‘Writers & Lovers’ book review: Finding your footing
Set in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1997, Writers & Lovers, Lily King’s fifth novel, is narrated by 31-year-old Casey Peabody. She is struggling to finish the draft of her first novel while dealing with college loan debts and the grief for her mother’s recent, unexpected passing while on a trip to Chile with her friends. She works at a restaurant, lives in a tiny potting shed and is lonely. As far as protagonists go, she isn’t charming. There’s a lot that makes her anxious and thus she is often a complete mess. But you can connect with her and even want to reach deep into the pages of the book and hug her, despite her infuriating, selfish, entitled behavior.
Casey has been unlucky in love. And you can see how that has shaped her and made her subconsciously adjust or lower her expectations. Her father, a teacher, turned out to be a peeping tom and was fired for spying on girls’ locker rooms. The boyfriends she has had over the years have been on and off affairs, with one even calling their relationship ‘the work of the devil’. She later finds that he was married. “Nearly every guy I’ve dated believed they should already be famous,” says Casey. They believed that greatness was their destiny and they were already behind schedule.” There is one ‘writer’ she likes but she backtracks when she finds out he has only written 11 and half pages in three years. “That kind of thing is contagious,” she says.
Also read: ‘You’ book review: The stuff of nightmares
Though Writers & Lovers has a bleak and rather insipid start, it’s essentially a story about hope and how you can build the life you want if you persevere through the rough, rocky patches. Though there is nothing unique about the story, it has deep and powerful messages about the choices and sacrifices you have to make in order to turn your dreams into reality. However, the first 80 pages or so will leave you feeling a bit uninvested. They seem a little pointless. But keep at it and by the time Casey is shuttling between two polar opposite romantic interests—Oscar, an acclaimed novelist and father of two young boys, and charming Silas who is closer to Casey’s age and a struggling writer—King’s simple prose and rich emotions have made their mark and you will be hooked.
Writers & Lovers
3 stars
Fiction
Lily King
Published: 2020
Publisher: Picador
Pages: 323, Paperback
‘You’ book review: The stuff of nightmares
‘You’ by Caroline Kepnes is a psychological thriller that will have you looking at people around you a little differently and doubting their intentions and ways. It makes you hyper aware of how people aren’t what they seem to be and that trusting them at face value might not always be a good idea. Basically, it puts you ill at ease. Why read such a book then?
That’s what my husband kept asking me when I was shuddering, shaking my head, and saying ‘this makes my head spin’ over and over again while reading the book. But to say You is gripping and addictive is an understatement. It gets under your skin and you find yourself in the midst of the action. And you want to know what happens next, so much so that you find yourself reading it at every possible chance—while brushing your teeth and making tea, stuck in traffic, and before bed after a long day.
The protagonists, Joe Goldberg and Guinevere Beck, are both dark and twisted characters. Outwardly, they seem perfect—kind, gentle, not flawless but working on their issues—but both have hidden traits and secrets that can destroy them and those around them. In an interview, Kepnes said shiny, happy people give her the creeps and you can see why: She imagines them to be as sinister as Joe and Beck.
Also read: Before the Coffee Gets Cold book review: Feels like a warm hug
From the first time Joe meets Beck at the local bookstore he manages for Mr. Mooney, he becomes obsessed with her. Starting with googling her name and meticulously combing through her Facebook and Twitter accounts, he digs up a lot of information. Then he begins to stalk her, getting inside her home when she’s not there, following her around town, and reading her emails (he pockets her phone when she gets into an accident of sorts and he ‘rescues’ her). Not only is he in love with Beck but he is sure that she feels the same way and is only distancing herself to avoid hurting her feelings.
You get this eerie sense that much of what he feels and thinks is happening is in his head and are his warped interpretation of events instead of the real thing. And then there is Beck who isn’t entirely innocent and nice as Joe makes her out to be. She is needy, manipulative, and there are ulterior motives behind most of her actions. Joe, the stalker, is a smart guy whose actions are unpredictable and disturbing. He keeps you guessing and gasping. The cumulative effect of it all is a very unsettling feeling. There’s a Netflix series based on the book and, with some minor tweaks, it’s almost as good as the original story. But I’d recommend you read the book before you watch the series. It’s such a thrill to watch your eerie visions unfold on screen.
You
Fiction
Caroline Kepnes
Published: 2014
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Pages: 422, Paperback
The Harder They fall movie review: Retelling a classic story with everything modern
So the good news for movie lovers in Kathmandu is, most multiplexes have opened. The bad news is, many, including yours truly, are still not ready for confined spaces, especially those with zero ventilation and air conditioning in circulation. But those who don’t mind have been enjoying some Hollywood and Bollywood flicks in cinema halls that are half (or more) empty.
Theater or not, nobody is going to stop us from watching movies so long as we have Netflix, YouTube, and all those other OTT platforms that offer new releases every week. But I have to confess that in the past couple of weeks, my movie-watching has lagged a bit because of the festival season and the ongoing T20i World Cup (which I think Pakistan will win.)
