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My husband and I rarely ever like the same book. We have completely different reading choices. Usually, I recommend a book to him, tell him he must read this book I just read, that I gave it a solid five stars, and he will roll his eyes at me. ‘A Man Called Ove’ by Fredrick Backman, which is one of my most favorite books, put him to sleep. He calls it the most boring book ever. (It’s a wonder I’m still married to him.) But we both absolutely adored ‘The Silent Patient’ by Alex Michaelides. It was probably the one book that we both agreed was better than most thrillers we had read. We also didn’t see the end coming. We wanted to read more by the author and were thrilled to come across ‘The Maidens’.  The Silent Patient is about a London-based psychotherapist who becomes obsessed with a painter who hasn’t spoken a word after she is convicted of murdering her husband. The Maidens also involves a London-based psychotherapist and the all-too-pervasive culture of silencing women. Mariana Andros is a 36-year-old, grieving widow. A little over a year ago, her husband, Sebastian, died on a beach in Naxos, Greece while on holiday. Mariana still lives in the yellow house she shared with her husband on Primrose Hill in Northwest London. She can’t get past the fact that she convinced Sebastian to go on a holiday and holds herself responsible for his death. Then she gets a call from her niece, Zoe, who studies in Cambridge. Zoe says her friend Tara is missing. Mariana fears this will be hard on Zoe as Tara is one of the few friends she has and so she leaves for Cambridge. There she discovers a secret society called ‘The Maidens’ who cluster around a brilliant Greek Tragedy professor named Edward Fosca. He is handsome and charming. But Mariana suspects there is something off with him and she starts to poke around. More women end up dead. They are killed in a grisly, ritualistic fashion and Mariana becomes convinced Fosca is somehow behind them, despite having airtight alibis. Cambridge also brings back a lot of memories as this is where Mariana and Sebastian met so there’s a lot of personal demons to battle as well. Michaelides is a great visual storyteller. The detailed descriptions of settings, with historical buildings, create an ominous atmosphere and set the right mood. But The Maidens wasn’t as good as The Silent Patient. The story feels unnecessarily dragged out at times. The Maidens isn’t as psychologically thrilling or taut as The Silent Patient either. That’s not to say it’s a bad book. It’s still a fun read—just don’t have sky-high expectations. Three and half stars Fiction The Maidens Alex Michaelides Published: 2020 Publisher: Pages: Paperback

One of my absolute favorite books is ‘Revenge’ by Yoko Ogawa. It’s a collection of interrelated horror short stories. They weren’t downright gory but Ogawa weaves horror into everyday stories like it’s the most natural thing and that still gives me the creeps. Ogawa has written more than 20 works of fiction and non-fiction and won every major literary award in Japan. I had been looking for her other works when I stumbled on ‘The Housekeeper and the Professor’. I bought it without even reading the blurb. The book was first published in 2003 and was translated into English in 2009. It was also made into a film in 2006. A story about a mathematics professor whose memory only lasts 80 minutes, The Housekeeper and the Professor is a beautiful meditation on life, the importance of relationships, and the lasting impact humans have on each other’s lives. A head injury in a car accident leaves a brilliant professor of number theory with short-term memory loss. Numbers are his only way of staying connected with the outside world and fostering connections with people and remembering them. He writes and pins little notes on his suit to help him recall things. The professor has no family except a widowed sister-in-law. She lives in the main house and he in a little cottage behind it. The story is narrated by the housekeeper hired to look after the professor, and offers fascinating insight into the mind of a genius while busting the myth that you have to be one to understand and love math. The housekeeper and her son—whom the professor names Root because ‘the top of his head is flat like the square root sign’—enjoy discovering equations and solving problems the professor comes up with. In the process, the three develop an unshakable bond. Math takes centerstage in this novel. You might find yourself recalling things you studied in school or college. And it suddenly becomes interesting as the professor makes math principles relevant in day-to-day life. Nothing dramatic happens in the book. It’s slow and there isn’t much of a plot. But Ogawa builds up tension by dropping little hints of the professor’s life before the accident. It’s a short book but not one you can breeze through: there is a lot to take in. The Housekeeper and the Professor is a moving story of found family that has you in tears, both of joy and grief. Three and half stars Fiction The Housekeeper and the Professor Yoko Ogawa Translated from the Japanese by Stephen Snyder Published: 2009 (English translation) Publisher: Vintage Pages: 180, Paperback

