Women, Dreaming by Salma translated by Meena Kandasamy is a narrative about Muslim women belonging to a middle class neighborhood bound by shackles ofWomen, Dreaming by Salma translated by Meena Kandasamy is a narrative about Muslim women belonging to a middle class neighborhood bound by shackles of patriarchy and religion, thus doubly marginalised. It is a narrative of women constantly aspiring to be someone stronger, both mentally and emotionally. It is a narrative of women baring their hearts out and dreaming of being holding the reins of their lives.
In my time of reading this book, I felt all the emotions I think of except sympathy for the protagonist. It is agonising to read the parts where her situation is described. On the other hand, two women have been incredible in doing what they thought was right for them, of course, going against the man of the house. They have had their occasional regrets, yes but no so much that they tried to stop each other in moving on in their lives. As a feminist myself, I believe in sisterhood, women standing for fellow women, especially in times of distress or when they need support the most after having been shunned by men. This book is tangential to the entire concept except a few moments. I know, the concept of the book is to show how women often breed patriarchy but it became too much to bear. I felt anger, frustration, distress, headache, eye pain, agony, lament, regret, disrespected and what not as I went deeper into the narrative. I only finished the book because I didn't want to first, DNF it, second, I wanted to know how much lamentation and crying could go on, third, I wanted to read if a particular character does what she wanted, fourth, I wanted to just read it for the sake of reading it.
The protagonist could have committed suicide and I wouldn't have blinked an eye. That is how much I hate the damned woman, and the antagonist, of course. I know people have loved this book but I, for one, did not. Pick this up with caution. You might want to pull your hair halfway through it....more
A building and many rooms, all on rent to diverse souls dealing with their pasts and present(s) in the best way possible. This is what is 'Gods And EnA building and many rooms, all on rent to diverse souls dealing with their pasts and present(s) in the best way possible. This is what is 'Gods And Ends' about, in the simplest of terms. It is an uncomfortable read, made me shift on my seat time and again. It is a difficult read, making me having to make my mind into reading it further. It is an eye-opening experience, making me wade through the pages to read more. It is a sentimental read, making me feel a plethora of emotions, all at the same time. The tenants, a widow, a drunkard, an unhappy couple, an abused wife, a sexually harassed girl, an abusive father are all dragging along their lives without any hope, aspiration or ambition. They just go on, soulless and carrying the heavy burdens of their claustrophobic pasts and bleak present that have made them stagnant. The narrative started slowly and was rather bleak challenging me to go on which I sure did. I was apprehensive about reading it further since it was frightfully unsettling but I was attracted to reading it all the same. The compelling writing style and the dark nuances and the thrill of knowing the past made it un-putdownable. The phenomenal characterisation is an icing on the cake. Each character is a neighbor to the other, are so unconnected yet share a similarity. They all are not happy with their past lives, hasty decisions and unfruitful actions, and continually wish to be able to change them, undo them to live a happy life in which they were loved and cared for. There were many characters I felt empathetic for, but when read about their side of the story, I couldn't hide my disgust for them. Each chapter is a point of view, an addition to the cramped air of the Mansion. They are presented in their absolute stark nature and rawness resembling the real life and its complexities and they bring forward the true nature of the society by subtly highlighting some grave social issues that make one stop and think hard, take a deep breath, swallow the harshness and move on.The narrative made me cringe and sometimes smile, at times both, at the silliness of thoughts or the unimaginable actions. The characters posed questions relevant to their times and the present, they acted older than their age, sometimes even younger, did hard-to-believe things, thought silly yet powerful notions and staged their real selves yet remained secretive to the world and to each other.The narrative brought the deep rooted misogyny and the gender biasness to the forefront through the perspective of its characters. It puts forward the entire society in a debatable position wherein the readers are left to judge the sentimentalities of them characters, the narrative giving a mere account of things as and when they happened and continue to happen.
