Autumn is Ali Smith’s response to Brexit. Clearly, she disagrees with the majority of the British’s decision to leave the European Union as demonstrated by the flow of the story. But what is unique about her story as opposed to Brexit literature is her approach to her story and her interpretation of this political event. As is understood by the title, Autumn is the seasonal time of change. So is Brexit. The social division is distressing and the future is uncertain. The intervening time is the hardest to pass. Here, Smith focuses on candour and hope instead of irony and cynicism. Autumn is als ..read more

The Door is a singular story of an unusual relationship between a female author and her housekeeper. Emerence, the housekeeper, is quite a character, a sort of a superhuman when she attaches herself to someone or some task. She is an uneducated woman, but her life experience makes her wiser than the educated in some ways. Magda, the author, is naive in many ways. Though highly educated and earned a name for her work, she displays a lot of naivety when it comes to worldly affairs. Szabo throws these two contrasting women into each other’s lives and creates a bond of such intensity and dependenc ..read more

Bloomsbury Girls by Natalie Jenner is a sequel to her debut The Jane Austen Society. Like in her debut novel, Jenner has chosen a theme with books and real-life authors from the past. However, in Bloomsbury Girls, Jenner has taken a step forward to address more complicated issues such as inequality of employment opportunities for women, racism, and sexual orientation. Having set her story at a time England is rebuilding itself after the second world war, Jenner also addresses the general social issues of a struggling nation. What I liked the most about the novel are the three “Bloomsbury girls ..read more

In Sycamore Row, I meet Jake Brigance, my favourite Gisham character, again. I find him three years later from his famous Hailey trial, still struggling with his practice and trying to establish a new home. Life had not changed much for him; he is still the street lawyer he was three years ago. And nothing has changed his personality either. It was quite a relief to find that my favourite Grisham character is still the same. Getting back to the story, this time Jake finds him entangled in a major Will contest. A wealthy white man named Seth Hubbard has committed suicide leaving a handwritten W ..read more

I never thought that I would experience yet another Lolita in my life. But My Dark Vanessa is a similar kind, because I found another Humbert Humbert in Jacob Strane and a Lo in Vanessa Wye. However, the two are different as they are alike. And this difference is what captured me and what made me want to read this debut novel by Kate Elizabeth Russell. Unlike in Nabakov’s Lolita, the story in My Dark Vanessa is narrated from the point of view of the “victim”, Vanessa. What is incredulous is that the “victim”, who we believe her to be, doesn’t admit to being one. To her, the affair with Jacob S ..read more

The 2023 Booker Prize winner, Time Shelter, is an extraordinary book that touches mainly on our relations with history and our own past. Combining this with people with dementia and Alzheimer who live in the present but with a past memory, Gospodinov writes an interesting story of a man called Gaustine who, with the assistance of the unnamed narrator, opens up a clinic to treat people with such a diagnosis. Together, they create an atmosphere where dementia and Alzheimer patients can live in the time they remember. In other words, they are allowed to live in a time shelter. But would this be a ..read more

There are instances wherein a certain event occurs in a person’s life that will change his life and personality forever. In this journey of life, it happens more or less to every one of us. This is exactly what happens to Ove. Ove is a man of fifty-nine. He is forced to “retire” and suddenly finds himself with no purpose in life. Being a widower of six months, he finds it absolutely unbearable to live without the “only person who understood him” – his wife, Sonja. So what does he do? He decides to take his life. What happens? A crazy neighboring family manages to thwart his plan. At times fun ..read more

I was attracted to The Name of the Rose some years ago when I learned that its story is centered on a medieval mystery set in an Italian Abbey. Now, I’m quite a fan of the mystery genre and I love history. Hence it went onto my “to read” pile. But it was there for quite some time, almost forgotten. But two years back, I visited the Melk Abbey, and I had a vague recollection that I’ve got a book in my collection that had some reference to the Abbey. Back at home, a quick search made me realize that it was The Name of the Rose. And what with my interest in history, mystery genre, and my visit to ..read more

For a die-hard Jane Austen fan like me, a book of anything about her is too tempting to resist. So when I came across The Jane Austen Society and read the summary, I was very much excited. Reading a book about a Jane Austen Society, formed in the small village of Chawton, where she once resided and wrote, by an oddly associated group connected by their love for her books, I thought to be a wonderful antidote to my present state of mind. In this expectation, I was partly gratified and partly disappointed. I’d begin with what I liked about this book. First, I liked the main characters, who thoug ..read more

Reading Sycamore Row took me down the memory lane to its prequel, A Time to Kill. And I realized that I haven’t written a review for this much beloved book. So here I’m trying to rectify that omission. A Time to Kill is one of the few emotional contemporary books that I have read. Based on the theme of racism and set in mid-eighties in a southern town in Mississippi, Grisham tells the tale of a black man who murdered two white men who raped his child and one white lawyer’s heroic struggle to defend him in a racially prejudiced society amidst great personal losses. Jake Brigance, the young hero ..read more