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I love children’s or young adult (YA) books for how they make you feel. They are hopeful. They are inspiring. They make you feel heard. They help you calm your chaotic mind by making you focus on a story. And, best of all, you can finish it in a day or less and feel really, really accomplished.

So, often, I browse through the children’s section at bookstores to discover new books and authors. I also stalk friends and relatives who have children, on Instagram and Facebook, to find out what books their little ones are reading. ‘Gangsta Granny’ by David Walliams, ‘A Wrinkle in Time’ by Madeleine L’Engle and ‘The Poet X’ by Elizabeth Acevedo are some children/YA books I read recently. I loved all three. But the one I want to reread and recommend is The Poet X.

The book is about a 15-year-old girl named Xiomara and how disconnected she feels from her family. Her mother is a devout Catholic and wants Xiomara to follow suit. But Xiomara is a tough young girl with a mind of her own. She isn’t going to do anything unless she wants to. She also has a tendency to get into fights. With a lot of emotions bottled up, she tries to work her way through her issues by writing poems—that she keeps hidden in a notebook under her bed. Ultimately, a slam poetry club forces her into sharing her poems and thus revealing her secrets.

Acevedo has written The Poet X in the form of a collection of poems and each poem is a little self-contained story in itself. I’ve marked the bits I’ve loved and rereading them has been a joy. The poems, in their entirety, give you an insight into the mind of a young girl who is trying to find her voice and is unable to conform, even when the stakes are high.

Xiomara is a fascinating character and it often feels like she has somehow managed to get inside your head and is saying the things you have always wanted to say. The other characters—her twin brother who Xiomara refers to as ‘Twin’, her best friend, Caridad, and her English teacher, Ms Galiono—are also fun people to get to know. These characters show you a different side of life, a different way of being. You wish you had someone like them in your life too, to balance out your quirks a bit.

Overall, The Poet X has a lovely message to convey about the importance of staying true to yourself and pursuing your passion against all odds. It’s also about love, change and adapting to that change. Acevedo, through Xiomara, shows you there’s beauty in holding on to your dreams even when there are hundreds of things pulling you in different directions.  

Fiction

The Poet X

Elizabeth Acevedo

Published: 2018

Publisher: Electric Monkey

Language: English

Pages: 361, Paperback

I read Aravind Adiga’s Man Booker Prize-winner “The White Tiger” almost a decade ago. Though I don’t much recollect exactly what happens in the story, I remember the feeling it left me with: I was enchanted. Balaram Halwai, the narrator of Adiga’s debut novel, was the kind of anti-hero I always fell for.

I recently watched the film adaptation on Netflix and was reminded of what a wonderful storyteller Adiga is. I hadn’t read any of his other works like “Last Man in Tower” and “Between the Assassinations” which is why I decided to read his most recent book, “Amnesty”. Priyanka Chopra, actor and producer of the movie, The White Tiger, recommended it during Marie Claire’s Shelf Portrait where celebrities talk about books they love.

This much I will say: Adiga is a fine writer. He knows his craft and his stories, I feel, will always incite interesting conversations. Amnesty made me think about my immigrant friends and relatives and how tough things must have been for them when they first moved to various cities abroad. You have to give credit to Adiga for making you reflect on things that you necessarily wouldn’t think about and label other peoples’ problems.

Amnesty is the story of a Sri Lanka immigrant Dhananjaya Rajaratnam, known as Danny, who has overstayed his student visa in Sydney, Australia. As an illegal, he works as a cleaner at rich people’s homes and lives in a grocery storeroom. In four years, he has learnt to hide, to blend in when necessary, and tried to live a ‘normal’ life. Then, Danny finds out that one of his clients, Radha Thomas, has been killed. He is sure the murderer is another client of his who was having an affair with the victim. And thus begins Danny’s moral dilemma: Should he go to the police with the evidence he has and risk being deported? Or should he let it go and carry on with his life?