It is laced with numerous trigger warnings and each act a blow after the other. Just when you think nothing worse could happen you're given another hard blow with your eyes turning as big as saucers at the harshness of the words leaving you numb and making you force into believing what you just read, as it happened with me. I couldn't stop my pencil from running freehand, underlining and annotating and writing what I felt for the fear of rereading it and reliving those shocking episodes. The narrative ended and I felt a void inside me, a hollowness. I guess I wanted a happy ending after all the dark-ness and the unsettlement but I didn't get one and that is making me feel empty and...and sad, maybe? In its sheer rawness with the stark characters speaking out their minds and figuring out the others', it again brought me closer to feeling what I felt while 'living' Rohinton Mistry's 'A Fine Balance.'...more
The need to belong, this is the core of the YA fantasy "The Gilded Ones." Deka, the protagonist wants to be recog"Today, you’ll show them you belong.”
The need to belong, this is the core of the YA fantasy "The Gilded Ones." Deka, the protagonist wants to be recognised as a part of her village, as one of them villagers; she wants to belong, desperately and completely. A ritual takes place in the village that promises her her human desire and she clings to that hope. If her blood turns out red she is pure and will belong, if it's not red, she is impure and will be banished or sent away to a brothel. She despises even the thought of coming out as impure but who can control their fate after all. Her blood runs gold, glimmering through her skin, the shiny cursed gold that changes her life forever. The narrative opens up with Deka's desperate need to belong, for her blood to run pure to validate her identity as a human, this is because of her appearance. Imagine being born and raised somewhere and still being treated as a stranger, this is what happens with Deka. The constant need to belong and the voicing out of that need throughout the first few pages of the book can easily drive any reader mad but it has serious underlinings of the presence and the danger from the Other, which resonates Deka's entire being. This Otherness has serious consequences for Deka since it snatches away her identity. She is shunned by the society, humiliated time and again and looked down upon. This Otherness is all but conceptualised on the appearance of Deka.
Her journey starts after she chooses her desire and she meets an entire army of women's and girls like herself, impure and outcasted by the society. She forms a strong bonding with the girl warriors and this marks the growth of Deka as an individual, her discovery of the self. This self-discovery is an ongoing process, a slow and steady one where she finally starts coming out of the shell of patriarchy, and recognises her worth for who she is with the girls around her having bore witness to a great deal of such things themselves.
'The Gilded Ones' is a strong feminist narrative which sucks the reader into its world of the fantastical in that it has the girls' standing together, voicing out their hurtful past and bonding over the same, pulling themselves and the others up to be great warriors with their supernatural powers fighting against the deathshrieks and the patriarchy. The characters bore into the reader, leaving a lasting impact on their minds. It gets brutal and chilling with the gruesome and vivid descriptions of violence, death, war, body dismemberment and what not. It does shy away from exploring the difficult topics of coping with life threatening situations, the impact of restricted movements within the society and the constant disregard of one's identity and the consequent self-hatred.
The characters experienced wholesome development, especially Deka who comes full circle from wishing to die to willing to live. The heavy misogyny that Deka herself divulged in really challenged me to even attempt to reading it further and I'm happy I did because it only got better putting across important notions of sel-worth, self-love, and hope. The romance was short but great for it brought hope of a positive change rather a ray of sunshine in Deka's dark (past) life. There were a few places where a little explanation or detail would have helped, like why what happened happened and a few obstacles would have been great along with the characters not buying into stuff too easily like they did. I'll look out for the brewing romance in the sequel. I do have high expectations from the author after reading this book. All in all, it's a must read for fantasy lovers....more
**spoiler alert** I really really wanted to like this book, even tried hard but couldn't, so much so that, I basically skimmed through after the first**spoiler alert** I really really wanted to like this book, even tried hard but couldn't, so much so that, I basically skimmed through after the first few chapters.
Jerzie Jhames is ambitious and a great singer who aspires to be the lead role in the hottest Broadway new-show, Roman and Jewel', a modern retelling of Shakespeare's 'Romeo and Juliet' except that it's not really that. That being said, she meets Zeppelin Reid during the rehearsals and they fall in love and the story moves on such.
