Anxious People by Fredrik Bachman

Statistics

Format: Audio Book

Genre: Contemporary Fiction

Length: 341 pages (9 hours, 53 minutes)

Narrator: Marin Ireland

Publisher: Simon and Schuster Audio

Date of Publication: 8th September, 2020 (first published on 25th April, 2019)

Rating: 5/5 stars

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I have tried audio books before but could never complete. I would find then difficult to concentrate on and my attention kept wandering. When Libro.fm started offering free early listening copies of books, I decided to try again. This was perhaps the perfect book for listening because I never had any problem with it at all.

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The Blurb

“When a failed bank robber escapes into an apartment filled with people during an open house, a group of six strangers are suddenly forced to get to know one another quickly and under extreme circumstances. But what will be the result?

In captivity we meet Roger and Anna-Lena, a recently retired couple who are on a manic hunt for fixer-uppers because they don’t know how to fix their own marriage. They have the distinction of shopping at every Ikea in Sweden—and those are some of the most romantic moments they ever shared. Then there is Zara, a wealthy director of a bank who has never cared for poor people or their problems (and isn’t shy about saying so). But when tragedy strikes in her life, she becomes addicted to visiting real-estate open houses to see how the middle-classes live—and possibly to find a suitable place to commit suicide. Julia and Danijela are a young lesbian couple with a newborn baby who can’t agree on anything. Their opposite and idiosyncratic home preferences are making them increasingly anxious about their chances of spending a lifetime together. And Estelle, an eighty-year-old woman who has lived long enough to be unimpressed by some bank robber waving a gun in her face. Despite the story she tells them all, Estelle hasn’t really come to the apartment to view it for her daughter, and her husband really isn’t outside parking the car.

As police surround the premises and television channels are broadcasting live, the pressure of an increasingly tense situation mounts, causing each person to reveal more and more about themselves to each other. Before long, the robber must decide which is the more terrifying prospect: going out to face the police, or staying in the apartment with this group of impossible people.

A riotous comedy, Anxious People is about a crime that never took place, a would-be bank robber who disappears into thin air, and a group of very anxious people who experience exactly the same events in wildly different ways.“

The Book

While the book is actually about a bank robbery and a hostage situation, we see the story told from multiple points of view. We see how each character is connected to the main plot in ways that we would not have imagined. We see how a single event from years ago creates ripples that keep compounding to reach a place where we are helpless to change the course of our lives. The six strangers come together in such a cohesive manner that you cannot imagine a better way for them to exist.

The narrator, Marin Ireland, is a legend! She consistently changes the tone of her voice and dialogue delivery subtly for each character, so by about 20% of the book, you feel like different people narrate each character. The entire story takes place during the course of a single day. We have a house showing by a real estate agent that gets totally unrelated people together. The retired couple trying to do what the other likes just so that they don’t fall into a rut, the young lesbian couple trying to find a forever home, an old lady trying to deal with the loss of her partner, and the wealthy lady who doesn’t really look like she wants to live there, all of them have a story of their own which incidentally has a connection with the others in the house. Add to this the bank robber who ends up with these misfits with no intention of robbing them, and we have a very interesting story.

The camaraderie that the strangers show towards someone who clearly has fallen into bad times was heartwarming. The father-son police duo also has a separate character arc of their own, and we see them warming up towards each other and showing that they care for each other. The book was brilliantly written and narrated. This was probably the best pick for an audiobook. Even though I listened to the book during my commute to and from work every day, I couldn’t help but tear up at certain places. Fredrik Backman never fails to amaze me with his honest writing, and I can’t wait to read all of his books.

The Author

I’ve written about the author in my review of Beartown that you can find here.

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TL;DR: A beautiful story that will leave you both smiling and crying at different parts

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Do you like audio books?

Which one would you recommend me to pick up next?

Tell me in the comments below or on my Instagram @the_food_and_book_life

The Dutch House by Ann Patchett

Statistics

Format: Paperback

Length: 352

Genre: Fiction

Publisher: Bloomsbury publishing

Date of publication: 24th September, 2019

Rating: 5/5 stars

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This was a book which intrigued me right from its cover art to its title. I’m a sucker for family dynamics being played out on a background of familial resentment and loyalty. So this was a book that was on my wish-list ever since it was published. Lucky for me, I received it from Gayathri in a Secret Santa book exchange in the December of 2019.