This is the kind of love story I want to read. ‘The Heart Principle’ by Helen Hoang was so-so good. I can’t stress that enough. It was believable. It wasn’t over-the-top. I don’t particularly enjoy love stories but if they were all like this one, I would devour them and become a sucker for romance novels. ‘The Heart Principle’ is the final book in the three-book series by Hoang, the first two being ‘The Kiss Quotient’ and ‘The Bride Test’. You don’t have to read the books in chronological order. The stories aren’t connected. I haven’t read them but I have heard that they too are good. But those who have gone through all three keep saying that ‘The Heart Principle’ is the best. Anna Sun is a violinist who shoots to fame when a YouTube video of her performing on stage goes viral. But she has since been replaced by a 12-year-old prodigy and is struggling to make music. Nothing she comes up with seems to be good enough. Then her boyfriend, Julian, suggests they open up their relationship. He wants to be sure she is the person he is meant to be with. When Julian says he knows Anna won’t date anyone, she becomes determined to prove him wrong. Enter Quan, who has just recovered from an illness and is looking to get back on the dating scene. The two connect through a dating app and hit it off right from the start. But Anna’s family doesn’t approve of Quan. She has also not broken up with Julian, who her mother and sister absolutely adore. Anna isn’t the type who can assert herself, say no when she wants to. It doesn’t help that she has recently been diagnosed as autistic but her sister thinks it’s just an excuse for her ‘poor’ behavior. Hoang writes with a lot of empathy for her characters. You find yourself mentally defending even difficult characters like Pricilla, Anna’s elder sister, who tries to dictate how other people act and live and generally comes off as annoying. You see she’s driven by her desire for what she assumes is good for her family. Her intentions are right, even though that may not be obvious. There’s a lot to unpack in The Heart Principle. The book deals with trauma, grief, family pressure, and the need to conform among other things. It’s a really wholesome love story.

Fiction

The Heart Principle

Helen Hoang

Published: 2021

Publisher: Berkley

Pages: 339, Paperback

‘My Brilliant Friend’ is the first book in Elena Ferrante’s four-volume series spanning almost 60 years. The first part is set in the 1950s in a poor neighborhood on the outskirts of Naples. It follows two girls, Lila and Elena, through their school years and adolescence. The girls meet when they are each 10-year-old and develop a complex and conflicted friendship.

What I liked about My Brilliant Friend is that it’s an unsentimental portrait of friendship—with rivalry, jealousy, and the need to put oneself first. It chronicles the lives of young girls as they struggle to understand the world they live in and thus themselves. My Brilliant Friend, however, isn’t just a story of friendship. 

Ferrante also tells the story of a neighborhood and a city as it transforms over the years and how the events that occur shape the girl’s thought processes and lives. It’s a story about a community and how the lives of people are often interlinked. You could say it’s a coming-of-age novel of not just two girls but of a place as a whole. 

Themes like sexual jealousy, shame, rivalry are generally underexplored in fiction. My Brilliant Friend does a wonderful job of bringing these to the forefront and talking about things that we would rather not confront. It also feels like great character studies of different personalities. 

My only complaint with the narrative is that it’s a bit slow and events tend to drag on sometimes. If you can put up with that, and you definitely should, My Brilliant Friend, with its exploration of complicated issues like love, abandonment, the impact of violence can be just the contemplative read we all need in the extremely volatile time we are living in today.  

About the author

Elena Ferrante is a pseudonymous Italian novelist. She apparently refuses face to face interviews and has only given a few written ones. She makes no public appearances and once told her editor that she would not be promoting her books because, “she believed that books, once they are written, have no need of their authors. If they have something to say, they will sooner or later find readers; if not, they won’t.” 

Her works, originally published in Italian, have been translated into many languages. The four volumes known as the ‘Neapolitan quartet’ (‘My Brilliant Friend’, ‘The Story of a New Name’, ‘Those Who Leave’ and ‘Those Who Stay,’ and ‘The Story of the Lost Child’) were published by Europa Editions in English between 2012 and 2015. My Brilliant Friend, the HBO series directed by Saverio Costanzo, premiered in 2018. Time magazine in 2016 named Ferrante as one of the 100 most influential people.

Three stars

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/35036409-my-brilliant-friend 

Fiction

My Brilliant Friend

Elena Ferrante

Published: Europa Editions

Publisher: 2012

Pages: 331, Paperback

Life is a little more bearable with friends. Good friends will lift us up when we’re feeling down. They will give us sound advice or a round of scolding, depending on what’s needed. They, in many ways, make us who we are. Having just celebrated friendship day (July 30), I’m going to give my closest friends a book that celebrates the bond that we have. I might also sneak in a reread. Here are my top five picks.  

