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When you read what feels like the perfect opening sentence, you just know everything is going to fall into place and that the book will make you either think, weep, or laugh. And if the writer really knows her subject and characters, then even all three. Avni Doshi’s debut novel ‘The Girl in White Cotton’ falls into the latter category, evoking a mix of emotions you struggle to contain.

The opening line—‘I would be lying if I said my mother’s misery has never given me pleasure’—hints at the unraveling of a complex relationship. Stories where a relationship is the crux of the narrative are, in my experience, rarely disappointing. Here, it’s a mother-daughter relationship that is being explored.

The story is narrated by Antara who had a tricky relationship with her largely detached mother, Tara, as she was growing up. Tara never prioritized Antara’s wellbeing and happiness and thus she had a difficult childhood. Then Tara starts forgetting things and Antara finds herself having to care for her. Antara struggles with conflicting emotions, torn between what feels like love and the need to put the past in the past.

What makes The Girl in White Cotton better than most books based on relationships between parents and children is the fact that the characters feel so real—you identify with their traits and behaviors and you see glimpses of yourself in them. The story too is raw and relatable. Doshi’s writing is sharp, witty, and empathetic. This was one of the very few books where I found myself marking lines and entire pages just to reread them later on. And I have done so many times already since I finished reading it at the start of 2021. 

Alternatively published as ‘Burnt Sugar’ in the UK (after it was originally published in India as The Girl in White Cotton in 2019), the novel was shortlisted for The Booker Prize 2020 and named NPR’s Best Book of 2020. Every media raved about it and it sold many translation rights much before the Booker Prize winner was announced. Though Douglas Stuart’s ‘Shuggie Bain’ won, I feel Shuggie Bain and other Booker Prize shortlists didn’t get as much attention and love as Doshi’s book. But having read it, loved it, and recommended it to over a dozen people, I’m no longer surprised that the book got as much press as it did.

The Girl in White Cotton or Burnt Sugar, whichever title sounds better to you (though I prefer the former), is a story about many things—family, love, relationships, responsibilities and obligations, unresolved issues, memory and how it fails us, trust, and how life is never ever neatly packaged but precious nonetheless. With so many serious issues, the story has all the potential to go haywire. But you would be surprised how beautifully Doshi has managed to tie all of them together. The result is a story that catches you off-guard while reading and then continues to haunt you long after.

Rating: 4 stars
Fiction
The Girl in White Cotton
Avni Doshi
Published: 2019
Publisher: Fourth Estate
Language: English
Pages: 277, Paperback

I wanted to review the newly released science fiction “Oxygen” this week. But given Nepal’s current battle with oxygen and my own experience with Covid-19, the movie about a woman fighting hypoxia in a confined space became a little too triggering for me to do. Now it becomes one of those movies I’ve left half-way despite being interesting. I also wanted to switch to a different OTT for once and review Salman Khan’s “Radhe” but by this time you probably know why I didn’t.

So, coming to my review for this week, I found solace in an entirely different universe of “Shadow and Bone”–an American fantasy streaming television series based on Leigh Bardugo’s “Grisha” novel trilogy. Directed by various directors, the eight-episode series is developed by Eric Heisserer and was released on Netflix mid-April. 

The events in Shadow and Bone take place in Grishaverse where a war is raging between Ravka, Fjerda and Shu Han regions. Shadow Fold—a dark void created centuries ago by a wizard called the Black Heretic where sinister creatures called Volcra live—divides the world and creates problems for people in all regions. Shadow Fold divides families, villages and even nations. 

Unbeknownst of her powers at the beginning, cartographer Alina Starkov (Jessie Mei Li) is recruited to cross Shadow Fold from West Ravka to the East. Inside the Fold, the expedition is attacked by Volcras, who kill most of her team. In order to save herself and her childhood friend Malyen “Mal” Oretsev (Archie Renaux), Alina unknowingly unleashes the power of the ‘Sun Summoner.’

After Alina’s ability is discovered, different forces fight to capture her and harness her power, which could potentially destroy the Show Fold, for their own purposes. In search of the Sun Summoner across the Grishaverse are Kaz Brekker (Freddy Carter), the leader of the Crows gang and General Kirigan (Ben Barnes), the General of the Second Army, the Shadow Summoner, among others.

A fantasy series it may be, but you would be wrong to compare Shadow and Bone with “Game of Thrones” or even the “Lord of the Rings” movie trilogy. But even if it might not have the captivating tenacity of Game of Thrones or the magnificent otherworldly visualizations of Lord of the Rings, Shadow and Bone’s story-telling and presentation make it one of the best fantasy series available on Netflix at present. 

The most noticeable and appreciable feat of the production team behind Shadow and Bone has to be world-building. The writers, both of the original book and the adapted screenplay, create a universe similar to the world we live in, but with entirely different places and people. It’s like we are back at the start of the 20th century, but in a whole different world. Despite having to create entirely new situations and explain them so that the audience is not lost, Shadow and Bone barely has any lapse in storytelling. 

The visualizations are also impeccable. Fantastical places and characters are presented realistically, as if they belong to the real world. Given the advancements in film production technology, this can be called pretty standard for a Netflix production. Still, Shadow and Bone has enough visual appeal to entertain you even if you don’t enjoy the storytelling.

Who should watch it?

Shadow and Bone is one of those screen adaptations that make you want to go read the original book. The series is a special treat for fantasy film lovers but might also interest anyone looking forward to a good pastime. The only disappointment is that the series leaves many conflicts unresolved, but that’s probably because the filmmakers are preparing for a few more seasons. Anyone who’s used to watching television series wouldn’t mind waiting. 

