Tag Archives: family

Title: Silent House
Author: Orhan Pamuk
Publisher: Hamish Hamilton, Penguin
ISBN: 978-0-670-08559-0
Genre: Literary Fiction, Translation
Pages: 334
Source: Publisher
Rating: 5/5
Not everyone I have met who like reading, like Orhan Pamuk. They say they cannot get into his books. Of course. It is true. One needs a lot of patience and time on hand to be able to read and appreciate a Pamuk. The first time I started on was with, “My Name is Red” and it took me two rereads to be able to understand the intricacies…

Title: The Care and Handling of Roses with Thorns
Author: Margaret Dilloway
Publisher: Putnam Adult
ISBN: 978-0399157752
Genre: Literary Fiction
Pages: 368
Source: Publisher
Rating: 4/5
I have not been a fan of the regular run-of-the-mill women fiction. I somehow cannot relate to it and more so I do not feel for the characters. I try and avoid reading such books. I try and then I give up in some cases. But the one that I am about to review now was a different experience altogether.
“The Care and Handling…

Title: The Free World
Author: David Bezmozgis
Publisher: Picador USA
ISBN: 978-1250002518
Genre: Literary Fiction
Pages: 368
Source: Publisher
Rating: 5/5
When you write about the migrant experience, it becomes very difficult to encompass everything in one single book, keeping the trail of thought intact. The Free World by David Bezmozgis is a perfect example of this. A lot of books about the immigrant experience have been written and it isn’t to write so. A part of the author’s life also goes into the book or else you cannot write…

Title: The Infinite Tides
Author: Christian Kiefer
Publisher: Bloomsbury USA
ISBN: 978-1-60819-810-8
Genre: Literary Fiction
Pages: 393
Source: Publisher
Rating: 5/5
If there is one book I would recommend you to read this year, amongst other books as well, but of course, “The Infinite Tides” by Christian Kiefer would be one of them for sure. I have read debuts so brilliant. Debuts that do not feel like the book is a first by a particular writer and this for sure falls in that category.
The protagonist of this book –…

Title: Honour
Author: Elif Shafak
Publisher: Penguin Viking
ISBN: 978-0670921157
Genre: Literary Fiction
Pages: 352
Source: Publisher
Rating: 5/5
Honour by Elif Shafak has to be one of my best reads this year. I loved everything about the book. Elif Shafak no doubt has to be one of the very few writers who can infuse a lot in one book – and that too sometimes using sparing language and length to communicate what she has to.
Honour is a story of a family and everyone connected to it. Stories of…

Title: The Patrick Melrose Novels
Author: Edward St Aubyn
Publisher: Picador USA
ISBN: 978-0312429966
Genre: Literary Fiction
Pages: 688
Source: Publisher
Rating: 4/5
The Patrick Melrose novels written by Edward St. Aubyn are not to everyone’s taste. These novels aren’t a happy read and do not promise a rose garden, so to say. The Patrick Melrose novels are made of 4 novels – Never Mind, Bad News, Some Hope, and Mother’s Milk. The novels trace the English Upper Class through Patrick Melrose and his affluent family.
The four books made…

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…

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: Em and the Big Hoom
Author: Jerry Pinto
Publisher: Aleph Book Company
ISBN: 978-8192328027
Genre: Literary Fiction
Pages: 240
Source: Publisher
Rating: 5/5
“Em and the Big Hoom” by Jerry Pinto may be positioned as a book about a mother’s descent into madness, but at the core to me, it was the story of a family. Not dysfunctional as much as a family thrown together in a circumstance, who make the most of life while dealing with the way things turn out for them.
Readers have speculated and critics…

Title: The Storm at the Door
Author: Stefan Merrill Block
Publisher: Faber and Faber UK
ISBN: 978-0571269594
Genre: Literary Fiction
Pages: 368
Source: Publisher
Rating: 5/5
Stefan Merrill Block’s, “The Storm at the Door” speaks of illness, mental illness at that. He combines his family facts and fiction to give readers a book that sometimes makes you stop in your tracks and think about it. The Storm at the Door is astonishingly original and quite compelling. Block has taken his maternal grandparents’ lives and blended fact with fiction – often…