The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini

This is an unforgettable story of the unlikely and tragic friendship between a rich boy and the son of his father’s servant. Not just friendship but also love, betrayal and redemption. Trigger warning though, it’s a bit violent at times and the story is disturbing. But it’s a hauntingly good and conscience-nudging story about the good and the bad that humans are capable of, and the lengths we go to for our dearest friends.

A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara

A book about four college friends as they navigate life in New York, A Little Life will break your heart. You will cry ugly tears but it will be worth it. Four friends Jude, Willem, Malcolm, and JB, help one another through the highs and lows of success, addiction, trauma and grief. You’ll see yourself and your friends in the characters, and thus it feels extremely cathartic. It’s a thick book but rest assured you will breeze through it as you won’t want to put it down.

The Giver of Stars by Jojo Moyes

Set in small-town 1930’s Kentucky, the book is based on the real-life Pack Horse Librarians of Kentucky, or the Horseback Librarian program as it was called then. The program delivered books as part of Eleanor Roosevelt’s traveling library and ran from 1935 to 1943, making books accessible to over 100,000 rural inhabitants. The story is tender and heartbreaking and celebrates the power of books and female friendships.

Marley and Me by John Grogan

This is based on a true story about a dog named Marley, a yellow Labrador, who was, according to Grogan, the naughtiest dog in the world. Marley is hyperactive and destructive. That causes many problems for the family. The book is about how they learn to adapt to him and their grief after Marley’s death. His antics will make you laugh, cry, and hug your own pet a little harder. Marley and Me celebrates the bond we share with our four-legged friends and reminds us to be gentler with them.

The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan

Amy Tan writes good books with complex relationships. You couldn’t go wrong with any of her works but The Joy Luck Club tops my list of favorites. It’s a story about four Chinese women who are new to the city of San Francisco. They are homesick but they find comfort in one another. The book also explores the bond between mothers and daughters and the friendship that people of different generations can share.

I always say I won’t read another love story when I’m done with one. Then when I’m swamped with work and need a light read, I’ll pick up yet another one. A love story doesn’t require me to think too much about the characters and be consumed by their problems. These are what I want to read when I don’t want to invest too much mental energy in a story. But the thing is, all love stories are the same. And halfway through these books, I’m exasperated and a little mad at myself. 

I have a few problems with romance novels. First, it instills a clichéd idea of romance: that it’s all about candlelit dinners, stargazing, and elaborate confessions of love. Second, it’s too trope heavy. Boy meets girl, they don’t like each other, but there’s a lot of sexual tension between the two that they both try to quash before eventually discovering they are perfect for each other. Throw in some mental hang-ups, misunderstandings or reservations on either side (that get sorted out in dramatic ways) and you pretty much have any love story ever written. I don’t like character portrayals in romance novels either. I find them sexist. Love stories are also predictable and cheesy. 

‘Book Lovers’ by Emily Henry is the third Henry book I’ve read, after ‘You and Me on Vacation’ and ‘Beach Read’. Both were immensely hyped on social media specially Bookstagram and BookTube. I enjoyed reading them. They were fun while they lasted. 

‘Book Lovers’ is about Nora and Charlie, who work in publishing. Nora is a literary agent and Charlie is an editor. Nora isn’t fond of Charlie, especially after he bluntly rejected a book by one of her favorite clients, Dusty. Then, Nora’s sister, Libby, plans a trip to Sunshine Falls and the two bump into each other at the small town where, surprise, romance ensues. 

I didn’t hate ‘Book Lovers’ but I was disappointed by it as it had nothing new to offer. It felt like a rehash of one of the many love stories I’ve read over the years. I also cringed in many places—when Libby refers to Nora as ‘sissy’ and when Nora says, ‘Tonight, can I just have you, Charlie?’ There are plenty of other such stupid dialogues and instances that made my eyes roll far back into my head. 

Nora is a strong woman. She’s raised her sister all on her own after their mother passed away. She’s gotten them out of debt and made a name for herself in publishing. There’s nothing she can’t do and nothing that she wouldn’t do for Libby. But, like the female protagonists of most love stories, her steely exterior is a façade for her loneliness. It takes a man, Charlie in this case, to make her tune into her feelings. The romance genre thrives on this trope. ‘Book Lovers’ had so much potential with its interesting setting but it ended up being another average romance novel.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/58690308-book-lovers 

Three stars 

Fiction

Book Lovers

Emily Henry

Published: 2022

Publisher: Penguin Random House

Pages: 377, Paperback 

I read ‘The Chalk Man’, C. J. Tudor’s debut novel, during the Covid-19 lockdown. It was just the distraction I needed to get my mind off the real-life horror we were facing at that time. Tudor’s writing was smooth and she was great at weaving in twists and turns in an otherwise simple narrative. I don’t usually read horror but The Chalk Man had me interested in the genre. I especially wanted to read more of Tudor’s works. I bought two of her other books on a whim: ‘The Taking of Annie Thorne’ and ‘The Burning Girls’. I read The Taking of Annie Thorne and now I’m wondering if I should exchange The Burning Girls for something else at the bookstore. Thank God Ekta Books grants me that privilege. 