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The Blurb

At the end of the Second World War, Cyril Conroy combines luck and a single canny investment to begin an enormous real estate empire, propelling his family from poverty to enormous wealth. His first order of business is to buy the Dutch House, a lavish estate in the suburbs outside of Philadelphia. Meant as a surprise for his wife, the house sets in motion the undoing of everyone he loves.

The story is told by Cyril’s son Danny, as he and his older sister, the brilliantly acerbic and self-assured Maeve, are exiled from the house where they grew up by their stepmother. The two wealthy siblings are thrown back into the poverty their parents had escaped from and find that all they have to count on is one another. It is this unshakable bond between them that both saves their lives and thwarts their futures.

Set over the course of five decades, The Dutch House is a dark fairy tale about two smart people who cannot overcome their past. Despite every outward sign of success, Danny and Maeve are only truly comfortable when they’re together. Throughout their lives, they return to the well-worn story of what they’ve lost with humor and rage. But when at last they’re forced to confront the people who left them behind, the relationship between an indulged brother and his ever-protective sister is finally tested.

The Book

One would not think that a house could be the centre of discussion for an entire book but with the right author, you find that not only can you read the entire book, but also enjoy it. Maeve and Danny seem to have it all. A beautiful house to live in, maids and cooks to take care of their every need, and a father who seems to get richer by the day. Even though they are constantly plagued by the fact that their mother decided to leave them in order to help the poor, the children lean on each other and have made a relatively happy life for themselves. But everything shatters on the day that they meet Andrea. She has her eyes on the Dutch House. The way to live in it is to marry into it, and the way to ensure that it stays with her is to banish the children forever. It was the classic step-mother angle told from a modern perspective. The author even had two stepsisters in the story, reminiscent of the Cinderella story.

It was gut-wrenching to see the two young children having to fend for themselves while also battling juvenile diabetes, abandonment issues, and commitment phobia. My heart went out to Maeve, who had to grow up in a hurry and take care of her younger brother while putting her education and ambitions on hold. While their return to the Dutch House street time and again could be seen as an unhealthy obsession, it made all the sense in the world to me. It was the only constant in their lives before it was unceremoniously snatched away from them. The injustice of the inheritance was infuriating, to say the least.

Andrea was a character that was created to be hated. She was the quintessential evil stepmother who only cared about herself and her daughters. Danny’s relationship with his wife seemed unidirectionally unfair from the very first time that it was introduced. While the animosity between the wife and the sister was meant to add an element of drama to the story, it felt quite unnecessary to me. The first half of the book was brilliantly written and kept me reading way past my bedtime. While the last third of the book was entirely predictable, it was still a very engaging read.

The Author

Patchett was born in Los Angeles, California. Her mother is the novelist Jeanne Ray.

She moved to Nashville, Tennessee when she was six, where she continues to live. Patchett loves her home in Nashville with her doctor husband and dog. Patchett attended high school at St. Bernard Academy, a private, non-parochial Catholic school for girls run by the Sisters of Mercy. Following graduation, she attended Sarah Lawrence College and took fiction writing classes with Allan Gurganus, Russell Banks, and Grace Paley. She later attended the Iowa Writers’ Workshop at the University of Iowa and the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Massachusetts, where she met longtime friend Elizabeth McCracken. It was also there that she wrote her first novel, The Patron Saint of Liars.

In 2010, when she found that her hometown of Nashville no longer had a good book store, she co-founded Parnassus Books with Karen Hayes; the store opened in November 2011. In 2012, Patchett was on the Time 100 list of most influential people in the world by TIME magazine.