Amnesty is a story of how cultures and societies, across the world, make immigrants feel like they don’t belong and seeking validation thus becomes a large part of their lives. That ‘important message’ aspect of Amnesty is quite commendable. Adiga manages to convey immigrants’ pain, worries, and issues with crystal clarity. But that’s one part of fiction writing. It’s how well you manage the other feat—narrating the story in a way that reconfigures a reader’s brain wirings—that determines whether a book is good.

The problem with Amnesty isn’t the lack of a plot but that much of it happens inside the protagonist’s head. It’s his thoughts and feelings. It’s his side of the story. It’s only how he interprets the world around him and what’s happening that we get to see. Though the story takes place in the span of a day, you feel like you have been with Danny for years, which, in this case, isn’t really a good thing because Danny is a mundane character.

You are always confused and your thought processes are severely restricted because someone else’s thoughts are being fed to you. You feel like you are being spun around in circles and the effect really is dizzying.

I still wouldn’t say Amnesty is a bad book. I can see why it could appeal to some people, especially to those who have experienced life as an immigrant. But it wasn’t for me and neither is it for those for whom a good narrative structure is as important as the story.

Fiction

Amnesty

Aravind Adiga

Published: 2020

Publisher: Picador India

Language: English

Pages: 256, Hardcover

Celeste Ng’s debut novel ‘Everything I Never Told You’ took her six years to write. She worked on four complete drafts. No wonder it’s as good as it is. Every sentence feels deliberate—conveying so much while saying so little, and the writing is gorgeous. It’s a book you will talk and be nostalgic about long after you have read it. It’s that book you will be shoving under people’s noses saying, “You’re missing out.”

Amazon’s #1 Best Book of 2014, Everything I Never Told You is a story about a Chinese American family living in Ohio in the 1970s, a time when being an immigrant in America came with a whole lot more issues than it does today.

Lydia Lee, a model daughter and ace student, goes missing. Her body is found at the bottom of a lake. The last person to have seen her alive is the local ‘bad boy’, Jack Wolff. Lydia’s elder brother, Nathan, is convinced Jack had something to do with her death. The rest of the family struggles to understand how this could have happened to their sweet and responsible Lydia—the last person you’d expect to get into trouble.

During the police investigation, the family is shocked to find that Lydia wasn’t who she appeared to be. Questions like ‘How was she doing at school?’, ‘Who were her friends?’, ‘Was she depressed?’, ‘Did she ever talk about wanting to hurt herself?’ lead to revelations that complicate the case. The people Lydia claimed to be friends with, she actually hadn’t spoken to for months. She never talked about troubles in school but, in fact, she was almost failing some courses. The family thought she kept journals. Her mother, Marilyn, gave her a new one every year. But she never wrote in any of them. 

It all begs the questions, ‘Who was Lydia?’ and ‘What was she hiding?’. Clearly, the girl her family knew never existed. So, what does that have to do with what happened to her?

As the family grapples with each shocking find, you see how death affects different people, how each person’s way of handling it is unique, and how it tears a family apart and then brings it together. It’s a crime drama where the drama isn’t related to the actual crime but its repercussions on the victim’s family. The book, I feel, brings together the best parts of a thriller and a family drama. These two elements together work brilliantly to keep the story taut and believable at the same time.

Everything I Never Told You feels like a labor of love. Reading it leads to a lot of introspection and a renewed sense of how we must value our loved ones for who they are and not who we want them to be. Ng (pronounced ‘-ing’) has given us a beautiful story of love, loss, and a sense of belonging that will resonate across generations.

Fiction

Everything I Never Told You

Celeste Ng                                                                 

Published: 2014

Publisher: Abacus

Language: English

Pages: 297, Paperback

“The House on Mango Street”, a 1984 novel by Sandra Cisneros, is a short book. It’s written in short bursts, with small chapters, some of which are barely a page long. That is probably what draws me to the book time and again. I know I can finish it in a day and move on. But every time I pick it up, I’m also hoping to get something more out of this little book that’s sold millions of copies, made its way into different prescribed syllabi, and is considered a modern classic. And it doesn’t disappoint. Each reading leaves me feeling a little different from how I did before. 