Don’t get me wrong, the book wasn’t a complete waste of time. It just wasn’t very interesting. If you watch horror movies or read such books, you’ll easily be able to tell how things will eventually unfold. The scenes also feel a bit clichéd. The book seems to have been written on a template—there are familiar acts and incidents. It’s all very déjà vu-ish. I mean, does horror always mean black bugs scuttling about, entire rooms painted with blood or big writings on the wall? Do things always have to be outlandish to be spooky? The plot was promising but the author stuck to the usual route of jump scares with creepy dolls, giggling children, and dark dungeons.   

The Taking of Annie Thorne starts with the disappearance of an eight-year-old girl. She returns two days later, but she isn’t the same person. She smells peculiar and her eyes have a menacing glow. Twenty-five years later, her brother Joe returns to the small mining town of Arnhill in Nottingham and takes up a job as a teacher at the local school. Joe is a heavy gambler and is running away from debt collectors. But that’s not just it. He is forced to return home when he receives an email saying, ‘I know what happened to your sister and it’s happening again.’ 

Readers have compared Tudor’s works to Stephen King’s. So, here’s the thing, if you have read King’s books, you know exactly what to expect. Maybe King’s books are Tudor’s templates after all. Initially, as the dialogues are witty, Joe comes across as daring and charming but, after a while, when everything he says comes with a punchline, it feels scripted and fake. Joe becomes a fictional character rather than a person who is actually going through all the things mentioned in the book, a person you feel like you know, and that kills the joy of reading.

https://www.goodreads.com/topic/list_book/40490762-the-taking-of-annie-thorne 

Two and half stars 

Fiction

The Taking of Annie Thorne

C. J. Tudor

Published: 2019

Publisher: Penguin Books

Pages: 358, Paperback

Reading slumps are real. There are times when you have read a really good book and are so caught in that timeline and place, you can’t immerse yourself in another story. Or you have had a bout of bad luck and have been picking up one terrible book after another only to shove them back on the shelf halfway through. No matter how hard you try, you just can’t seem to get back in the game. There are some books that can rescue you at times like these. Sit back with a cup of tea and one of them and you’ll find yourself recharged in no time. 

Atlas of the Heart by Brené Brown

‘Atlas of the Heart’ uses science-backed facts and research to teach us how to embrace our emotions and use meaningful language to build deeper connections with others. Brown explores over 87 human emotions and offers us tools to express and understand them. It’s a book for those who want to understand and be in more control of their emotions. Brown keeps reminding you, with impactful examples, that you must be your authentic self and embrace your vulnerabilities to truly master your emotions. The book is big and heavy with thick glossy pages but the good thing is the design is interactive with photos, graphics, and entire pages of contemplative quotes and questions. 

The Boy, the Mole, the Fox, and the Horse by Charlie Mackesy

The book, in Mackesy’s words, is a “small graphic novel of images and conversations over a landscape.” The story is really simple and saying anything at all would be giving too much away. ‘The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse’ is essentially a tale of friendship and courage that is comforting to read. It gives you a lot to mull over. The artwork is super fun to look at and you might be inspired to try and replicate it. You can also use the book as a journal of sorts as it has a lot of space for you to jot down your thoughts or stick some post-it notes (if, like me, you too hate the idea of scribbling on books). 

The Comfort Book by Matt Haig

Matt Haig is an empathetic writer. His stories strike a chord and make you feel seen and heard. ‘The Midnight Library’, a fictional story about the choices that shape our lives, was such a heartwarming read. It was the best book I had read in 2020 and since then I have gone back to reread many of its passages. ‘The Comfort Book’, on the other hand, is non-fiction. It’s basically Haig’s reflections on the ups and downs of life and there’s a lot of wisdom there. There are positive affirmations, quotes, thoughts on food and books and anecdotes of inspirational people—it’s all very heartwarming. Also, the chapters or sections are short and you don’t have to read the book from start to finish. Just dip in and out and be charmed.