Her work include:

1. The Patron Saint of Liars (1992)
2. Taft (1994)
3. The Magician’s Assistant (1997)
4. Bel Canto (2001)
5. Truth and Beauty (2004)
6. Run (2007)
7. What Now? (2008)
8. State of Wonder (2011)
9. This is the Story of a Happy Marriage (2011)
10. The Getaway Car (2011)
11. The Bookstore Strikes Back (2012)
12. Another Year (2012)
13. Commonwealth (2016)
14. The Dutch House (2019)

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TL;DR: A beautiful story that keeps you reading and and fills up your heart

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I’ll Give You the Sun by Jandy Nelson

Statistics

Format: eBook (kindle)

Length: 371 pages

Genre: Young Adult, Romance, LGBTQ+

Publisher: Penguin Books

Date of Publication: 16th September, 2014

Rating: 5/5 stars

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I had sworn off the YA-romance genre for a while now. Every book felt like it was written along the same writing prompt. So when Bells Book Club had I’ll Give You the Sun as the book of the month, I wasn’t sure if I would be reading it. However, late one night, I was feeling curious about the book and decided to read 10% of it and then decide if I wanted to continue it or DNF. But what a beginning it was! I didn’t stop at 10%. I in fact binge read up to 38% and only stopped because the sun was rising and my body was begging me to get some sleep! But the minute I woke up the next morning, I jumped right in and finished the book that very day! It is not wonder that it won the Printz Award, Stonewall Honor and the Bank Street’s Josette Frank Award and plenty more.

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The Blurb

“We were all heading for each other on a collision course, no matter what. Maybe some people are just meant to be in the same story.”

“At first, Jude and her twin brother Noah, are inseparable. Noah draws constantly and is falling in love with the charismatic boy next door, while daredevil Jude wears red-red lipstick, cliff-dives, and does all the talking for both of them. Years later, they are barely speaking. Something has happened to change the twins in different yet equally devastating ways . . . but then Jude meets an intriguing, irresistible boy and a mysterious new mentor. The early years are Noah’s to tell; the later years are Jude’s. But they each have only half the story, and if they can only find their way back to one another, they’ll have a chance to remake their world. This radiant, award-winning novel from the acclaimed author of The Sky Is Everywhere will leave you breathless and teary and laughing—often all at once.“

The Book

The book is humorous and witty and at the same time heart-wrenchingly sad. Each sentence is filled with artistic metaphor that the reader might need some time to get used to. For example, a sentence that beings with something to the effect of “…the walls started shaking, things fell off tables, pictures fell off the walls…” and ends with “but only I noticed” is how the author decides to describe the inner turmoil of the character’s mind. Another metaphor that I loved was the description of florescent green vomit splattered over the table to explain the depth of the character’s jealousy. I adored the book for this. It made me want to drop everything and paint. It is a painter’s dream to read of all the creative ways that the twins’ minds work. Although I would understand if people categorise this book as ‘weird’, this is one of my favorite books read so far this year!

The book is told from two perspectives- Noah and Jude, ranging for about three years on a floating timeline. On the outside, both the twins appear to have similar tastes and temperaments. But as the story progresses, we see sibling rivalry, parental discord, jealousy and peer pressure act on them very differently. Noah is happy to let Jude do all the talking while Jude is happy to let Noah keep painting. But this bliss is soon shattered when they begin to compete for attention, both at home and in the outside world.

The descriptions of loss are heartbreaking. The twins’ need to protect each other even while hurting each other was true of any sibling relationship. The teenage angst, the need to fit in and the learning to navigate complex personal relationships has been beautifully rendered. Noah is coming to terms with who he is but is emotionally wrung out without any support. Jude must decide if she wants to be with the popular kids or if she wants to be true to herself. All of this must be done while competing for parental affection and trying to get into the best art school in the city. It is not easy being Noah and Jude!

Although I predicted the twist in the end, I would still consider this as a 5-star read because of how much I enjoyed reading it and all of the creativity that the author incorporated into it. The artistic process, in particular, was what made me fall in love with the book and made me finish reading it in one day flat.

The Author

Jandy Nelson, like her characters in I’ll Give You the Sun and The Sky is Everywhere, comes from a superstitious lot. She was tutored from a young age in the art of the four-leaf clover hunt; she knocks wood, throws salt, and carries charms in her pockets.

