Archive | August, 2011

A story of children in the Holocaust, Once is poignant and powerful without being frightening or graphic. With his gentle and utterly alive manner, Gleitzman reads the tale of Felix, a Jewish boy who runs away from the convent where his parents had him hidden and roams the countryside with an orphaned girl until they find their way to the cellar of a print shop in the Warsaw ghetto, where an old dentist has been protecting lost children. (From Goodreads)Despite the serious and sombre subject matter of this book, I…

Author: Jyoti Arora
Publisher: V&S Publishers
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He can be as good as he wants to be and I’ll be as bad as I need to be! We’ll see where it all ends up,??? says Aashi.
She believes she has a right to fight for her dreams. She believes a little bit of selfishness is necessary to survive in this world. Abhi, however, has not learnt that lesson. And he can’t accept the fulfilment of his hopes when they seem to rise from the ruins of…

REVIEW BY SHREYA RAMNATH
Witty and entertaining
While it is commendable that new-age authors are consciously writing about what is familiar to them- their roots, milieu and middle-class lives, this change, though refreshing at first, seems to have (typical of today’s world where anything successful is done-to-death) deteriorated into yet another overdone trend that the bored reader has tired of, wishing instead for something new and ‘different.’
Keep The Change by Nirupama Subramanian does little to introduce a new type of writing to the reader; it is another one of…

Paperback: 403 pages
Genre : Fiction
Publisher: Vintage 2007
Source: My Daughter
First Sentences : ‘Hot,thought the Parisians. The warm air of spring, It was night, they were at war and there was an air raid.
Review Quote :’ An irresistible work. Suite Française clutches the heart’ The Times
My Opinion: For me this story was all the more poignant because of the way the author died.

I read this as it was a recommendation from my daughter and she kindly passed this copy onto me once she had finished…

Published by Rupa and Co., 

Cost- Rs. 195 

No. of pages- 271

Set in India & UK, this novel by Sunaina Serna Ahluwalia is about how the rich and powerful people belonging to the Page 3 category feel they have the freedom to do just about anything, and get away with it, even if it is Murder!! 

The main character in the book is  Darshana, as the pages unfold, we read about her journey through life,  where she manages an erratic alcoholic husband Kirat, an interesting and fascinating photographer she…

Inspirational.
There are some books which attract you. For some reason, one gets pulled towards them and then there is no turning back. One knows that it is going to affect one is strange ways. Memories Of A Rolling Stone, did precisely that. It has been over a week since I completed the book and I am still mesmerized, influenced and inspired by the book.
This is the first autobiography that I have completed. The book not only gave me an insight into the women’s movement in India but also segments of…

REVIEW BY RAMYA Y
The Padma Bhushan award winning author Yashpal himself played a dominant role in the quest for liberating India through revolutionary armed struggle. He embarked on his literary career in the barracks where he was imprisoned for 14 long years, continuing his zest for writing in Lucknow where he went on to author several short stories, essays, novels and reminiscences that mirrored his ideas of revolution, romance and gender equality. Jhootha Sach, his masterpiece of Hindi literature is a poignant portrayal of the partition scenario in India.…

Bombay Duck Is A Fish is an impressive first by scrip-writer Kanika Dhillon. Her protagonist, Neki Brar, a small towngirl from Amritsar moves to Mumbai to make it as a filmmaker in Bollywood. Shefinds a flat and her first job in Mumbai easily enough but trials follow soonafter. Life on a film set is chaotic and Neki discovers a knack for showing upat the wrong place at the wrong time. Gradually, the naive girl metamorphosesinto a shrewd Assistant Director and starts climbing the ladder of success. Littledoes she suspect that…

This book review has been published in association with Vodaphone Crossword Book Awards -2010. You can check out the award details here.

Author: Kalpish Ratna

Publisher: Harper Collins India

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Rating: 5/5

That first Sunday in December, while the Prime Minister in India dozed in Delhi, lesser things happened to lesser people in Bombay.

Mohammad Yunus doused his clothes with kerosene and struck a match.

Balkrishna More leaned out over the frenzied maha-aarati in the street and jumped to his death.

In a shuttered room in…

REVIEW BY SATWIK GADE
Mind-Numbingly Placid

Those grown jaded of the generation Y (or is it Z?) hip metro reads that glorify culturally mongrel protagonists and their antipathic misadventures are often on the look out for a book that could take them back into the past, telling the tale of a bustling joint family, whose curious social mores touch a spot set aside for nostalgia. They would hungrily lap up the saga of a nation that is coming of age, stretching its umbilical cord without quite severing it. They would be…