Crime fiction
Snap
Belinda Bauer
Publisher: Penguin Random House
Published: 2019
Language: English
Pages: 433, Paperback

Belinda Bauer’s novel ‘Snap’, inspired by the murder of a pregnant woman, Marie Wilks, on the M50 in 1988, was longlisted for the Man Booker prize. It’s extremely rare for crime fiction to make it to the Man Booker list. But Snap isn’t a run-of-the-mill crime fiction either. In an interview, Bauer said she was more interested in victims than in crimes and, true to her words, Snap focuses more on the repercussions of the crime, in terms of the impact it has on the family of the victim, rather than on the crime itself.

Set in a small British town of Tiveron, Snap tells the story of 14-year-old Jack and his younger sisters following the murder of their mother. After being abandoned by their grief-ridden father, the three children live in a house stacked with newspapers that carry news of their mother’s murder. Jack’s sister continues to collect the papers in what is a macabre way of holding on to her mother’s final memory. Jack has to deal with the trauma of losing his parents while shouldering the responsibility of keeping his family together. It’s a lot for any teenager but Jack manages to keep the family afloat by breaking into homes and stealing whatever he can. There is a horde of other interesting characters whose lives become inextricably linked by this one unsolved murder.

Bauer worked as a journalist and then as a screenwriter before, at the age of 45, she finally sat down to write a book. Better late than never because Snap has both the edge-of-your-seat suspense as well as the turbulence of an emotional rollercoaster. It’s not just a wonderfully crafted novel about a teenage boy’s hunt for his mother’s killer. Bauer also explores how a single crime has so many ripple effects, and how it can affect different people differently. You find yourself pondering how life has the potential to fall apart and maybe eventually come together.

Bauer said that she had “never read anything that was actually marketed as a crime book” and that she started her journey of writing crime fiction “possibly on a different footing to someone who was immersed in the genre”. You are glad it was that way because what’s come out of it is an intriguing tale of loss, trauma, and familial bond, one that alters the way you view life.

Phoebe Morgan’s second psychological thriller, ‘The Girl Next Door’, received fantastic reviews, just like her debut novel ‘The Doll House’ that was published in 2018. And rightly so because Morgan’s writing is gripping, characters believable, and she sure knows how to convincingly turn things around.

In The Girl Next Door we meet Jane Goodwin who, in her neighborhood, is considered to be a perfect wife with the perfect family. But the fact is, she goes to great lengths to keep up the façade. Things are far from perfect in her household but Jane manages to cover her bruises. When her neighbor, 16-year-old Clare Edwards, goes missing and is found murdered, Jane realizes she has to protect her family, lest her meticulously crafted life starts unraveling.

The premise might seem simple enough, like any other whodunit, but just when you think you have it all figured out, Morgan starts shifting the spotlight on another character, making you rethink your theory. The story is narrated from three different perspectives: by Clare leading up to her death, by her next door neighbor Jane, and then the detective investigating the crime, DS Madeline. Each narration sheds light on crucial clues and makes you question what you considered to be true after completing the previous chapter.

I have always been a sucker for crime fiction and take great pride in the fact that I’ve read so many authors in the genre that, by now, I’m usually able to predict the ending. I have been able to guess the endings of the last few thriller novels I have read halfway through the books. But The Girl Next Door broke my record.

What I loved about The Girl Next Door is that there were times when things felt very unsettling. It gave me the creeps and I actually shuddered a bit. Very rarely has crime fiction had that effect on me in recent years. Though the novel isn’t a killer-on-the-prowl-thriller that makes you want to sleep with the lights on, it’s dark and disturbing and thus messes with your head a bit. The wonderfully layered story has everything to keep you on the edge, a little scared but still unable to let go.

Paul Kalanithi was just months away from qualifying as a neurosurgeon and completing his postdoctoral fellowship at Stanford University when he was diagnosed with Stage IV lung cancer at the age of 36. Suddenly, the doctor becomes the patient. And his plans to start a family with his wife, Lucy, now seems like a distant dream, one that would perhaps never come true.

Kalanithi chooses to pen a book because, as he writes in an email to his best friend, he has outlived two Brontës, Keats and Stephen Crane, but, unlike them, he doesn’t have anything to show for it. Writing When Breath Becomes Air is a) his way of coming to terms with his death and, more importantly, b), as his wife said in an interview after the book’s publication, his way of communicating with his daughter Cady after his death.