Partly based on Cisneros’s own experience, The House on Mango Street is the story of Esperanza Cordero, a 12-year-old Chicana girl growing up in the Hispanic quarter of Chicago. The story explores what it’s like belonging to a low economic class family and living in a patriarchal community besides also dealing with elements of class, race, identity, gender, and sexuality.

At the start of the book, you find out Esperanza and her family have arrived on Mango Street. Before coming to Mango Street, they had moved a lot—from one run-down building to another—always promising themselves that they would own the next place and that it would be their ‘dream house’. The house on Mango Street is finally theirs but it’s far from the home they had always dreamt of.

Though the place is a lot better than any of the previous homes they have lived in, Esperanza isn’t happy. She pines for a ‘real’ house with a big garden and everything else she has seen in ‘ideal’ houses on TV. The rest of the story is basically Esperanza’s growing-up years in the house as she writes poetry to express her suppressed feelings, makes friends who aren’t really friends, and tries to craft a better life for herself.

I can understand the universal appeal of this book and why it’s prescribed reading in many countries. A story of a girl transforming through the challenges she faces as she steps into her teenage is motivating. With Esperanza, Cisneros has also delved into the immigrant experience and difficulties that children and young adults face as they struggle to fit in when they find themselves in unfamiliar surroundings. The only problem I have and what’s perhaps a bit jarring for me is the book’s narrative structure. It can get a bit confusing at times and you find yourself rereading certain parts because they have gone over your head. 

But despite its length, A House on Mango Street feels like a full-fledged novel and that’s the beauty of it. You will feel like you have known the titular character for a really long time because, a) there is just so much happening in the story, and b) with her intriguing thoughts and feelings, Esperanza takes up a lot of space in your head and heart. You can also relate a lot with her because some struggles—feeling like you don’t belong, trying to change yourself and your situation—are universal.

Fiction

The House on Mango Street

Sandra Cisneros

Published: 1991

Publisher: Vintage

Language: English

Pages: 110, Paperback

I have never been a fan of the horror genre—in both books and movies. I know friends and YouTubers who love reading/watching horror. They have always made it sound so fascinating. There is a booktuber (@paperbackdreams) whose fondness for horror is particularly palpable. She gets visibly excited and happy while taking about the horror books she has enjoyed. I love watching her videos and hearing her talk about all these scary stories. But somehow being scared, with goosebumps up my arms, wasn’t a state of being I was comfortable with.

That changed when I started watching movies based on Stephen King’s novels on Netflix during the lockdown. The movies were creepy and made me cover my eyes and ears at least a dozen times during our weekly movie night—but I was hooked. Now, I seek horror recommendations and I’m determined to discover writers other than King who will make my skin crawl. Turns out, that ‘goosebumps up your spine’ is a pretty fun feeling.

I’ve also kind of made it my mission to devour King’s books; the endings of many of his movies, I hear, are quite different from how the books conclude. Not satisfied with how some movies have ended, I figured I’d read ‘The Shining’ and ‘Pet Sematary’ to get some closure. But, unfortunately, I couldn’t find the books at any of the bookstores in Kathmandu and the only one I could lay my hands on was ‘Elevation’. 

Elevation is a tale of Scott Carey and how he ends up uniting his town folks, while dealing with a baffling personal issue and his own prejudices as well as those of his community. It’s a story of an ordinary man, in extraordinary circumstances, who chooses to rise above hatred and value the people in his life.

Scott is suffering from a mysterious ailment. He is losing weight but doesn’t look any different. Every day he is getting lighter and lighter while taking up the same amount of space he always did. He doesn’t know what will happen if he steadily keeps losing weight. Scott also has another problem. He is engaged in a low-key battle with one of his neighbors, who happen to be a lesbian couple—Deidre McComb and Missy Donaldson. He is sure Deidre’s dog is doing its business on his lawn. She refuses to believe it and so he is fixated in proving her wrong.