Rating: 3.5 stars
Actors: Jessie Mei Li, Ben Barness, Freddy Carter
Director/s: Lee Toland Krieger, Dan Liu, Mairzee Almas, Jeremy Webb
Genre: Fantasy
Run time: 7hrs approx.

‘Limited series’ have always been my preference over seasons after seasons of ‘extended series’ where sometimes the waiting time can feel eternal (sic “Money Heist”). I am not keen on months-long wait to find what’s happening next in a story I’m already invested in—one reason I don’t much watch television series. But limited series or miniseries is completed in one season, leaving you without the gnawing feeling of ‘mission incomplete’.

When, once in a while, you come across something like “The Innocent” (Spanish: “El inocente”), and you are blown away by how much suspense and thrill an eight-episode miniseries can pack in. Released on Netflix on April 30, the Spanish television thriller is based on Harlan Coben’s novel of the same name and directed for the screen by Oriol Paulo.

A young Mateo Vidal (Mario Casas) gets into a fight outside a disco and accidentally kills someone. An aspiring lawyer, he gets four years in prison, which he completes. Back from prison, it does take some time for Mateo to adjust to the outside world but he manages to create a place for himself in the society and now successfully runs a law firm. He is also happily married to Olivia Costa (Aura Garrido) and the couple is expecting a baby.

All is fine and dandy in their lives until Olivia’s business trip to Berlin turns awry. Mateo gets video calls that show Olivia in a compromising position with a stranger and a further inquiry leads to a revelation that she has not left the country. As he begins to investigate his wife’s disappearance, Mateo also gets entangled in a chain of incidents that make him a fugitive of the law again, with time-hardened cop Lorena Ortiz (Alexandra Jiménez) after him.

With Lorena at his heels, Mateo is also forced to confront ghosts from his past and demons from present. On the other side, his wife Olivia too has a set of skeletons in her closet and there seems no end in sight for the number of problems they get into.

Suspense is the very DNA of The Innocent. Every episode has something that will surprise the audience and further draw their interest, only to take them towards another spinoff in the story. It is delightful to watch filmmakers pull off so many substories and subplots within the series, the contents of which has enough material for a few more seasons.

Suspense after suspense packed in a single season speeds up The Innocent, but nothing an engrossed audience cannot keep up with. The series does not center on a single character. Using multiple flashback scenes and also background narrations for storytelling, The Innocent gives each character its own space, story and POV. 

The acting—although I am in no position to judge dialogue delivery as Spanish is not a language I understand—is convincing to the point that a non-speaker like me reading dialogues on subtitles easily understands the emotions the actors are trying to convey. This is a big win for the actors and directors.

Who should watch it?

If you like thrillers, we recommend you drop whatever you are doing and begin The Innocent asap, before spoilers start appearing all over social media. It is the type of series that you can watch now and revisit a couple of years later. (Seriously.) Also for audience who are not generally into crimes and thrillers, this could be an exception. This will perhaps also change your mind.

Rating: 4 stars
Genre: Thriller, crime
Actors: Mario Casas, Aura Garrido, Alexandra Jiménez
Director: Oriol Paulo
Run time: 7h 47mins

Summer.1986. Twelve-year-old Eddie Adams and his tight group of friends spend their days biking around in a sleepy English village. To make their days interesting, as children often want to, they devise a secret code to leave each other messages only they can understand. They draw chalk stick figures. Each of them uses a different color. Then a chalk man in white—nobody in the group uses white chalk—leads them to a dismembered body of a girl who narrowly escaped death at a local fun fair. The prime suspect is a local school teacher, and the case is quickly closed.  

Thirty years later, Eddie is a schoolteacher, living in the house he grew up in. He has put the past behind him and is quite content with his lonesome life—with only his lodger, Chloe, for company, and the occasional phone call or visit from his mum. Then, he gets a letter in the mail. It has a single chalk stick figure. Turns out, all his friends got the same message. They dismiss it as a prank till one of them ends up dead. Eddie realizes that he needs to find out what happened all those years ago to be able to really put the past behind him and begin afresh.

C. J. Tudor’s debut novel ‘The Chalk Man’ got a lot of attention when it was published in 2018. There were raving reviews in almost every media outlet, from The Guardian to Sunday Express. Writers like Stephen King, John Boyne (author of ‘The Boy in the Stripped Pajamas’), and A. J. Finn (‘The Woman in the Window’) were full of praise for it—calling it ‘utterly hypnotic’ and ‘completely engrossing’. Every other booktuber was also talking about it.

I had been looking for a copy for quite some time—browsing local bookstores and messaging online ones on Instagram. They had all run out of it. The book flew off the shelves, they said. It was that popular. Right before the lockdown, I finally found it at Pilgrims Bookstore in Thamel, Kathmandu. I had wanted to read The Chalk Man for so long that I actually put off reading it so as to always having something to look forward to. I would have probably kept it on my TBR pile for a while. But then the bleak times we are living in soon had me searching for an escape: I needed a fictional horror story to replace the real horror narrative in my head.

The Chalk Man was just the book I needed. Alternating between two timelines, the story is convincingly told. Each chapter makes you want to read the next. There are so many twists that each time you are convinced something is true, something else seems more likely. The characters are well crafted and Tudor’s simple writing style makes it easier for you to relate to all their contrasting emotions. I wouldn’t call it perfect or the best thriller/horror I’ve read. But Tudor was able to conjure some really vivid morbid scenes in my head and for that, I’ll highly recommend this book. I will also now search for the author’s other titles.

Fiction
The Chalk Man
C. J. Tudor
Published: 2018
Publisher: Penguin Books
Language: English
Pages: 345, Paperback