“Once Upon a Curfew” by Srishti Chaudhary

Set against the backdrop of 1970s Delhi, an era of Rajesh Khanna’s movies, the cold cozy winters of Delhi and a time when a wave of nationalism ran through the society, “Once Upon a Curfew” takes us through the life of our young protagonist, Indira Narayan, who wants to convert her grandma’s old flat into a library for women, one where she has left behind hundreds of books, collected over all her years of living there.
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Indira’s family thinks it is a suitable idea since it will keep her occupied until she marries her fiance, Rajat, who is studying in London for two more years.
But when she meets Rana, a young lawyer full of life and humor, and the Emergency declared in India, the world that she once thought was perfect for her, will turn upside down. What kind of life will she choose now?
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A refreshing take on the era surrounding the Emergency when the times were filled with political tension and yet Delhi was booming with life, it’s movies, it’s winters and it’s love for Bollywood movies, the plot digresses significantly from how the story first started.
The romance brewing between two young souls, against the backdrop of a library, does sound promising but the narration dragged a bit when the courtship of Indira was developing, and the book could have done better with fewer dialogues.
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Would have loved if the story moved in one direction and not scatter abruptly into subplots so much.
But with a strong plot-line, a very pleasant premise, lovable characters, an old school love story blossoming in a library and a peek into the yesteryear’s struggle of people during the Emergency, this book has all the elements for a cozy mushy read.
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🍂Rating: ⭐⭐⭐.5/5
🍂 Genre: fiction, indian-literature, historical-fiction, romance

“Atonement” by Ian McEwan

“A person is, among all else, a material thing, easily torn and not easily mended.”
– Ian McEwan, Atonement.
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It’s the summer of 1935, and a thirteen-year-old Briony Tallis misunderstands her older sister Celia’s relationship with their family gardener Robbie, and in a day a series of events will lead her to commit sin more grave than anything the price of which the two people have to pay for years, and she will be left atoning for it for the rest of her life.
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While the premise of the book is so enticing, the story goes real slow and the element of suspense and wonder what first made me go for this book was lost in the slow pace writing and overly detailed description. Very few books can make the narration from different POVs work, and this just didn’t work for me.
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The wartime chapters were extremely generic and unnecessarily crawling. Also, the idea of the ‘flawed’ judgment of a teenager, bringing in dire consequences felt like a fluke.
Other than that the writer has worked well with words and you can feel yourself looking forward to find out what happens next, in bits and pieces.
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Rating: ⭐⭐⭐/5
Reading difficult: ⭐⭐⭐⭐/5
Genre: fiction, historical-fiction, romance, classics, historical

“The Color Purple” by Alice Walker

“I am an expression of the divine, just like a peach is, just like a fish is. I have a right to be this way…I can’t apologize for that, nor can I change it, nor do I want to… We will never have to be other than who we are in order to be successful.” -Alice Walker, The Color Purple
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Do you ever come across a tale so poignant yet so inspiring, that you cannot help but marvel at its beauty in all its form, one that is so tender that it touches you deeply even though it is just some words written on a few pieces of paper?
Well, this was one such read for me.
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Celia is a young black girl born into a poor family and having grown in a household where she was continuously raped by her father, deprived of the right to live with her two children and separated by her darling sister Nettie, she finds herself in an ugly marriage.
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Her life is gloomy and melancholious until she meets Shug Avery, a steadfast and unwavering woman, who refuses to resort to her destiny of living the life of a black woman, one that is filled with a lot of sacrifices and prejudice.
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Told by means of letters written by Celia, the story takes beautiful turns, showing a mirror of the condition of woman in black societies. If the blacks were the deprived classes back then, then the black women were deprived of the deprived. So much so that at some points of the book, it almost breaks your heart.
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Even though the narration is in African American English dialect, which might not be everyone’s piece of cake, once you get the hang of it, it is one of those tales that are so absorbing, you almost don’t want it to finish.
Intense yet gratifying.
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Genre: classics, black-history, historical-fiction, feminist-literature, feminism
Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐.5/5
Reading difficulty: ⭐⭐⭐.5/5

“The Palace of Illusions” by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