I had been pretty stoked on reading this book when I first received it but the excitement was definitely short-lived and I personally feel that the blurb of the book was somewhat misleading, maybe, maybe not. The backdrop being the Broadway was quite interesting and I imagined a great plot and amazing characters. Jerzie, the protagonist was interesting to read about in the first few chapters but after she met Zeppelin, it all went down the hill. She became deranged from her motive and became a jumbled mess who only looked cute when she got nervous, other than that, she became completely uninteresting to me and the fact that she declared Zeppelin as the love of her life within an hour of meeting him seemed unrealistic to me. It's basically an insufferable and unrealistic Instagram-love triangle with a celeb-vamp, Cinny who would do anything to create misunderstandings between the two. The language is too mushy, cheesy and the characters are flat with no development. I tried hard but could not stomach the blandness of it....more
Those Delicious Letters by Sandeepa Mukherjee Datta is a delectable narrative. Shubha, a middle-aged, middle class Bengali woman is like every other IThose Delicious Letters by Sandeepa Mukherjee Datta is a delectable narrative. Shubha, a middle-aged, middle class Bengali woman is like every other Indian married woman shuffling between cooking, children and home. Her marriage has lost the romance and lustre and hence her husband, Sameer seems to her more distant than ever. Shubha has friends who have ticked off almost everything on their bucket lists of to-do things before forty as she contemplates the decisions she'd made in her life, recalling how she had had to wait for her daughters to be done with their practice sessions et al.
In the descriptions of her life, past and present, Shubha is very conversational, witty and funny with many brilliant one-liners. I'd somehow related to her when she says how much she hate surprises and how a perfect birthday celebration should be. On the course of her few days, as she moves forward, in complete contrast to her friends, she receives a letter, out of nowhere, from a woman in Bengal who claims to be her grandmother, Didan. The letters are full of lip-smacking Bengali dishes, that even I, not a Bengali, felt like cooking (I told my mom to try one for me tho :)). The narrative then unfolds the life of Didan, the shadowy voice behind those letters, that give a glimpse of the tradition and food of Bengal. Shubha's and Didan's storylines interweave as one wades through the novel, a heartwarming, sweet novel. The one most brilliant yet subtle thing I found in the novel was the dedication to the recipes, one chapter for one recipe for someone who really wants to try Bengali food.
The narrator, Shubha, as I said, is conversational somewhat, because I really felt her talking to me when I caught myself nodding and shaking my head while reading her flowing words that came out so easily and perfectly like beads in a string. I felt happy as I read the book, my first cookery/food book, the satisfied happy and lighthearted as I ended the book with a smile across my face. I recommend it whole-heartedly to anyone who want to feel happy. It really would make one happy. Believe me....more
The first book in the WP trilogy, Privilege sucks you in. Complex, emotive and candid is what describes the book best. A drug lord in a high powered bThe first book in the WP trilogy, Privilege sucks you in. Complex, emotive and candid is what describes the book best. A drug lord in a high powered business environment, privilege of WP and the ultimate socio-political commentary on class privileges sets the narrative apart. Described as 'Oceans 11 with Brown people,' it spikes interest and keeps one's attention held till the end. The protagonist, Rakshan Bagila works for Aditya Shetty's Adhrst and is looking forward to get a promotion and to propose to Sadiya the same day. However, things take an ugly turn for him when he's been fired by Aditya. That's when Rakshan and his friends decide to bring down Aditya and obtaining WP to boost their status in the society. WP is a fictional drug that it available to only the privileged ones, the rich Whites and to minor communities only if they acquire it illegally for them to climb the economic ladder. Rakshan aims for the same and in a desperation for economic gain, he resorts to all the illegal acts and the narrative grows dark with raw obsession thick in the air. Making my way through the narrative, I stepped into the world of racial discrimination, injustice, class, wealth, race, power and