The Bronte Plot by Katherine Reay

A Travelogue with a Tale

    Here is a scenario that all bibliophiles would agree with. We fall so deeply in love with our book(s), that we don't just read and re- read it, we live it. Our conversations are peppered with passages from the book. We may even emote like a character did in the book,.. well..  like how we imagined the character did, in our heads.

   " I mean that reading forms your opinion, your worldviews, especially childhood reading and anything that does that has an impact"  - Katherine Reay, The Bronte Plot


    This is what unfolds in Katherine Reay's novel, The Bronte Plot. Her protagonist lives and breathes books of the Victorian era, Jane Austen, the Bronte sisters, Charles Dickens, Beatrix Potter, John Ruskin etc..

   Lucy Alling has a gift. She, like her father, can weave fabulous stories that will enthrall an audience. This gift helps flourish her profession as a seller of rare editions of books. It was all  perfect until her secret is discovered and everything turns sour for Lucy. She is on the verge of ruining her relationship with Sid, her mentor / father figure and with her boyfriend James. In walks Helen, James' grandmother, with a proposal for a quest that is quite alluring and may provide a solution to untangle the mess in Lucy's life.

   The novel is mostly about the physical and the emotional journey that Helen and Lucy set upon, which takes them to London and Haworth. This is what I really liked about the book. There are plenty of references about places worth visiting in England, if one is a fan of classic English Literature. This is why I call the novel " a travelogue with a tale'. I have highlighted all the tourist spots mentioned in the novel, lest I miss any when planning my trip to London.


  " Lucy led on, through Russell Square, and upon reaching Gordon Square, she stopped. "Here it is. The heart of the Bloomsbury Group. You wouldn't believe who lived along here" 


   A simple tale but the references to various literary passages and quotes from books of the Victorian era were a delight to read and so was the tour of London. Read it if you are a literary buff and travel enthusiast.

Cookie Jar by Stephen King

A well baked Stephen King recipe

   A magical cookie jar that is always full of freshly baked cookies and magically fills up no matter how many cookies one takes out to eat. Crispy, crumbly and an array of choices to pick from. This could be what every child dreams are made of.

    For Rhett and Jack Alderson this was a dream come true. Their mother has one such jar, a blue ceramic cookie jar, from which she treats her boys with sumptuous cookies to eat and memories of happy hours to keep. After his mom passes away, Rhett inherits the cookies jar. The brothers then discover the magical secret of the cookie jar but they continue to eat from it. One day Rhett upends the cookie jar, to literally unravel the mystery at the bottom of the Jar. What he finds is beyond bizarre.

    Stephen King's Cookie Jar is perfect for a quick read. Being just twenty odd pages long, the narrative is the retelling of a tale by an older Rhett Alderson to his great grand son. The tale is set against the backdrop of major wars that rocked the twentieth century, especially WWII.

   The Author treads a fine line between fact and fantasy. The Cookie Jar is perhaps an allegory that Stephen King uses lest the memory of the brutality meted out at the Nazi concentration camps fades with time.  Having read the short story, what remains undecidable is "what is more horrific?". The acts of barbarity in the western kingdom of Lalanka or the depths of human depravity in our world. Either way, the point to remember is that how we choose to write our history is up to us.

   The story appeared in the Spring 2016 issue of the VQR Magazine ( a delight to all readers, me included..YAY  ) and I now hear that it has also been included in the October 2016 paperback edition of Stephen King's book, Bazaar of Bad Dreams.