Title: Are You My Mother?: A Comic Drama
Author: Alison Bechdel
Publisher: Jonathan Cape, Random House UK
ISBN: 978-0-224-09352-1
Genre: Graphic Novel
Pages: 289
Source: Publisher
Rating: 5/5
When Alison Bechdel wrote, “Fun Home”, a graphic novel about her closeted gay father and her relationship with him, it was received with great aplomb. Critics loved it and so did the regular readers. I read it last month and was in absolute love with it. At the end of the book, I wondered, “What about Alison’s mother? What about her point…

Reviewd by Kamalika C
Title: One Amazing Thing
Author: Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
First Published on: 2009 in Voice by Hyperion in USA
ISBN: 9780670084524
Pages: 208
Price: 450/-
Rating: 4/5
Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, surely needs no introduction, as she is one of those Indian-English writers who provokes the Diasporic Literature to reach its zenith. Every time I read her novels, I delve deep in the ocean of her amazing story selections – simple, common but unique in true sense; which keeps one mesmerized with its ravishing writing skills. She blooms…

Title: The Sense of Sight
Author: John Berger
Publisher: Vintage USA
ISBN: 978-0-679-73722-3
Genre: Non-Fiction, Art Criticism
Pages: 300
Source: Personal Copy
Rating: 5/5
When John Berger writes something and you read it, it is nothing but poetry in prose and sometimes even his non-fiction woks stand out even more so. I was introduced to John Berger by chance and thank god for that “by chance” moment or else I would have never known the beauty of his works and he would never have become an integral writer in my…

Title: THE SEPTEMBER REVELATION
Author: KANIZA GARARI
 Publication: FROG BOOKS
 
The sleek and slender book, ‘The September Revelation’ is a simple tale about a young woman Zainab with a past that she cannot forget which invariably becomes an obstacle in her present, refusing to permit her to settle down in life.
With not too many pages to pull you down, the book is a delight to read, something which you can finish reading without straining your nerves. The narrative is smooth, hiccup-free and simple so, you just sail along with…

Title: Manjaveyil Maranangal(Deaths in Yellow lights)
Author: Benyamin(Benny Daniel)
Originally published in Malayalam(2011)
Publisher: D.C. Books
Pages: 356
Price:INR 226/-
Homeshop 18,DC Books

First Things first.I am not a great fan of Benyamin.Though I loved ‘Aadujeevitham’( Kerala Sahitya Academy Award 2009),his ‘Akkaporinte Irupathu Nasrani Varshangal’ made me mad.So I was a bit sceptical when I picked up his latest best seller,’Manjaveyil Maranangal’.The book turned out to be a half baked thriller and left me terribly disappointed.Manjaveyil Maranangal starts off (well) as a murder mystery,tries to be a historical fiction in…

Every time I have a Srishti Publisher’s book in my hand, I have a different kind of expectation with it because the first time when I picked an unknown Indian fiction writer- it was from Srishti publication. And the 10 writers whom I picked after him was again from Srishti. So, I started loving the general thoughts that these writers from Srishti wrote. And once again, I picked up this book from the same publication- “And then it rained” which also has a tagline- “coz life ain’t always a fairytale”.…

Title: The Land of Decoration
Author: Grace McCleen
Publisher: Chatto and Windus
ISBN: 978-0-701-18682-1
Genre: Literary Fiction
Pages: 291
Source: Publisher
Rating: 5/5
The Land of Decoration starts off as a strange book. About a girl, her father and their staunch religious beliefs. At the core of it, it is a battle of good and evil at times, about the choices we make and how we can pretty much differentiate, and the times when everything clouds over and we aren’t able to make the right decisions.
Judith McPherson is a…

Title: The Submisssion
Author: Amy Waldman
Publisher: Picador USA
ISBN: 978-1-250-00757-5
Genre: Literary Fiction
Pages: 337
Source: Publisher
Rating: 5/5
It isn’t easy sometimes to write a book review about a book that has had a huge impact on the way you think and what you believe in. Very few books manage to achieve that and The Submission by Amy Waldman did just that for me.
The premise of the book is simple on the surface: It has been two years after the 9/11 attacks. There is a contest for…

The noise between Patch and Nora is gone. They’ve overcome the secrets riddled in Patch’s dark past…bridged two irreconcilable worlds…faced heart-wrenching tests of betrayal, loyalty and trust…and all for a love that will transcend the boundary between heaven and earth. Armed with nothing but their absolute faith in one another, Patch and Nora enter a desperate fight to stop a villain who holds the power to shatter everything they’ve worked for—and their love—forever. (From Amazon.ca)
What I liked about this book was the beginning. It started off with Nora being…

Now-a-days, if you plan to enter a bookstore or to browse Flipkart/Infibeam to pick up at least 2-3 Fiction novels by Indians, you will be disappointed to see that almost every synopsis/blurb of the book has a common word in them “Love” or “Romance”. No one is trying to come out of that comfort zone and write something else. No, it is not that I or majority of readers aren’t romantic or we hate the process of love but we don’t want to read the same thing that we are…