Submit your Article

People gather on an island, off the coast of Ireland, for a wedding. The groom, Will, is a rising television star. He is handsome and charming. The bride, Julia, runs a successful magazine. She is driven and smart. Everything has been planned meticulously, by Aoife and Freddy, under Julia’s strict instructions. 

But as the couple’s friends pour in, secrets and grudges are slowly revealed. People don’t like one another even when they seem really amicable and close. They are cut off from the rest of the world. The cell phone service is spotty. Then someone ends up dead. ‘The Guest List’ by Lucy Foley creates an atmospheric wedding vibe where tensions run high. There’s no mystery from the beginning of the story but you get the idea that something is off despite the perfect, ultra-glamorous setting. 

None of the characters is particularly likable. They all seem to have an ulterior motive. Johnno tricks Will into making him the best man and then forgets his suit at home. The bridesmaid, Olivia, who is Julia’s half-sister, ruins hers on purpose. Hannah, who is married to the bride’s best friend, Charlie, isn’t comfortable with the bond her husband shares with Julia. It doesn’t help that Charlie has started drinking since getting on the island, and alcohol always makes the otherwise calm geography teacher a bit aggressive. Aoife, the wedding planner, offers a 50 percent discount to host the wedding on the island. She wants to promote it in Julia’s magazine, The Download. But is that all she wants? 

There’s a lot going on—it’s sometimes a bit much to grapple with but in a good way. Also, the story is narrated from six POVs which keeps things interesting. I’m a sucker for thrillers and murder mysteries. It’s my guilty pleasure. It’s a great distraction from whatever is bothering me in life. For a few hours, I can stress about someone else’s problems and that, as weird as it sounds, is a wonderful way to create some distance from my own issues.

The Guest List is outlandish. It is ominous. And I loved it for the sense of fearful anticipation I felt in the days I was reading it. It also has a very Agatha Christie vibe to it—a cleverly concocted plot with plenty of juicy secrets for readers to discover as they read. This is the kind of book you’ll find yourself binge-reading, eager to find out how it ends. I now want to read the author’s most recent release ‘The Paris Apartment’—about a journalist who mysteriously disappears while living in an apartment in Paris. I need Foley to tell me another story.  

Four stars

Fiction

The Guest List

Lucy Foley

Published: 2020

Publisher: Harper Collins 

Pages: 378, Paperback

Cho Nam-Joo’s novel ‘Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982’ centers on a woman who goes about her daily life in South Korea. It sounds simple enough. Yet the story—about everyday sexism that women face in their personal and professional lives—is moving and makes you think. It narrows in on how women, in South Korea and the world over, face unnecessary pressures, scorn, sexism and even assault and how they can lead to a loss of self and lack of confidence. The book was published in 19 countries, becoming an instant bestseller in Japan, China, and Taiwan, and has sold more than two million copies. 

Middle-class, 30-something Kim Jiyoung, whose mind starts unraveling suddenly, could easily be any woman we know. She has dealt with the effects of Korea’s misogynistic society from a young age. Her paternal grandmother is disappointed by her birth. She had hoped for a grandson. As a child, Jiyoung had to share a room with her elder sister while her brother got his own. At work, she is overlooked for a promotion. Men make random remarks about her appearance and her father blames her when she is stalked. When she becomes a mother, she has to give up work to look after her child. 

Jiyoung also endures many cases of sexual assault and discrimination in her life. Her school had many male teachers who sexually assaulted young girls. One of her male high school teachers touched female students in class using a pointer stick: “He carried around a pointer that had a hand pointing just the index finger on the tip, which he used to poke girls in the breast under the guise of drawing attention to missing nametags, or to lift girls’ skirts to “check their school uniform.” 

At work, there’s a hidden spy camera in the ladies’ room and men pass around naked photos of their female colleagues. When found out, the company’s director tries to brush the incident under the carpet saying, “The accused male employees have families and parents to protect. Do you really want to destroy people’s lives like this? Do you want people to find out that your pictures are out there?” 

Sexism dictates the lives of most women and through Jiyoung we are made to realize just how it can potentially ruin us, sometimes even without us noticing until it’s too late. Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982 is a slim book but it will take you time to finish it because the content is quite heavy. Cho Nam-Joo’s fiction is backed by hard facts in the form of statistics and reports that are cited as footnotes. You might find yourself googling these articles to learn more. I certainly did—actually, going through the references online took more time than reading the book. All in all, the book is an important read that calls for some much-needed introspection.