privilege. The book assesses closely everything in a fast-paced, twisting and turning environment that had me sitting on the edge of my seat (rather bed) till the end. One might get deceived considering the short length of the book but that's what is stunning, the short length but the wide range of issues it covers made all the more thrilling by the multifaceted and absolutely raw characters. There are many POV changes within a single chapter, an LGBTQ reference which I so loved, the miss-a-line-and-you-are-lost thing, the sweet romance, the portrayal of the individuality of each character and the ownvoices representation, these all make it an enlightening and engrossing read that as, I said, sucks you in, presents to you the real world in its ugly form, makes you relate to the characters and spits you out at the end of it revealing and unrevealing all the same. (Waiting for the next two books :))...more
More Than We Bargained For by Fiona West is a feel good romance novel for me. Starla Moore is a librarian, which is every booklover's dream and she isMore Than We Bargained For by Fiona West is a feel good romance novel for me. Starla Moore is a librarian, which is every booklover's dream and she is very devoted to her sincerely paying job and her two kids. Sawyer Devereaux is a handsome young man, diagonased with Multiple Sclerosis, who is apparently smitten with Starla but cannot find a way to voice out his affection. Turns out they eventually start hanging out with each other, brought together by the mutual love for books.
The blurb was enough to convince me to read the book. Books, romance and more books with more romance. Perfect! The characters are so vivid and beautifully drawn, I could actually see them in my head, walking and chatting and just being. I found Starla so innocent and charming, but at times more laid-back. She has a problem with humiliation, definitely, because she is so cautious of getting herself and the others humiliated that she sometimes seems stupid to me. The most problematic statement of hers was when Sawyer, due to his medical condition, involuntarily did something he had no control over and Starla who was spectacularly handling the situation until she thought 'how humiliating, poor Sawyer.' I mean, are medical conditions humiliating? The moment I read this, I felt so strongly for Sawyer; and for Starla to be punched in the face. And I couldn't get that out of my mind till the end of the book, no matter how I loved Starla's character, I could not bring myself to relate to her in any way, might have even lost respect for her. There's another character, Charlie, Starla's ex-husband, who's a misogynist in every possible way. He tries to get back with her by having her financially and emotionally destitute. He blames her for their son's misbehavior because, apparently, kids go wrong because of their mothers' upbringing (Don't even get me started on that).
As for Sawyer, I adored him. He's every bit a book boyfriend material. Intelligent, brilliant even, smart, handsome, caring, supporting and loving. I related with Sawyer a bit more I could with Starla. The book stands in line and simultaneously in contrast with 'The Kiss Quotient' by Helen Hoang, which is another romance book with mention of disability. I couldn't help but compare both and I found out that 'More than We Bargained For' is more realistic and relatable. The disability wasn't just for the sake of being a trope but it's presence was palpable. The author did a great job in weaving both the tropes together....more
First of all, thank you so much @coloredpagesblogtours for having me on this tour and introducing this absolute gem of a book to me. Secondly, thank yFirst of all, thank you so much @coloredpagesblogtours for having me on this tour and introducing this absolute gem of a book to me. Secondly, thank you @ugly____things for writing this book! I never thought I needed to read this book so much until I did. I just read this and my heart is so full of it that I know I am not coming out of the hangover of Sasha Masha anytime soon♥️♥️ Definitely one of my best and favouritest reads of this year!
Favorite quotes: “I guess I’m holding on to how nice it can be . . . to say who you are.”
“Things aren’t always fair.”“I know. But that’s why it’s important to try to make them that way.”
“You may call me Sasha.” But that didn’t seem good enough, since Sasha could be a boy’s name or a girl’s name. I wanted something striking, something complete. So I said it again, with an addition. “You may call me Sasha Masha.”
'...wishing people could be more like cats. Sniff, settle in, move on.'