However, when Kalanithi died on March 2015, the book wasn’t complete. His wife Lucy wrote an epilogue for it and the book was published 10 months later. In the book Kalanithi ponders on what makes life worth living when one is facing death. Apart from meditations on life and death, Kalanithi also gives us a glimpse into the life of someone who strives to always maintain a positive outlook.

For Kalanithi, life was never about avoiding suffering. So when his wife asks him, “Don’t you think saying goodbye to your child will make your death more painful?” when they decide to have a child, his reply is, “Wouldn’t it be great if it did?’”

‘When Breath Becomes Air’ is perhaps the most soul stirring book I’ve read. Lucy writes in the epilogue that his memoir can teach us to face life and death with integrity. And indeed When Breath Becomes Air serves as a reminder to value life and not think of death as a tragedy. Kalanithi’s message is simple: We are all confronting mortality on a daily basis, whether we know it or not, and the beauty of life lies in the fact that it’s so uncertain.

“Before my cancer was diagnosed, I knew that someday I would die, but I didn’t know when. After the diagnosis, I knew that someday I would die, but I didn’t know when.” The important thing, he says, is not how long we live but how we live.

But be warned, this isn’t a book you can read in a single sitting or even over the course of a few weeks for that matter. There were times when I couldn’t read another page. But I also wanted to be comforted by Kalanithi’s words and to find out how Lucy and his daughter were doing. It’s compulsive but you have to put it aside and take time to process what you have read after every few pages.

Fiction
When Breath Becomes Air
Paul Kalanithi
Publisher: Vintage
Published: 2016
Language: English
Pages: 228, Hardcover

When her novel ‘The Palace of Illusions’, based on the Mahabharat told by Panchaali, was published 10 years ago, many readers asked Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni what she would write about next. Usually that was a question she had no answer to but this time she instinctively knew she had to write about Sita. Just like Panchaali, she wanted Sita to be able to tell her own tale.

In Hindu mythologies, women are more often than not relegated to the margins and we rarely get to know them unless it is in context of their husbands who are always mighty warriors. Which is why retellings of these ancient texts are so important. They bring women to the forefront and give them a chance to tell us how things transpired in their lives and how they felt about it.

And ‘The Forest of Enchantments’ is just that. It’s Sita filling in the gaps in the story and recollecting her version of events. What I specially liked about Divakaruni’s retelling of the Ramayana is that it’s not just Sita’s story either. The other women—Kaikeyi, Mandodari, Surpanakha—also get a chance to set their narratives straight. They are more than just mothers, wives and sisters. Kaikeyi is an excellent charioteer and swordswoman, and Mandodari is shown to be a perceptive leader with infinite compassion for her people.

We know how the Ramayana plays out but even if you don’t reading Divakaruni’s version of the mythology is enough for you to understand the story. There’s everything there, from Sita’s birth and her marriage to Ram, the eventual exile, to Ravana kidnapping Sita, and the ultimate rescue and the birth of Luv and Kush. Divakaruni has also chosen to be faithful to the original text and kept the ending the same. But it’s much more nuanced than in the original text.

Sita’s Ramayana, which is what this book essentially is, is far more than a story of morality and filial duty, as Ramayana is generally made out to be. The Forest of Enchantments reads like an important commentary on love, duty, the importance of balancing the two and, sometimes, when situations demand, being able to prioritize one above the other.

I read The Forest of Enchantments on a weekend. Divakaruni’s writing is a joy and the story too is captivatingly told. If you, like many women I know, have always been slightly angry by the unfairness of things in Ramayana, then this book will appease you  a little.

Fiction
The Forest of Enchantments
Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
Publisher: Harper Collins
Published: 2019
Language: English
Pages: 359, Hardcover

FICTION
PONTI
Sharlene Teo
Publisher: Picador
Language: English
Pages: 291, Paperback

Sharlene Teo won the £10,000 Deborah Rogers Writers’ Award for her unpublished manuscript ‘Ponti’. Later, Picador bought the rights to it in a seven-way auction. The cover has a wonderful comment by Ian McEwan on it. When I bought the book, I had pretty much made up my mind: This was going to be one special read.Sadly, it wasn’t. The much-lauded book feels strange and is, frankly, a bit tiring as well. That’s not to say the debut novel doesn’t have a prom­ising plot or Teo’s writing is bad; perhaps what it needed was more editing. What got published seems like a rough draft of a potentially great book.