Three and half stars

Fiction

Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982

Cho Nam-Joo

Published: 2020

Publisher: Liveright

Pages: 176, Paperback 

If you are in the mood for a creepy story that makes the hairs at the back of your neck stand, I suggest you read ‘The Sun Down Motel’ by Simone St. James. It’s a bit slow and there aren’t many jump scares but it feels like watching a good suspense thriller movie. The vibe is kind of like that of ‘The Shining’ by Stephen King, perhaps the ultimate horror book/movie set in a hotel. The Sun Down Motel is a family drama, ghost story, and murder mystery all rolled in one. The initial few chapters feel a bit bleak and that might make you want to stop reading. But once the story picks up pace—after a 100 or so pages—you can’t put it down. 

Told in two different timelines, The Sun Down Motel takes you to a small town in upstate New York. The setting is very eerie. In 2017, a young woman, Carly Kirk, arrives in Fell. She wants to find out what happened to her aunt, Viv Delaney, who disappeared from The Sun Down Motel in the 1980s. Carly’s mother never talked about her sister but Carly could sense that she was haunted by Viv’s disappearance till the day she died. 

For that reason, Carly has never been able to let go of the past and is determined to figure out just what happened to her aunt. She takes up the same job—as a night clerk—that Viv had when she disappeared and starts poking around. She finds out that nothing much has changed in Fell and at the motel since 1982 and is quickly ensnared in the same mysteries that apparently claimed her aunt. 

I don’t usually read books with ghosts and otherworldly stuff but I quite enjoyed this one. Maybe that’s because the supernatural element is just one aspect of the story. The plot moves forward even without it; the story’s mystery isn’t explained by the supernatural events. The ghosts give you goosebumps but the story is grounded in reality. Trigger warning: There are mentions of rape and some of it is horrifyingly graphic. The reason it’s a three-star read and not a four-star one is because the story wraps up a little too tidily for my liking. Otherwise, it’s a great book with just the right amount of twists and turns to keep you hooked.

Three stars

Fiction

The Sun Down Motel

Simone St. James 

Published: 2020

Publisher: Berkley

Pages: 342, Paperback

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/45885644-the-sun-down-motel

I’d heard and read a lot about Brit Bennett’s debut novel ‘The Mothers’, a story about the consequences of an unplanned teenage pregnancy. Unfortunately, our local bookstores could never get the book. So I settled for her second novel published four years after The Mothers, ‘The Vanishing Half’, when I found it at Pilgrims Book House in Jhamsikhel. 

Now, The Mothers was a smashing success. Often when there’s that pressure to come out with another equally good work, writers don’t deliver. But if The Mothers is even as half as good as The Vanishing Half, it’s going to be a phenomenal read: Bennett’s second novel is filled with intrigue, drama, and a rich, detailed setting that puts you, the reader, smack in the middle of all that is happening. 

It’s a story about twin sisters Desiree and Stella Vignes who are born and live in Mallard, a fictional town in Louisiana, where the residents are mostly light-skinned blacks. Nobody marries dark in this town and over time the population becomes lighter and lighter, like ‘a cup of coffee steadily diluted with cream’. But being lighter than the average blacks doesn’t protect them in an era when prejudices and racism run deep. 

The twin’s father is killed by a gang of white men and their mother works as a cleaner at a rich white lady’s house. Desiree and Stella know that if they continue to stay in Mallard, they won’t ever be safe or free despite their light skin tone and wavy locks. So they run away to New Orleans but after a year Stella leaves Desiree and the two end up leading entirely different lives: Stella passes off for white and Desiree marries the darkest man she can find. 

A decade later, the twin’s teenage children, dark-skinned Jude and blonde Kennedy, meet at a cocktail party. Initially they don’t know they are cousins but they soon find out that their mothers are sisters and how their lives have been shaped by the lies they had nothing to do with, their fates sealed by their mother’s decisions. Largely a story about racism and identity, The Vanishing Half also explores the fragility of relationships and the constant effort you need to put in to build the life you always dreamt of. 

Bennett seems to have a natural flair for writing and the story doesn’t drag on despite feeling a tad melodramatic at times. The Vanishing Half is a book of tremendous wisdom, forcing you to confront your hidden biases and misgivings about race, class, gender, and other societal constructs.