Jandy, a literary agent for many years, received a BA from Cornell University and MFAs in Poetry and Children’s Writing from Brown University and Vermont College of Fine Arts. Currently a full-time writer, she lives and writes in San Francisco, California—not far from the settings of her novels. 

Her work include:

1. The Sky is Everywhere (2010)
2. I’ll Give You the Sun (2016)
3. The Fall Boys and Dizzy in Paradise (To be published)

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TL;DR: A beautiful book that talks of the journey that different people go through to become the people that they are meant to become

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What are some of the books that took you by surprise?

Tell me in the comments below or on my Instagram @the_food_and_book_life

Petit a Petit: Litte by Litte by Ambica Uppal

Statistics

Format: eBook (Kindle)

Length: 134 pages

Genre: Poetry

Publisher: Notion Press

Date of Publication: 17th March, 2020

Rating: 3.5/5 stars

Disclaimer: I received a free ecopy of the book in exchange for an honest review

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I had read and loved the author’s previous book Malhaar so when I was approached by the author about reading and reviewing her second book, I quickly accepted. Unfortunately for me, the book that I ordered over Amazon could not be delivered because of restrictions in courier services during the lockdown so I began reading the ebook that the author sent.

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The Blurb

“Petit à Petit is a collection of simple and inspiring poetry that motivates one to dream and change the narrative of their lives. It assures you that tomorrow will be a better day and encourages you to realise your potential and achieve your aspirations. Petit à Petit is centred on themes like self-love, self-confidence and taking life into your own hands.No matter how far-away and impossible your dreams seem, don’t be afraid to reach for them.“

The Book

Ambica Uppal writes poetry that speaks to the modern woman. The emotions are what each of us has felt at least once in our lives but couldn’t put into words. She is the quintessential feminist. She talks about empowering the society and equality for everyone. She asks us to re-write stories that begin with “mirror mirror on the wall”. She asks us to enable girls to wear capes and fight rather than wonder ‘who is the fairest of them all’. A sentence that really hit me was “Don’t grow thorns just because you couldn’t grow flowers“. We often see ourselves hardening our heart because of a trauma that occurred years ago. We shut ourselves off to new experiences that would have healed us. She says that it doesn’t matter if we live when we don’t give any meaning to our lives.

The book is peppered with illustrations, some of it made by the author herself. My favorite was the one showing a young child looking into a mirror that shows her her grown-up self. It is important that we grow up to live a life that the younger version of ourselves would have been proud of.

She urges us to be unique and let our light shine through. She says that there will always be sunshine after the rain so we need to believe in the strength within ourselves. I loved it when she said, “don’t go searching outside for the magic that you so preciously hold“. In a race to fit in, we have all forgotten how unique we truly are. It is time we let our true selves shine through rather than make ourselves smaller and quieter.

I also liked the concept of the heart having loose hanging wires that we need to join to re-ignite dreams. My favorite poem of all was Don’t fear, go for it. Here the author says that we are afraid to fly because we see the ceiling before we see the sky and we are afraid to dream because we see no point in it. This reminded me of one of my favorite parts in A Court of Wings and Fury where Azriel says that the main reason for not being able to learn to fly as an adult is the fear of the fall. The author also talks about how we judge a person based solely on what we see but forget that the person is made up of many hidden parts that we know nothing about. We cannot decide that we know a person based on what we perceive at a particular time.

Reading the book during the time of lockdown for the Corona Virus, I saw a lot of poems resonating with what we have all been feeling. Everybody is trying to be productive every day and seems to think that it is a race to see who comes up with the most number of new artwork or new recipes. But Ambica says “Why is life not what we get but a bunch of wants and wishes? Why is it all about chasing and trying to catch the misses?“. Another poem that spoke to me during this time of crisis was title Slow Down. It asks us to look around us and appreciate the things that we have.

While this collection of poems did not have the same hair-raising response from me as her earlier work Malhaar did, I still found a lot of poems that spoke to me on a very personal level. It is something that everyone could find that they relate to at some point in their lives.

The Author

Ambica is an Indian Canadian writer who lives in Toronto, Canada. She was born in Aizawl, an eastern city in India. Today her writings are manifestations of what she feels while experiencing things around her and poetry is just one such form in which she likes to express herself.

