Weaving of Arachne

I have been meaning to read The Switch  by Beth O’Leary since the day it was published, which is roughly two months ago. Bookstagram totally had me this time with its aesthetic pictures of this book and its gushing reviews. I was very intrigued as I read the blurb that I decided then and there that I have to read it. I rarely read contemporary novels so I was pleasantly surprised to find a language replete with terms and concepts that I could easily relate to. The novel is replete with neologisms such as mansplaining, manspreading, Netflix, etc. Also, the writing is very smooth and it is pretty much a fast paced novel. The novel presents two point of views, one of Eileen Cotton, the grandmother and the other of Leena Cotton, the granddaughter, who eventually swap their lives.The novel almost met with my expectations, except a few points. The major turn-off, for me, was its extreme predictability. It explores a unique and interesting concept, that of swapping lives but it is rep...

The Joy Luck Club  by Amy Tan surely lives up to its label as the modern classic. Reading it has been sheer pleasure and a wonderful experience. It is the story of Chinese immigrants in U.S.A told by four Chinese women and their American born daughters. Also, reading The Joy Luck Club  has been a novel experience for me because of its novel structure. The book does not fit under the label of ‘novel’ in a strict, traditional sense, because it is constituted of sixteen seemingly unrelated vignettes which can easily be read separately as short stories. The book is divided into four parts each part consisting four sections, and each of these sixteen independent sections are narrated by the eight primary characters. This unique structure gives voice and adequate space to each of these eight primary characters to tell their own stories. However, these sixteen vignettes are not altogether disparate rather they share a connecting link, albeit feeble with each other. Through their...

The Trial for Murder by Charles Dickens is a first person narrative of a paranormal experience by an unnamed narrative. We are told that the narrator belongs to the ‘respectable’ bourgeois class and has led an almost uneventful existence undisturbed by anything unordinary, except this one instance which he narrates.  On an ordinary morning he read a news article about a murder which captured his attention leading him to read the piece twice and more carefully. This inexplicable attraction of the narrator towards the story of the murder set forth a domino effect entangling him into events which were absolutely unconnected to him. He started seeing the apparition of the murdered man and unbeknownst to himself became the murdered man’s medium for justice.   The story is well-written and the narrative is taut. Dickens characteristically wrote a vividly descriptive story. I could easily visualise each event happening before my eyes. However, after the first two-three sections...

Haroun and The Sea of Stories  is a brilliant tale by the master storyteller Salman Rushdie. Strictly speaking, the book belongs to the category of children’s literature but it enthrals the adults all the same. The novel has many layers to it, it can be read as a fanciful fairy-tale or as a nuanced story subtly mocking the drudgery of adult world. The brilliance of the novel is that it is neither merely a fanciful fairy-tale nor a preachy, boring moralistic sermon. Rushdie has struck the right balance while brewing this tale. Rushdie in his signature style morphs reality to subtly present the truth, which otherwise might be too bitter to consume. How ingeniously does Rushdie describe the drab modern urban life through the sad city, a city so unhappy that it has forgotten its name and the factories that manufacture sadness which people can’t get enough of! The novel with its taut and interesting narrative is a definite page turner. Rushdie vividly renders the fantastic world (o...

The Duchess of Malfi  by John Webster takes the reader/audience through a sensationalist ride of court intrigue, revenge, treachery and murder. The drama is set in the early 16 th  century Italy and focuses on the vengeance fostered by two noble brothers, one of which is a Cardinal against their sister. This drama falls under the category of revenge tragedy because as mentioned earlier it focuses on revenge and also on the tragedy which inevitably accompanies vengeance. The eponymous Duchess is a young dowager and is prohibited by her brothers Cardinal and Lord Ferdinand from remarrying. Nevertheless, she secretly marries her steward, Antonio Bologna and bears him three children. This defying act of her enrages her brothers to such an extent that they end up plotting her and Antonio’s murder and finally executing it. The Duchess had to suffer many tyrannies of her brothers before she was finally strangulated by their henchman Bosola. Initially, I thought that the Duches...

I have been meaning to read The Hobbit  for a long time but ironically I was sceptical of it because of its genre. I have not read much fantasy fiction and I have a feeling, perhaps irrational, that I won’t like this genre. I wasn’t sure how will I sync myself into a fantastical land or relate with characters that are not even human in the first place. But, I am really grateful to J.R.R. Tolkien who dismissed my unfounded fears/scepticism and made my plunge into the universe of fantasy fiction an enjoyable and satisfying experience. The Hobbit  is usually considered to be children’s fiction but as an adult I was hooked on to it till the very end and never for once did I find it juvenile. The storyline of The Hobbit  in itself is brilliant; however it has been refined and embellished manifold by the writing style of Tolkien. According to general opinion, Tolkien’s literary skills reached their zenith in his The Lord of The Rings  series, but for me his literary s...