I adore this book. Another queer fiction. Another trans narrative. Another journey. Another gem of a book. Another admirable, compelling yet absolutely unique writing style. Just not another book. It isn't just about coming out as a queer but the journey before it, the self-recognition of being a queer, the difficulties of being and feeling not-Real, the trials and errors of fitting into the boxes of heteronormative society and the eventual coming out and living as Real.
"I opened my eyes … there were no templates for the sky. It was an open-ended playground for water creations. That’s why the sky never judges, never of"I opened my eyes … there were no templates for the sky. It was an open-ended playground for water creations. That’s why the sky never judges, never offers personalised service."
The Love Virus by Elina Cay is a verse novel with different storylines; the past and the present woven together into a beautiful and heartfelt fabric of the speaker's life. The protagonist, Katie, is nineteen years old and suffers from MS2 and Multiple Sclerosis who struggles her way into a normal life that is, a life she led before the disease(s). As an independent and strong willed person she finds it excruciatingly difficult to cope up with the daily struggles of life When I started reading the novel, I intended to read it quickly like any other novel, but this being in verse demanded patience and time and after the first few chapters, I eventually relented to the pace of the novel and enjoyed it a little more than I was initially. The novel demands time and asks of the reader, understanding and cooperation as it progresses, to feel what she is feeling, to have an insight into her consciousness. The detailed description of Katie's everyday battle with herself, her paranoia and her body is beautiful and painful in contrast to her imaginary and lively trip to Andratalia where she meets Paul and Rosemary who are poles apart, one a tech savvy and the other a nature enthusiast yet manage to live at ease with each other. This is what Katie learns, to live with the new reality so soon and so abruptly. The core of the narrative is the resilient protagonist and her determination to help herself out of the imaginary rooster that haunts her whenever she's at her worst or when she doubts herself and to cope up with the after effects of the binary nature of things around. Now and then Cay brings in the two worlds together with the precision of a story teller with heart-wrenching poetry at places that just demands to be read endlessly and medical language in flawless verses.
"I opened my eyes...there were no templates for the sky. It was an open-ended playground for water creations. That’s why the sky never judges, never offers personalised service.”...more
"When pain bumps against pain can it create joy? Can it breed love? I hope so."
You Know I'm No Good by Jessie Ann Foley is one book that would make yo"When pain bumps against pain can it create joy? Can it breed love? I hope so."
You Know I'm No Good by Jessie Ann Foley is one book that would make you forget the decency in the world and it really does scramble the brain given the harsh realities of life. The protagonist, Mia Dempsey, is a "troubled teen" at least that's what everybody believes her to be, who abuses drugs, is promiscuous, defiant, an alcoholic and intelligent. These attributes have gained her her 'slut' reputation that consequently has her life become a talk show for others to mock at.
On one such occassion, when her dad and stepmom decide that they couldn't do anything more to have her on the right path, they practically stage her kidnapping by having her transported to a boarding school for troubled girls without her knowledge. There she meets more such 'troubled teen girls' who've been living there for as many as two years, completely cut-off from the civilization, to help them heal, to help them deal with their issues and consequently behaviours. However, what they fail to realize is that these behaviours and issues might have their roots deep into traumatic memories, things and people and situations that made them troubled in the first place. Mia has some reasons too which her parents decided to completely ignore and instead put the blame on her for being a bad child which is very forthcoming because aren't all kids responsible for their behaviours and issues they go on suffering from while growing up in a negligent household? She has strong opinions, an appreciative perspective and a steely willpower. However, she lacks is self-confidence as she wishes of being dead and considers herself as a piece of shit.
It talks about so many real issues at ground level that it becomes difficult to read it continuously. The brain reaches a saturation point where it can't soak in the extremities of human behaviour and you need a good few minutes to ponder over it. It's a hard read. I wish there were some light elements in the book to make it more enduring.
TW - self-harm, drug, alcohol & sexual abuse, suicidal ideation
Thank you netgalley and Quill Tree Books for the E-Arc....more
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