The novel is set in Singapore where we meet Szu and Circe as teenagers. Their friendship is thick but uneasy. Szu comes across as clingy, and Circe could be best described as neurotic. Szu’s mother, Amisa, was once a star—having been featured in a series of horror movies that were ignored when they first came out but now enjoy a cult following—but works from home as a ‘hack medium’ (someone who connects the living with the dead) when we meet her.

The novel revolves around these three characters, with some men making occasional, vague, and redundant appearances. However, it’s Amisa who intrigues and infu­riates you as she goes about her life, oblivious to what’s happening around her and with blatant dis­regard for her daughter. You get a sense of the problematic relationship between the mother and daughter from the start but it’s crudely por­trayed. So much so that when Amisa falls ill and is hospitalized and Szu prays, “Please just get better and look normal again. Just get better and let me hate you in peace,” you aren’t really surprised or bothered.

The narrative alternates between the past when Szu and Circe were growing up and the present-day when a 30-something Circe works as a social media consultant for a firm whose new project is to remake Ami­sa’s cult horror movies. There is also a third narrative—of the young and beautiful Amisa who gets the chance of a lifetime when a director offers her the lead role in his upcoming film. Amisa’s story is gripping—the only story that manages that effect—but the character, albeit fascinating, seems hastily written and you can’t connect with her much.

Also, a lot of what Teo tells us about the characters feels pointless. I mean, what’s the use of a long and lengthy description of a tapeworm infestation that Circe is taking medi­cation for? It doesn’t factor into the story and the description is tediously drawn out. You could argue that it is mundane things like this that give a story a real feel but Teo’s writing isn’t powerful enough for that. It takes a good writer and a sharper editor to tell a simple yet gripping story.

It’s only in the last few pages that Teo shines and the story finally makes sense. But, as a reader, you have lost all interest in it by then.

Elizabeth Is Missing

Emma Healey

Language: English

Published: 2014

Publisher: Penguin Random House

Pages: 293, Paperback

Maud, 82, is slowly losing her memory. She makes tea and forgets to drink it. In her liv­ing room there is a long row of cold cups of tea on a shelf. She keeps find­ing little notes tucked in her pockets that remind her “not to have more toast”, “not to cook”, and definitely “not to buy tins of peach slices”. But the one note that keeps reappearing says, “Elizabeth is missing”.Despite being assured that her best friend is fine, Maud is convinced that something has happened to Elizabeth. She makes rounds to her friend’s home (only to find it desert­ed), calls Elizabeth’s son Peter at night to ask about her whereabouts, and even places a missing person’s advertisement in the paper. She is determined to find out what’s hap­pened to her friend but it’s tricky when she can’t differentiate between the past and the present, or even remember what she did a day before for that matter.

Many years ago, Maud’s elder sis­ter Susan or Sukey had also disap­peared and her family never found out what had happened to her. Maud keeps confusing events relating to her sister’s disappearance with those of Elizabeth’s current unaccountable absence. However, even when her mind fails her and no one believes a thing she says, Maud keeps look­ing for her friend and tries to recall what exactly happened to her sis­ter. In the end, Maud manages to dig up old facts hidden within the recesses of her memory to solve a long-buried crime.

Maud’s thought processes are, by the nature of her illness, repetitive. She constantly does and says the same things over and over again. Though that could have made the story slow and dull, Healey’s nar­rative is gripping enough to keep it from being bleak at any point. Healey writes about old age and aging with such finesse that you can sort of see yourself in Maud’s place someday.

Maud, with her fractured memory, also seems like a highly unreliable narrator at times. You can’t be sure if what she’s telling you is actually the truth (or just her version of it) and this makes it hard for you to guess where the story is headed. But that’s the charm of Healey’s debut nov­el—she lets you be the detective and shift through the clues from Maud’s memories.