“Love comes like lightning and disappears the same way. If you are lucky, it strikes you right. If not, you’ll spend your life yearning for a man you cannot have.”
– Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
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A novel take on the age-old saga of Mahabharata, narrated by Panchali or fondly known as Draupadi, this enchanting tale takes you to the beginning of her birth in the fire, to her earlier days in her father’s palace, to her stint as a woman with five husbands.
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We all are probably aware of the courses that Mahabharata took but do we ever think of what happened and why it happened especially from the point of view of a woman who was supposedly ‘modern’ and lucky for her time, being married to five men at a time?
The story provides answers to all these questions and opens up your eyes about the circumstance that led Draupadi to be the cause of the war.
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The narrative also provides important insights about her friendship with Krishna and a long lost love, that never came to fulfilment.
How were her relationships with the Pandavas? What were the sacrifices she had to make as a woman of that time and to support her husbands in the war?
Did she really get what she wanted in the end?
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Beautifully narrated, highly engaging and refreshingly stimulating.
The parts where the war is described does get a little boring because most of it is already been told so many times before, but the different take that the book offers on the war more than makes up for it.
Highly recommended for lovers of Indian mythology.
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Genre: indian-literature, mythology, war, fiction, fantasy, historical-fiction
Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐/5
Reading difficulty: ⭐⭐⭐/5

“All the Light We Cannot See” by Anthony Doerr

“Open your eyes and see what you can with them before they close forever.”
– Anthony Doerr, All the Light we cannot see.
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Marie-Laure is a young blind child of a museum caretaker in France. Torn by war, Marie and her father had to flee France, taking with them an infamous diamond, in an attempt to save this artifact from the Nazis.
Werner, on the other hand, is a young German lad recruited in the Hitler youth army and is known for his exceptional intelligence and scientific curiosity.
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What brings them together is war. Both of them meet in the ancient wall city of Saint-Malo, where Marie and her father had taken refuge in Marie’s great uncle and Werner arrives with the invading German army.
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Set in a beautiful port city, taking you to parts of Nazi Germany here and there, the story moves beautifully through the eyes of both the protagonists, who only meet briefly in the end, yet one can almost feel the love lost between the two.
Written in wonderful prose, with an enchanting description of the characters, their complexities, the plight of two cities affected by war, the plight of two characters affected by war, so differently, yet so similar.
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If you are a fan of historical fiction, I definitely recommend this one. Or even if you aren’t, I would just recommend it for the beautiful way it is written. Everyone deserves realising that captivating experience, heartwarming and heart wrenching.
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Genre: fiction, historical-fiction, war, history
Rating:⭐⭐⭐⭐/5
Reading difficulty:⭐⭐⭐⭐/5

“The Lowland” by Jhumpa Lahiri

“Isolation offered its own form of companionship”          – Jhumpa Lahiri, The Lowland
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Subhash and Udayan, two brothers born fifteen months apart, spend their childhood in a Tollygunge, a typical Calcutta neighbourhood and even though they were inseparable growing up, due to their stark opposite personalities, they make different choices in life that take them to separate paths when they grew up.
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Udayan, the ever enthusiastic and charismatic being, finds himself in the Naxalite movement while Subhash, the obedient son, leaves home to pursue scientific research in America.
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It is only when Subhash finds about his brother’s plight in the lowland outside their house, he returns back to his home in hopes of making everything right for his family and Udayan’s wife.
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Beautifully written with touches of intimacy, heartfelt emotions and bittersweet pangs of separation and exile, this tale of what happened to two beings that deeply loved a person who is now gone. Subhash, trying to take responsibilities that his brother left and Gauri, trying to discover things for herself and move forward from the flawed choices her husband made.
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The sense of separation that the book takes you to lasts almost the entire life of the two protagonists and it is nothing short of magical.
Another masterpiece by Jhumpa Lahiri.
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Genre: fiction, indian-literature, historical-fiction, contemporary
Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐.5/5
Reading difficulty: ⭐⭐⭐/5

