, and those that can be controlled. Their growth eventually leads them to make the best use of the cards dealt to them. The growth of the characters is quite well done. The story itself is quite straightforward and simple, without any superfluous twists. The plot merely reflects the mundane oddity of life.

Turtle is an endearing child who tugs at the heartstrings. I think Turtle is an extremely adorable pet-name for a baby! Kingsolver does a very refined job of showcasing the subtle emotional, physical and mental traumas of an abused child. Like many kids in the real world, Turtle is a resilient survivor. In comparison to this young child's strength, Taylor realizes how weak she really is in coping with loss and pain. I'm always touched by such kids' implicit faith, helplessness and silent endurance of all the world's insensitivity. The child really forms the heart of the novel, although her story is but another brook in the woods. Through the dynamics between Turtle and Taylor, Kingsolver explores the meaning of motherhood - the doubts, the limitations, the joys and the satisfaction.

But there is one low point. I unfortunately could not connect with Kingsolver's writing, although it was insightful, simple and down-to-earth, quite befitting the theme of the novel. I found it to be too wry and dry, very much like the desert lands of Arizona. Her parched, stripped down writing style struggled to keep my attention and interest. But I plodded along to make sure that everything turned alright for Turtle.

In all, The Bean Trees is a realistic story of life, inspiring and touching.

Reflections: Chronicles Of Avonlea

Avonlea is a warm community in Canada, home to the ever adorable and memorable Anne Shirley of Green Gables. It is a place where people's goodness of heart knows no bounds, in an era of simplicity and harmony. Chronicles of Avonlea contains snippets of heart-warming stories spun around the folks of Avonlea. The community's favorite girl, Anne, features in some of the stories, where she unleashes her characteristic mischief and spunky wit to help her friends straighten their little issues. The stories are full of cheer and humor, some even profound and poignant in the morals they convey. I loved every story and I recharged myself through the positive (if a little idealistic) portrayal of humanity's goodness. Montgomery's writing deserves all the adulation it receives - grammar, imagination and vocabulary are wielded together so beautifully that even the most complex of emotions is captured with simplicity and eloquence.

The stories are strung along very simple themes - the power of love, the healing borne out of forgiveness and compassion, the ruins cast by vain pride, the miracles that can be worked through faith, the folly of rash judgments and service to humanity through multiple ways. The stories are crisp and the morals stick hard. To spruce things up, there are some hilarious stories with a romantic twist that subtly dole out little nuggets of morals. I was impressed with Montgomery's stress on feminism and empowerment balanced against certain aspects of tradition and social norms that were prevalent in the early 20th century. The stories are well-rounded and thoughtful.

This is a delightful book sure to lighten any reader's heart.

Reflections: Letter From Peking

It's a pity to realize that there are hardly any copies of this book left. Most of Pearl Buck's books are, much to my surprise and bewilderment, lost inside a literary tombstone. But I was glad that I could find a very befitting picture of the book's cover - this is exactly how I would have wished the cover to be on my borrowed copy.

The book's core doesn't stray much from Pearl Buck's much beloved theme - the east and west reaching out to love and accept each other. Elizabeth is an American ardently in love with her half-Chinese husband, Gerald. Her fervent love for Gerald made her a strong woman who was ready to rebel , leave her country and make a home in China. Following the Communist's upheaval within China, Elizabeth and her son are forced to leave Gerald and move to America. Gerald's patriotism and loyalty towards China forbids him to abandon his country - and so he remains, torn with guilt and longing for his family, and a fierce sense of duty towards his country. His occasional letters sent surreptitiously every few months remained the only vestige of hope for the family to unite, until the letters dwindled and a final one came along. The tale is about a heartrending love between two people, separated by the world, because of the races that profiled their faces and genes.

Being half-Chinese and half-American was so pitiful a state when the world tore apart and the oceans distinctly marked the two continents as different and distant. Those like Gerald and his son were stranded, befuddled on where to turn and which country to hold close to them, while both countries silently rejected and never completely accepted them. But both father and son struggle to make home in the country they choose, yielding to sacrifices they couldn't escape from. Meanwhile Elizabeth lives on hope, and nourishes her life through the deep and unending love for Gerald. The book reads on as Elizabeth's journal. It records events that are simple and plain, emotions that are deep and pure.

Pearl Buck's tales have so much realism in them that within a few pages they cease to be a story, a novel - they transform to images of real people living their realities, without embellishments, fancy twists or miracles. Elizabeth's journal captures the pain, the love, the maturity and growing wisdom of a woman cruelly separated from her husband and is left to cope with loneliness. Pearl Buck's characters always come alive from her stories and it's difficult to shake them off as fictitious. Elizabeth comes to life representing many separated and lonely women - victims of the world breaking apart.

The writing in this book is one of Pearl Buck's best. Words rustle and trickle so beautifully, capturing and reflecting on every little emotion and feeling. A simple description of the sunlight out the window, or the spring in the air... seemingly minor in detail, but so immaculately wonderful in their expression. To me, this book symbolizes Pearl Buck's literary spirit.

Reflections: The Man Who Ate The 747

J.J is the record keeper for the World's Book of Records, who has traveled far and wide to record and verify world records of all kinds being created and shattered by aspirants who wanted to immortalize themselves through a mention in the Book. JJ's life revolved around seeking such greatness - he'd witnessed men do the most grueling and incredulous things to achieve that greatness. Through every euphoria of a "record", J.J lived his dreams vicariously and chased his life in search of more greatness. Having been accused of not knowing anything about love, he races to a little farmland in Nebraska to verify and record the feat of a farmer named Wally eating a junked Jumbo Jet 747, to prove his hopeless love to the much sought after maiden, Willa. In this curious adventure, J.J learns quite a few lessons about the nature of love, and witnesses quite a few records being created - asides the eating of a Jumbo Jet.

Typical of me, my immediate thoughts when I read the first few chapters were of immense curiosity of people who seemed so invincible and crazy to attempt such things, when there were bigger concerns in the world. News reporters and TV broadcasters acting like greedy vultures swooping in to make the most of such a ludicrous thing, was quite saddening... the harsh realities of our world, to look for ways of making money and surviving. Then I shushed those thoughts away, for that wasn't what the book was aiming to convey. Through a very charming, sweet and predictable love story, the author folds in the message that great records and wonders are not created through the raw facts of statistics and timing. There can be many men who might come forward to eat plenty more 747s, but their "greatness" would fall flat in the light of a simple and good farmer who loved a woman so much that his depth of love drove him to endure anything. Such an unquantifiable measure of love and pristine goodness is a record, a wonder. They say the best things in life, cannot be seen, bought or measured. These aspects cannot be caught in a single moment, frozen with timing and numbers, nor can they be preserved in a physical space of glasses and security. They are to be experienced, and felt... only to be stored in the folds of our brain lobes in the form of tiny electrical signals or as chemicals filling in the synapses of our memory. And such a record, a deep impression despite not worthy of qualification in any Book of Records, is an indelible wonder within us.

The tale teases skeptics of "true love", who cast it off as a mere work of hormones and chemicals - surges in dopamine and oxytocin as nature's way of encouraging genetic intermingling. Through the book, I was reminded of the tale of the "Hunchback of Notre Dame". A physically deformed beast of a person falls hopelessly in love with a bewitchingly beautiful gypsy all because she offered him a few drops of water - the only gesture of love and kindness the world had ever bestowed on him. He goes on to furiously stand by his loyalty to the woman. But contrary to the classic, the book promises a happy ending with a very heartwarming message that makes you go down memory lane - to recognize, appreciate and thank all the wonderful records people created for you, in their own little ways.