I remember quite enjoying Airs Above the Ground by Mary Stewart. Maybe I didn't like it as much as The Ivy Tree or Madam, Will You Talk? but I did enjoy it. This time, I enjoyed the beginning. The Spanish Riding School, the levade, Timothy in his awkward state between adolescence and adulthood... I smiled through all of it. I liked the sudden unreliability of the narrative voice, the same technique that blew me over in The Ivy Tree. I liked the balance between description and narration. In fact, I think I liked the story till the husband makes an appearance. Is it just me or is the novel too full of dramatic action and corny romance to be really enjoyable? … [Read more...]
The White Horse of Zennor and Other Stories
I love short stories! I wrote in my diary not very long ago, I think short stories are far more exciting to write because they capture a spark of imagination that lasts right through the moment of the story. A full-length novel... It begins with the spark, but for me involves more laborious imagination and less exciting inspiration. I've read The White Horse of Zennor and Other Stories before, and I enjoyed it just as much the second time around. Writing about the sea is an old idea. I think, of course, of Tennyson and so many others. Michael Morpurgo captures the same excitement and thrill of the sea in stories that mix the traditional and the modern. Magic, folk-tales and a very willing suspension of disbelief come together to create stories that are filled with wonder. The first story, The Giant's Necklace, made me sad, but it was so gently told, with such great sensitivity, … [Read more...]
All Because of Jackson
There's a bubble of contentment within me whenever I read Dick King-Smith, and All Because of Jackson is no different. Filled with delightful pictures and dreams, All Because of Jackson is the story of a rabbit. Of course, with Dick King-Smith, it has to be about an animal. An animal that is perfectly ordinary, but different. Different because Jackson the rabbit wants to be a sailor. No rabbit becomes a sailor! Human beings eat rabbits!But Jackson wants to be a sailor. And so he does. All Because of Jackson is a twenty-minute voyage of joy! … [Read more...]
Moon Pie
Every page of Simon Mason's Moon Pie rang true. On the book-cover, I remember reading that someone called it an 'ultra-modern' story. I was not sure what to expect. I certainly did not expect this kind of brutal honesty. It made me shake my head and cry. Eleven-year-old Martha is puzzled by her father's strange behaviour. Martha's mother is dead, and the girl assumes that her father is grieving and so, naturally, behaving strangely. But Martha's mother always said that someone had to think straight, someone had to keep his head. So Martha has to keep her head. After all, she is eleven, she tells herself. She is old enough to take care of herself, to take care of her five-year-old brother Tug and to make endless lists of things to do to maintain order despite her father's strange behaviour. She is eleven. She cooks, makes lists and tries to do the things on the list. One … [Read more...]
A Mouse Called Wolf
Whenever I read Dick King-Smith, I think about C.S. Lewis's oft-quoted “A children's story that can only be enjoyed by children is not a good children's story in the slightest.” How true it is! Whoever heard of a singing mouse? From the single line on the book cover, reading the book is like a joyful ride into a story that moves from the first page to the last in the course of about half an hour. When Wolfgang Amadeus Mouse was born, he was the littlest of all, so his mother wanted to give him a grand name. Her nest was was made of a chewed up sheet of music and somehow, a little bit had remained unchewed. It said 'Wolfgang Amadeus Mo'. Of course, Mary Mouse knew that the last three letters were missing because what could the name be but Wolfgang Amadeus Mouse? Wolfgang Amadeus had to have a nickname, of course. His name was rather a mouthful. And so, his twelve siblings nicknamed … [Read more...]
Simon the Coldheart
What is it about Georgette Heyer that she can turn imagination into language so brilliantly? I reread another Georgette Heyer, before reading Simon the Coldheart, and found myself skipping large sections of it. I think time has made me a little uncomfortable with the romance that she portrays. I squirm more than a little, and run my eyes over the pages sometimes, without reading much. I realise I don't like her ideas of mastery in romance or the way in which so many of the heroines just seem to give in. Yet, I enjoy Georgette Heyer.Why? Each page sparkles with fun. I love the humour; laughter rises to my throat time and time again. Those are the answers that come to me instinctively. But Simon the Coldheart is not one of those novels. It's not one of those with joyous gurgles of laughter. It's one in which the romantic element kicks in quite late in the novel. But I read on and on, … [Read more...]
The Worry Tree
I remember having a conversation with a friend about the challenges faced by each generation. "Our grandparents had to work hard - physically," I said. "My grandmother has so many stories of how difficult it was to make dosa batter and things like that. Our parents had financial difficulties, more than anything else. What about us?" "We have emotional and intellectual issues," my friend said, thoughtfully, "basically about who we are and what we want from life." In that sense, I think The Worry Tree reaches out to the children of this generation. Children who are worried. Children who sometimes don't realise that problems around them aren't their fault. I loved the idea of the book, reading page after page with a half-smile. I love the pages at the end where the child who owns the book can write down his or her own worries, hang them up on the worry tree, so to speak. I took about an … [Read more...]
Pegasus
What a mixed bag of emotions! Pegasus was wonderfully imagined. I loved the ideas of feather-tip fingers, strong human hands and flexible wrists, being bound to the pegasi of the sweet green land... Beautiful! There was a kind of raw beauty that reached out and touched me, page after page. The beauty of the Caves - the Caves that are so full - I want to see them too! I feel shivers at the thought of beauty that is so profound that you cannot see it. Rather, you feel it, if you distance yourself from space and time. It was an experience of bliss, reading Pegasus. There has to be a 'but', though. It was long, a little too long, I thought. Maybe not too long, actually. Long in ways that it should not have been long, but not long enough when it came to knowing what happened. I want to know more. It ended all wrong for me. The biggest enemy of beauty is not ugliness. It is … [Read more...]
The Joy Luck Club
Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club fits so perfectly under the heading 'unusual'. It's unusual in every way. The language is unusual. The structure is unusual. The name is unusual. I love the idea of stories of motherhood, and I love stories that do not have a simplistic conclusion. Each story in this collection is the story of a mother and her daughter against a Chinese-American socio-cultural backdrop. Mother and daughter struggle to fit in, while retaining a Chinese identity. Mother and daughter speak a foreign tongue. Mother tries to curl her tongue around ideas that do not have their equivalent in the new language. Daughter tries to achieve, tries to over-achieve, tries to find a place. Mother wants the best for her daughter and tries to find the balance between two nations separated by an ocean. Going back home to China means travelling westwards to reach the east. Of course the novel … [Read more...]
On Two Feet and Wings
I'm a slow reader. Despite the fact that I love reading, I take my time over books. Sometimes, I take weeks to finish a book, even one I enjoy. On Two Feet and Wings was not like that. I would never have expected a book based on a true story to have transported me into a world I do not know at all. Powerful, moving, pacy - what cliched words these are! But each of them is apt. I started reading Abbas Kazerooni's story only because someone gave me On Two Feet and Wings for my birthday. When I started reading it, I didn't know what to expect. But I loved every moment and every page - I'm tempted to say that I loved every word. The innocence and pathos in the story reached out to me - I haven't been touched like that in a long time. I saw the dirty alleys of Istanbul, smelled the dank sheets, drank the tea and cringed at the cockroaches in the bathroom. I saw a precocious nine-year-old … [Read more...]
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