Coming to the subject, most Netflix subscribers would probably have seen a motion poster of “The Harder They Fall” movie in the “recently added” section with the unmissable image of Idris Elba looking ruthless in an old cowboy hat. This is Elba’s second cowboy movie this year after “Concrete Cowboy” but this one’s only more gritty, stylish, and Western.
Well, actually The Harder They Fall turns out to be an American Revisionist Western film—a term I just discovered. Revisionist or Post-Western on Anti-Western is a subgenre of Western films that challenge the norms set by the classic. Here, almost the entire cast is black, a rarity in classic Western or even spaghetti Western movies.
Historically, black people have contributed as riders, ropers and wranglers in the Western frontier of the mid to late 19th century. It’s just that Hollywood, in all these years, decided to shove the image of gun-slinging, cigar-smoking, out-for-revenge as predominantly white.
The Harder They Fall challenges this narrative, in its own oddball way that low-key follows the example set by Quentin Tarantino’s 2012 American Revisionist movie “Django Unchained” starring Jamie Foxx in the lead and was a major success, both critically and commercially.‘The Harder’, visibly low-budgeted than Tarantino’s epic, is stylistically close and establishes a group of black people as frontrunners in the American West.
Also read: Midnight Mass series review: A Biblical tale of the ungodly
There is no Western movie without a revenge angle. In this one, Nat Love (Jonathan Majors), as a child, witnesses his parents get murdered at the hands of Rufus Buck (Idris Elba), a deadly outlaw. Like any classic Western, Nat dedicates his whole life to trying to exact revenge for his dead parents and in the process becomes an outlaw himself. In the meantime, Rufus’s gang has grown stronger than ever with the deadly Trudy Smith (Regina King) and quick-draw Cherokee Bill (Lakeith Stanfield) joining him. Meanwhile, Nat gets support from fellow outlaw Bill Pickett (Edi Gathegi), quick-draw Jim Beckwourth (RJ Cyler), Marshal Bass Reeves (Delroy Lindo) and Cuffee (Danielle Deadwyler).
The story, written by its director Jeymes Samuel, is a typical textbook Western. Dozens of movies have been made with the same storyline. What makes this one more interesting is the execution. Not only does the film put the African-American people of the 19th Century in the spotlight and positions of power, it is also molded stylistically to appease the modern audience.
The cinematography is good where it needs to be and the set design looks like a postmodern version of classic Western movies—deliberately not too elaborate but not too shabby either. The actors, too, fit in accordingly and instead of trying to emulate what’s worked for hundreds of classics in the past, they take a modern approach to performing their roles.
Writer/director as well as co-producer/co-screenwriter Samuel is also behind the film’s music. The music is what truly drives the film’s modernistic production. Again in the footsteps of the great Tarantino, Samuel’s music does not adhere to the Western classic genre. Instead, the background scores range from hip-hop to reggae to Afrikaan and every other genre one couldn’t possibly associate with Western films a few decades ago.
Who should watch it?
A fan of cowboy movies or not, “The Harder They Fall” is an interesting watch for anyone who likes a little action, a bit less melodrama and some good music in the background.
The Harder They Fall
Rating: 3.5 stars
Genre: Drama, Western
Actors: Jonathan Majors, Idris Elba, Regina King, Danielle Deadwyler
Director: Jeymes Samuel
Run time: 2hrs 10mins
Before the Coffee Gets Cold book review: Feels like a warm hug
We all have regrets, things we are embarrassed about and would like to undo if given a chance. But sadly, life doesn’t work like that. As much as we wish it were, time travel isn’t possible in real life. But we can indulge in a little vicarious living every now and then, thanks to good fiction where surreal things like time travel happen all the time. And books like these, though they won’t be able to change our past, can help us make our futures a little better.
Toshikazu Kawaguchi’s ‘Before the Coffee Gets Cold’ takes place in a café in Tokyo where, along with great coffee, customers are given a chance to travel back in time. There’s a woman who goes back in her past to confront the lover who left her, a wife who wants to get a letter her husband wrote to her before his memory started to fade, a pub owner who is estranged from her family but wants to see her sister one last time, and a mother who travels 10 years into her future to get a glimpse of the daughter she never got to meet.
But there are some conditions of time travel: They must sit in a particular seat and not get up—they will be forcibly brought back to the present if they do so. And they must also return to the present before the coffee gets cold, else they will forever be stuck in the past.
Also read: Take a Hint Dani Brown book review: Sweetly seductive
Originally written as a stage play before being adapted into a novel, there is a certain theatricality to it. Even the setting and characters are reminiscent of theater performances. The book consists of four individual stories and though you don’t have to read them in order, it helps if you do. The characters, at least the recurring ones, make better sense that way.
There are times when the narrative is a bit sappy but the lessons the stories impart and the bouts of introspection they lead to more than make up. Another issue I had with the writing style, or perhaps it’s the translation that is faulty, is that the same thing is said multiple times. But these are minor niggles. Before the Coffee Gets Cold might be a little rough but it feels like a comforting warm chocolate drink on breezy autumn evenings.