Generally, King’s books can be used as doorstoppers. Not that we should use books for that but you get the drift. Elevation, on the other hand, is a novella. And it’s not horror. As disappointing as that was when I read the blurb, the book is now one of my favorites. It’s unlike King’s regular style but he is a skillful storyteller and, turns out, he doesn’t need the help of horror to grip your heart.

Elevation is a charming tale of the way our biases run deep, why it’s important to get over our narrow-mindedness, and how we can find friendship and love in the unlikeliest of places.

Fiction

Elevation

Stephen King

Published: 2019

Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton

Language: English

Pages: 132, Paperback

In the past few years, we have definitely made some progress on LGBT issues, with many countries legalizing same-sex marriage and guaranteeing them equal rights. But it’s one thing to have laws and mandates in paper and quite another to have them followed. In conservative societies, people’s attitude to gays and lesbians isn’t going to change just because homosexuality isn’t a punishable offense anymore.

This is where stories can help. Fiction, I believe, makes us empathetic. It exposes us to a horde of characters and experiences that we otherwise wouldn’t have come across. A good story can put things in perspective and instigate change. ‘A Very, Very Bad Thing’ by Jeffery Self is, in that regard, an important book. The YA novel is short, has a simple premise and forces us to confront our hidden biases.

Marley, the 17-year-old protagonist, introduces himself as a “snarky gay kid from Winston-Salem, North Carolina, watching life through the disconnected Instagram filter of my generation and judging every minute of it.” With supportive parents and an equally snarky and cynical best friend, Audrey, he seems to be getting on just fine. Then Marley meets Christopher and it’s love at first sight—for both of them. 

But Christopher’s father is the famed televangelist Reverend Jim Anderson who is actually tied to a movement called “pray-the-gay-away”. He and his wife have tried everything to “fix” Christopher and they aren’t ever going to give up. There is no question of accepting Christopher for who he is.

The story is basically about these two gay boys trying to be themselves and enjoy life a little in a hostile environment. It's also an apt depiction of how societal constraints can sometimes lead to mistakes and mishaps that can never be set right.

Ever since I read A Very, Very Bad Thing, I’ve been wanting to recommend it to everyone I meet—avid readers, occasional readers, and even those who have to be coaxed or challenged into reading. Stories like these are imperative to make us understand that every person has a preference that isn’t necessarily governed by how they were born, and that every person should be allowed to live the life they want.

When I was at the bookstore, I randomly picked up A Very, Very Bad Thing and read the blurb out loud. A staff who had come to chat with me made a disgusted face and told me I’d be better off not reading “things like that”. It wouldn’t be a stretch to say that her reaction is still how majority of public feel about LGBT in Nepal. Many will behave like they understand and accept homosexuality but it’s just a façade. It’s important to change people’s mindset for real so that the world becomes a safer, more loving space for our children. A Very, Very Bad Thing and stories like that are crucial in bringing about the radical transformation we desperately need.   

Fiction

A Very, Very Bad Thing

Jeffery Self

Published: 2017

Publisher: Push, an imprint of Scholastic Inc. Publishers

Language: English

Pages: 225, Hardcover

Let me get this out of the way: I’m not a Paulo Coelho fan. ‘The Alchemist’, which seems to find its place in almost everyone’s list of favorites, isn’t a book I’m crazy about. But there are some Coelho books, like ‘Veronica Decides to Die’ and ‘Eleven Minutes’, that I must admit I enjoyed. Still, Coelho, whose books have sold 300 million copies in print, isn’t an author I recommend or get excited about.

I bought ‘The Archer’ entirely because it’s a slim book. I’m trying to read a book a day this January just to give myself a pat on the back at the end of the month and feel like my life is headed somewhere as I continue to work from home. Also, flipping through the book at Ekta Bookstore in Thapathali, Kathmandu, I realized I could enjoy the illustrations even if I didn’t particularly like the book (and I didn’t think I would) and could justify spending money on it.