“Man’s Search for Meaning” by Viktor E. Frankl

“When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves”
– Viktor E. Frank, Man’s Search for Meaning
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Based on psychiatrist’s Viktor Frankl description of his life in a Nazi death camp, the book narrates the psyche of a prisoner struck between life and death and how the idea of survival changes in dire situations.
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The author argues that we can be caught in a life that we didn’t choose, that brings us suffering every single day, that things can turn grim any day, but how we choose to cope with it depends on us.
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How we find meaning in a life we feel is not worth living, is entirely on us and rather than underestimating the will power of the human soul, one can always attempt to find light in adversity. Sure the meaning and values will change but life will still be life and it is not something to give up on.
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What makes the book impactful is the author’s real-life experiences of living in a concentration camp, of being surrounded by death everywhere, still trying to find a trace of humanity even when fate fails him.
I recommend it to anyone who is confused as to what is the true meaning of life. The book doesn’t answer the question entirely but sure will help one see how so many things in life are to be grateful for.
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Genre: #non-fiction, #psychology, #philosophy, #history, #memoir
Rating:⭐⭐⭐⭐/5
Reading difficulty: ⭐⭐⭐/5

“The Help” by Kathryn Stockett

“You is kind. You are smart. You are important.”

– Kathryn Stockett, The Help

Three wonderful women, Skeeter, Minny, and Aibileen, are set to change the course of history by bringing out a change in their small town of Jackson, Mississippi.

In a time when black women work as domestic help for white women, Skeeter, the white lady, decides to pen down the experiences of the ‘help’ to the white society in the hopes of exposing the white folk’s hypocrisy and stirring the already brewing black rights movement at that time.

What will she have to go through by turning against her own people?

How is Minny’s and Aibileen’s experience going to change the air of racism in their town?

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The narrative style is so fast-paced and dramatic that one finds it hard to put the book down. Although the characterization was simple and the writing style easy to read, the way the various characters were woven and how well the characters take forward the plot, demands applause for the author.

The only downside to the story was that the book was the stories of the black woman were narrated by the point of view of a white woman. It would have been better if the actual stories were elaborately told in the novel.

But that aside it was a riveting read, a story of not just racism but the bond between one’s househelp and oneself.

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Genre: fiction, historical-fiction #contemporary, black-history

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐/5

Reading difficulty: ⭐⭐⭐/5

“Memoirs of a Geisha” by Arthur Golden

“At the temple, there is a poem called ‘Loss’ carved into the stone. It has three words, but the power has scratched them out. You cannot read loss, only feel it”

– Arthur Golden, The memoirs of a geisha

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A historical fiction that talks of the loves of geishas in the Japanese town of Gion, a world where appearances are important, where woman are taught the art of enchanting men by their mannerism, art, and the skill to hold conversations.

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Chiyo and her sister are taken away from their poverty-stricken fishing village and sold to an okiya at a young age. Thus began Chiyo’s journey of becoming a geisha in the true sense. The hard realities and pains that she had to take on her journey take you on a bittersweet ride.

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While the author’s style of narrating the tale in a conversational style is really engaging and interesting, the book gets dull in the latter half.

One would expect more to learn of the Japanese culture and the history and lives of geishas, but in the end, it was just another fictional tale intended to weave a dramatic story, which ultimately failed to spike any interest.

Overall a pretty decent read, and I recommend it if you want to get started on learning about the Geisha culture.

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Genre: fiction, historical-fiction, memoir, Japanese-literature

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐.5/5

Reading difficulty:⭐⭐⭐/5

“The God of Small Things” by Arundhati Roy

“And the air was full of thoughts and things to say. But at times like these, only the small things are ever said. Big things lurk unsaid inside.”  

  -Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things

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“The God of Small Things” by Arundhati Roy is a story that discovers the social constructs and norms in the state of Kerala, the southernmost tip of India. It is a story about the fraternal twins, Estha and Rahel and how their lives are governed by the complex love laws, that lay down who should be loved. And how. And how much.
About their mother, Ammu, who even though being free-spirited, is bound to lead a lonely life with her children in her maternal house, after fleeing an abusive marriage. About her blind grandmother, Mammachi, their beloved uncle Chacko and their grandaunt Baby Kochamma. About how all of their lives can change in a day and take ugly shapes because of an unfortunate accident.