Elizabeth Is Missing is many things: a crime novel, a story about mental illness and dealing with mental illness, and a meditation on the complexities of aging. It’s also a powerful and affecting portrait of a woman’s slide into dementia and the frustrations that come with it. It doesn’t fit into any particular genre but it’s a deeply satisfying read and that really should be a whole other genre in itself.

The Japanese island of Okinawa, where Ikigai is believed to originate from, has the largest population of centenarians in the world. Ikigai is apparently their secret to longevity, beauty, and mindfulness. Ikigai, which roughly translates to “a reason to get up in the morning” or “a reason for being”, has existed in Japan for centuries and is still deeply ingrained in Japanese daily life and culture. But the concept of Ikigai isn’t exclusive to the Okinawans and the Japanese. Ken Mogi gives us an insight on what it is and how it works in ‘The Little Book of Ikigai’.

But that’s just what it is—an insight. Don’t expect to understand the concept and be motivated to find your Ikigai after reading the book. If you have heard about Ikigai but don’t know much about it, the book might be able to give you a few ideas. Though Mogi introduces you to the five pillars of Ikigai—starting small, releasing yourself, harmony and sustainability, the joy of little things, and being in the here and now—and explores them through different aspects of Japanese life, the book feels more like a guide to Japanese culture. That could have been a good thing because the Japanese culture is fascinating. However, the author makes everything appear so idealistic and perfect that you can’t help but feel a bit annoyed. 

Mogi is also far from assertive and only seems to be interested in presenting the Japanese ways of life and declaring how Ikigai plays a role in almost everything without giving any clear examples. He leaves you to draw your own conclusion on whether or not you should seek your own Ikigai, but you don’t have much to base your decision on. His analysis is superficial to the point of being preachy. Also, Mogi isn’t a skilled writer so his narrative is jumpy and he has a very roundabout way of explaining things, which makes The Little Book of Ikigai a tedious read.

However, there are snippets that make the (thankfully) short book interesting. Mogi writes about how Hayao Miyazaki, a Japanese animator who co-founded Studio Ghibli, one of the most popular animation studios in the world, understood the importance of “being here and now” by making fantastic animations for children. Then there’s the story of Jiro Ono, owner of a popular sushi restaurant, who enjoyed and believed in serving the perfect sushi. He is 91 years old, and once said that he wants to die while making sushi. It is through interesting bits like these that Mogi manages to make you curious about Ikigai. But if you want a good understanding of it or want to adopt it in your life, you will have to find other books on the topic.

I was excited to read ‘Sharp Objects’ by Gillian Flynn as I had really enjoyed her ‘Gone Girl’. But Fly­nn’s debut novel is nothing like her third, which was an internation­al bestseller. Both are psychologi­cal thrillers but the similarity ends there. Sharp Object fails to deliver the same edge-of-your-seat impact as Gone Girl. It just isn’t as well writ­ten, and something about the story feels off.Sharp Object follows Camille Preaker, a Chicago-based journalist, who returns to her hometown Wind Gap in Missouri to report on a series of brutal murders. Going back home is somewhat of an ordeal for Camille who has probably never gotten over the death of her sister, and whose relationship with her mother can only be described as cold and dys­functional. The story is both about the murders of little girls as well as Camille’s relations with her family, and you get a sense that the two are somehow entwined. The other characters in the story, especial­ly Camille’s boss, step-father, and half-sister, could have added interest to the story had they been developed a bit more. But Flynn doesn’t bother much with them, choosing mostly to focus on Camille and her mother, and it’s that lack of nuances and nor­mality that makes Sharp Objects a dull, monotone read. Flynn also likes to write about dysfunctional women, but in today’s world of television and books dysfunctional characters are more the norm than well-adjusted ones so there’s nothing new there either.

Having said that, Sharp Object touches on issues like self-harm, familial bonds, and the need to fit in and be loved. There is also a gener­ous dose of darkness and gore that is trademark Flynn and she manages to give different dimensions to the main character. Camille is unlikable and she has no redeeming qualities but you are still able to empathize with her because you realize she has been shaped by her childhood and circumstances, and that she is only human. If you read Sharp Objects with some preconceived notions about how it might or should be, based on Gone Girl, the book or the film adaptation, then you are unlike­ly to enjoy it. But if you haven’t read Flynn before or didn’t think much about Gone Girl, then you just might like this novel that explores the dif­ferent facets of human psyche.