Three and half stars

Fiction

The Vanishing Half

Brit Bennett 

Published: 2020

Publisher: Dialogue Books

Pages: 366, Paperback

Emily Henry writes good books with bad, misleading titles. The frolicky looking covers don’t do justice to the stories either. With better, more-fitting titles, her books, I believe, would have been more widely read. Right now, it feels like chick lit and that definitely puts off many people. I didn’t read her books for the longest time as I felt I had outgrown those kinds of stories. 

But as everybody—people I knew and random strangers on the Internet—was raving about her books, I picked up ‘You and Me on Vacation’. I’d stop reading the moment I felt my stomach roil (love stories tend to have that effect on me). It didn’t and I loved the book. 

So naturally I wanted to read ‘Beach Read’ which was even more hyped than ‘People We Meet on Vacation’ (the US title of You and Me on Vacation). Centered on two writers who strike a deal to write each other’s books, Beach Read has a great premise that delivers till the very end. January is a romance writer who no longer believes in love. Augustus Everett (or ‘Gus’ to January) is a literary writer who is stuck in a rut. They were also nemesis in college with each apparently dissing the other’s work. 

Somehow, they end up living in neighboring beach houses. Each is trying to write a novel but is stopped by a massive writer’s block. In a bid to get out of the creative slump, they agree to swap genres. Romance ensues as they get to know each other better. 

But the story isn’t limited to that. There’s a lot of heavy content, with issues of abuse, neglect, infidelity and grief bringing in plenty of darkness to what appears to be a lighthearted story. Also, Gus is researching suicide cults and his ‘interviews’ with people who were a part of it are difficult to read at times, as are his traumatic childhood memories. 

January learns about her father’s mistress on the day of his funeral and can’t come to terms with it, especially as her father isn’t around to explain himself. The hardest thing isn’t missing someone, it’s being angry with someone and not being able to fight it out, she says. The book is peppered with many contemplative moments like this. The end does feel a bit stretched out but the characters are so empathetically crafted that you are willing to overlook this one fault.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/52867387-beach-read

Four stars

Fiction

Beach Read

Emily Henry

Published: 2020

Publisher: Penguin Books

Pages: 361, Paperback

British author Clare Mackintosh is a former police officer who seems to know what she is writing about in her novel ‘I See You’, a crime thriller set in the elaborate labyrinth that is the London underground. Many scenes jump off the page and feel very real. It’s almost like watching a crime drama series. But, for me, the ending was a letdown despite the numerous twists and turns. It felt a little clumsy. As if the author couldn’t decide what to do, which direction to take. It makes for a rushed and a little unbelievable ending. If you are someone who’s read or watched a lot of crime stories, you can sense where things are headed.

Zoe Walker is 40 and divorced with a son (22) and a daughter (19). Her boyfriend, Simon, lives with them but her children don’t like him much. It doesn’t help that Zoe’s ex-husband, Matt, is also in the picture and still loves Zoe. Simon is jealous of Matt and her children blame her for leaving their father. Then, one day, she sees her photo in a newspaper advertisement for a dating service. The problem is she hasn’t signed up for one. As Zoe starts looking into it, she finds that women who have appeared on the advert have been victims of abuse and crime. 

Enter Kelly Swift, a police officer who patrols the subway, keeping an eye out mostly for pickpockets. She was demoted to the position after she attacked a prisoner who provoked her. The man had raped her twin sister in college. Kelly learns that there’s a mysterious website that lists the subway routes of women along with their personal details. There are different subscription plans to access this information. When her team finds out that at least two women on the website have been raped and murdered, they start looking for the website owner. 

The novel’s first sentence holds a lot of promise: ‘The man behind me is standing close enough to moisten the skin on my neck with his breath’. I bought the book because I felt the tension would escalate. But the danger lurks more in Zoe’s mind rather than actually out there. For the most part, it feels like Zoe is just scared and making things up, even when she’s not. And because there are only a handful of characters, it’s not that difficult to guess who might be behind it all. 

Mackintosh, having served in the police force for 12 years, definitely understands the complexities of the job and it is this richly portrayed side of the story that is more interesting than the actual plot. I’d still recommend the book, purely for the vibes of the chaotic London subway system and numerous mentions of tea. 

Three stars

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/26233572-i-see-you

Thriller

I See You

Clare Mackintosh

Published: 2016

Publisher: Berkley

Pages: 388, Paperback

Often, whatever it is that you claim to value—family, friends, pets, books and other little things that spark joy—are relegated to the end of your priority list as your workload increases. Caught up in the rat race your days merge into one another and you run the risk of letting life pass you by. Klune focuses on this theme and tells interesting stories, making you think about all that you take for granted. I loved ‘The House in the Cerulean Sea’ and I picked up ‘Under the Whispering Door’ because I just knew this one would also be amazing. Klune’s writing is extremely nuanced and witty as well.  

