The Pearl That Broke It's Shell by Nadia Hashimi

                Every war is not fought on the battlefield.

 

  This is a book about two young women and their travails to live a life with dignity. Two stories, set in Afghanistan in different time periods and yet so similar, it almost feels like time has stood still in Afghanistan while rest of the world has moved on.

  Rahima, the middle child in a family of five daughters is dressed up as a boy by her mother, for the want of a male child to support the family. Dressed as a "bacha posh", Rahima feels liberated, to (be able to) play on the streets, go to school or work to make some extra money. In a society that believes that a woman's role is in the house as wife, a mother and a dutiful housekeeper, Rahima's fate isn't any different. She and her sisters are married off to men twice their age as third or fourth wives. What follows is akin to swimming against the tide.

  Shekiba too has a similar tale. She loses her mother and siblings to an epidemic that stikes her village and soon after her father too dies heart broken. Shekiba is forced to seek refuge with her grandmother and other relatives. Her struggles to reclaim her home only lands her in deeper trouble. She is then "given away" to work at the palace in Kabul as a guard.

  There is a lot of pain and despair in this book, both these women are bogged down by draconian laws that rule the land. While reading this, I ought to have felt appalled but strangely am not, despite the westernization of our lifestyles, women of many nations and undoubtedly in mine too suffer a similar fate. These stories may not be " currently trending"on social media but it is changing. Among this angst there is  always hope. Maybe Shekiba will give up but Rahima certainly has a chance.

  A well written book that takes the reader deep into the heartland of a war torn nation. A poignant tale about the women fighting a battle against the odds.

Murderous Intent by Lee Hobart

  The Ramblings of a Retired Female Private Detective....


   Every time I pick up a book to read,  I hope it would be a good choice. It probably is only in a perfect world that such an event happens every time.  I occasionally do end up reading such not so great work.  If I was asked why I would bother to write a review on such a book, having wasted time reading it, then I would say "this isn't a perfect world and whatever the outcome I can't stop talking about what I've read". This is one such occasion.

  Jim Curtis holds the memory stick which has a secret formula to strengthen the cladding of airplane wings. When he is accidentally killed, the memory sticks are untraceable.  Laura Curtis, Jim's wife, and her two children now find themselves trapped in a web of an international conspiracy. Laura moves her family to Tredunnon, hoping to start afresh but  unless she finds those memory sticks, her family will always be in danger.

  Who is Franz Reimann? And why was he keen on buying Jim's company? Can Danny Myers , Jim's partner be trusted? Lots of questions and Laura has no one to take help from and the police wouldn't even investigate the mysterious  circumstances of Jim's death. Maybe the handyman, Andy Simpson knows more than just fixing taps.

  I found this book on Netgalley, the intriguing title and a fairly decent book cover convinced me to download it.  Nothing else about the book  is impressive.  A desperation to make it a page turner is apparent all through the book. As the narrative style  is mostly from Laura Curtis's point of view, not much detail is provided on Jim's work and I would have liked to read more about it. Being retired, the private detective Laura, plays a rather subdued role. The only skill she displays of ever having been a detective, are a few karate moves.  The characters were superficial, the plot weak and the writing amateurish , a book I wish I had not read.

White Teeth by Zadie Smith

"The best laid schemes o' Mice an' Men

           Gang aft agley, "

( The best laid plans of mice and men

     often go awry )

                                                                           -To a Mouse by Robert Burns

     I am a big fan of British satire, so when I picked this book up I hoped to be impressed. The narrative style is quite unlike anything I have read before and I loved it. At the same time, reading this book was tedious too. This is really hard to explain, do I like the book or not? I can't tell and that is annoying. I was experiencing a farrago of emotions while reading it.

     The book is written in four parts, each part focuses on one of the primary characters, sort of a point of view of that particular character. The first two parts on Archie and Samad are like a prelude. Samad is a first generation Bangladeshi immigrant and Archie is Samad's man Friday. I found this part to be placid and it took an effort to keep reading. The second half of the book shifts to Irie Jones and from here on I sensed a glimmer of interest to keep reading.   

     Lot of cliches and over dramatized characterization completely overshadows the quirky and well written narrative. In retrospect, I am intrigued to read Zadie Smith's writings in the future, this book however has failed to impress. 

A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry

"Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall."
                                                                                                 - Confucius

    I  read "Family Matters" by this author and shortly after I picked this book up to read. Now it is wrong of me to expect to take away a similar experience from reading  both these books. "Family Matters" is a book about families, the idiosyncrasies of family members and the unmitigable love among them .But "A Fine Balance"  like looking at the world without our rose tinted glasses.  Rohinton Mistry weaves a tale of hope in the time of despair.

 

   The crux of the story is the travails of the four main characters, Ishvar, Omprakash, Maneck and Dina. Life isn't easy for them but when there is hope in the face of despair the will to beat the odds will never cease. The four protagonists are, metaphorically speaking, drowning yet they make unflinching efforts to hold one's head above the water.

   The book is very depressing and the author does not spare any gory details when describing the agony experienced by  the characters. Set in the time of the Emergency posed by the then ruling Indian government, the ground realities described in the book are a stark contrast to the distilled information I have read in my school textbooks.  No book has left me feeling so much pain and denial, and this is why I rate this book as the best book I have read but not call it my favourite.

Hector and the Search for Happiness by Francois Lelord

Either that or Hector doing a lot of grownup things.

   The book cover art and a cursory reading of the blurb had convinced me that this was one of those quirky and comical new age books about finding happiness. My interest was piqued but that didn't last long.

   This book is sort of a travelogue by Hector, a psychiatrist. One day on an impulse he decides to set out on a journey to discover what makes a man happy. He first goes to China and the to some civil war ridden African nation. His experiences, the people he meets and the lessons he learns make up the book. 

  I hoped the book would have been a good read but the narrative style was elementary for me, unless that was the intention. I like to share my reviews on books that I enjoyed reading so I was unsure about putting this review up because in retrospect, this book is one of those that I wish I had not picked up. And now they have made this book into a movie!!!