The Archer begins with the arrival of a stranger who says that the local carpenter, Tetsuya, is the best archer in the country. He challenges Tetsuya to a contest. Though Tetsuya hasn’t picked up his bow and arrow for years, he agrees and then goes on to perform better than the stranger. A young boy is witness to all this and wants to learn the ‘way of the bow’. Tetsuya relents on the condition that the boy never reveals his true identity. The rest of the book is basically a series of motivational dictums where archery is used as a metaphor for life lived well.

It took me about 45 minutes to read The Archer and more than half of that time was probably spent gazing at the illustrations. Unsurprisingly, I didn’t like it that much but there are bits and pieces that aren’t bad. The ‘life’ advice was a little too much in-your-face and it did sound repetitive at times. But, I feel, we must embrace whatever ideas we can get on how to live a balanced and harmonious life. Yes, such advice comes our way all too often, from ‘well-meaning’ people, but if it gets you to try and improve your life even a little bit, it’s perhaps worth enduring these not-so-gentle reminders.

However, I would not encourage people to read the absolutely mundane stuff that Coelho seems to come up with. I have met people who believe if Coelho gets non-readers reading, then there’s really no harm in that. I disagree because I think we are dumbing down our senses by consuming words that don’t do anything other than make the author rich.

So, if you must, read The Archer once. Borrow the book. Find a free e-book or the audio version. See what kind of mindset it leaves you in. But please, please don’t let Coelho ever dictate how you think or set the tone of your reading life.

Fiction

The Archer

Paulo Coelho

Illustrations by Christoph Niemann

Translated into English by Margaret Jull Costa

Published: 2003

Publisher: Viking  

Pages: 130, Hardcover

Winner of the Goodreads Choice Awards Non-Fiction 2014, ‘The Opposite of Loneliness’ by Marina Keegan is a collection of essays and stories that captures the universal hopes and struggles as one prepares to face the ‘real’ world after graduation. On her graduation day Marina had said, “I will live for love and the rest will take care of itself.” Her love for and fascination with life is evident in each one of the 18 essays and stories in this collection.

Marina died five days after graduating magna cum laude from Yale in May 2012. Her boyfriend, who was neither intoxicated nor speeding, fell asleep at the wheel. The car hit a guardrail and rolled over twice, killing Marina but leaving the driver unhurt. Her parents, Tracy and Kevin Keegan, wanted the state to drop the charges of vehicular homicide against her boyfriend because ‘it would break Marina’s heart’. When he went to court, they stood by his side and the case was dismissed.

Marina’s dream—after hearing novelist Mark Helprin say, during a master’s tea at Yale, that it was virtually impossible to make a living as a writer today—was to become a writer and ‘stop the death of literature’. Published posthumously with the joint effort of her professors, friends, and parents, The Opposite of Loneliness is all that the world will ever get to hear from Marina. It’s unfortunate because Marina, it seems, was a gifted writer. Her essays and stories draw you in and you find yourself tuning the rest of the world out.  

What made the book compelling, for me, was definitely her writing that’s laced with humor. She doesn’t hesitate to make fun of herself and she does so with an enviable ease. In a way that helps you try and accept your own idiosyncrasies a little more. Her writing is also emotional and contemplative, thus forcing you to look at things from different perspectives. An important underlying message of much of her work is that it’s never too late to live a life with joy and meaning. We could all use a little reminder every now and then, couldn’t we?

The Opposite of Loneliness might not be writing at its finest but Marina’s voice is fresh and unpretentious. She wasn’t trying to sound a certain way or writing to impress. Reading her makes you feel she loved to write and so she did with reckless abandon. That makes it even harder to read her but you know, deep down, that hers is a book you will be recommending and revisiting as often as you can.

Essays & Stories

The Opposite of Loneliness

Marina Keegan

Published: 2014

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Language: English

Pages: 208, Paperback