Under the Whispering Door is a whimsical fantasy novel about a man named Wallace Price who dies and becomes a ghost. But Wallace wasn’t done living. He had too much work left to do. As Wallace struggles to cross over to the afterlife—floating around in the teashop run by an empathetic ferryman called Hugo—he finally learns how to live. Cold, calculating, and cantankerous, Wallace wasn’t a very likable man when he was alive. He never realized the extent of damage he did to people around him. But death humanizes him, makes him realize there is no difference between him and the next person and that life doesn’t necessarily have to be about beating other people to get to the top. Kindness, Wallace learns albeit a bit late (or is it ever too late?), can (and does) go a long way. And if not in life, then in afterlife, he is determined to make it his guiding principle. 

Klune has written a beautiful story of redemption after death that brims with witty one liners and scenes you want to go over again and again. There are many fun characters who never let the story get boring, even when there’s not much happening. Mei is a passionate and smart reaper who makes you double with laughter with her sarcasm and knife-wielding threats. Hugo’s grandfather, Nelson, is another ghost like Wallace who has been hanging around the tea shop for years. He teaches Wallace ‘how to be a ghost’ and scares visitors he doesn’t like at the teashop. Then, there’s the Manager who everyone fears and wants to avoid. His imminent arrival creates a tension that keeps you at the edge of your seat. 

I must mention the cute love story between Wallace and Hugo (no, it’s not a spoiler). It’s very organic and doesn’t feel forced like many narratives where romance isn’t the primary focus. Klune, who is gay, makes sure there is good queer representation in his stories. Reading his books, I believe, can help create a positive image of the LBGTIQA+ community. Though Under the Whispering Door is a fantasy novel, it’s highly relatable and helps you better understand yourself and those around you. Definitely a must read.

Four stars

https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/53205888-under-the-whispering-door 

Fantasy fiction

Under the Whispering Door

TJ Klune

Published: 2021

Publisher: Tor 

Pages: 376, Paperback

‘The Boy in the Stripped Pajamas’ by John Boyne is a sad, fictional story about the holocaust. But it doesn’t have that gut-wrenching effect as many other fictions and memoirs about the atrocious historical event. Rather, I felt the story downplayed the horrors at times. As far as fiction goes, I wouldn’t say it’s the best representation of the crimes of the Second World War. 

It could, however, be a good place to get children started on history. There’s a Netflix adaptation of the novel and it’s much better and nuanced than the book. While I’d recommend children and young adults to read the book and skip the movie, adults could do the opposite. 

The story is narrated by Bruno, a nine-year-old, whose father is one of the commanders of Hitler’s army. When his family moves to a dilapidated house near a Nazi concentration camp from a five-storey mansion in Berlin, Bruno struggles to understand why he has had to leave his comfy home and friends behind. He is angry and annoyed. He also doesn’t get why there aren’t other children around to play with. 

Then he befriends a boy named Shmuel who lives on the other side of a barbed wire fence and who only seems to wear striped pajamas. Shmuel’s head is shaved, he is thin, and he is always hungry. Bruno visits him often and starts smuggling food and the two become friends. 

Unlike other boys their age, they just sit on either side of the fence and talk. Then right before Bruno is to return to Berlin with his mother and sister, he does something unthinkable that shatters his family.

Besides Bruno and Shmuel, there are other characters that give you glimpses of the different aspects of the holocaust. Even Hitler makes an appearance. Boyle’s writing is sparse but conveys a lot. You can imagine the scenes quite clearly. But because the story is narrated by a child, it lacks nuance. However, the innocent voice tugs at your heartstrings and makes you laugh at times. Bruno calls his sister ‘hopeless case’ (whenever she does something he can’t understand and you find yourself rolling your eyes and laughing at the same time) and the things he notices could only occur to a child. 

He seems to be  a boy you know—inquisitive, stubborn and cute. Stories about the holocaust are always difficult to read. The Boy in the Striped Pajamas is no different. But it’s predictable and you sense where it’s going, though the ending will still shock you.

Two and half stars   

Fiction

The Boy in the Striped Pajamas

John Boyne

Published: 2006

Publisher: Vintage

Pages: 223, Paperback

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/39999.The_Boy_in_the_Striped_Pajamas