You can find more details of the author in my review of her book Malhaar.

Her work include:

1. Malhaar (2018)
2. Petit a Petit (2020)

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TL;DR: A book that will resonate with everyone

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What have been some of your favorite contemporary poetry book?

Tell me in the comments below or on my Instagram @the_food_and_book_life

The Empty Room by Sadia Abbas

Statistics

Format: Hardcover

Length: 320 pages

Genre: Fiction, Contemporary Fiction

Publisher: Zubaan Books

Date of Publication: 15th November, 2018

Rating: 4/5 stars

Disclaimer: I received a free copy of the book in exchange for an honest review

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It had been a while since I read contemporary fiction. When I saw that this was Pakistani contemporary fiction, I jumped at the chance of reading it since it was going to be my first.

Zubaan Books has such wonderful book choices that I was spoilt for choice. I can’t wait to read more from them.

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The Blurb

In 1970s Karachi, where violence and political and social uncertainty are on the rise, a beautiful and talented artist, Tahira, tries to hold her life together as it shatters around her. Soon after her wedding, her marriage is revealed to be a trap from which there appears no escape. Accustomed to the company of her brother, Waseem, and friends, Andaleep and Safdar, who are activists, writers and thinkers, she struggles to adapt to her new world of stifling conformity.

Tragedy strikes when her brother and friends, are caught up in the cynically repressive regime. Faced with horror and injustice, she embarks upon a series of paintings entitled ‘The Empty Room’, filling the blank canvases with vivid colour and light.

Poetic, elegant, and powerful, The Empty Room is an important addition to contemporary Pakistani literature, a moving portrait of life in Karachi at a pivotal moment in the nation’s history, and a powerful meditation on art and on the dilemmas faced by all women who must find their own creative path in hostile conditions. 

The Book

I had forgotten how wonderful it can be to read a story with family drama rather than the mystery thrillers and fantasies that I have been reading of late. The Empty Room reminds you of a time that was simpler in terms of what was expected of people but it was also a time where the society was undergoing radical changes. This makes it a time of turmoil and heartbreak for the people at the cusp of change.

Tahira is one such character who has grown up in a house that encouraged her talents and gave her the freedom needed to pursue her passion. But it was also a house that expected her to put all of it down and become a ‘good’ wife and mother the minute she got married. Her husband is the typical male who believes that a wife must be educated and talented so that she is fit to be paraded in front of society but she must submit to his will at all times. He and his family are hypocrites who refuse to give their daughter-in-law the same love and opportunities that are given to the daughters of the house. The entire book had me screaming on the inside at all the injustices that a woman is supposed to silently accept. What made it worse was the fact that although this was a book set in the 1970s, the situation is not much better after half a century!

I was enraged at Tahira’s parents’ inability or unwillingness to help her but was glad to see that her siblings and friends were a source of strength. The political aspect of the story motivated me to do a bit of research on it and I was appalled at how situations have been used for political gain while people that truly want to help the society are silenced by any means necessary. The descriptions of Tahira’s art were vivid and it was one of the things that I kept waiting to read more of. The only thing that I wish had been better was the pace of the book. Some areas seemed a bit too long and unnecessary but I chalked it up to the author’s creative process.

The Author

Sadia Abbas grew up in Pakistan and Singapore. She received her PhD in English literature from Brown University and she teaches in the English Department at Rutgers University-Newark. Sadia is Adjunct Professor at the Stavros Niarchos Center for Hellenic Studies at Simon Fraser University. She loves long walks, the Mediterranean and, indiscriminately, all sorts of films.

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TL;DR: A beautiful book with descriptions of the everyday life of an average family abundant in drama and art

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What are your favorite contemporary fiction?

Tell me in the comments below or on my Instagram @the_food_and_book_life

Sputnik Sweetheart by Haruki Murakami

Statistics

Format: Paperback

Length: 229 pages

Genre: Fiction, Magical Realism, Surrealism

Publisher: Vintage, a unit of Penguin Random House

Date of Publication: First published on 20th April, 1999. This edition on 4th October, 2012

Rating: 5/5 stars

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I have always wanted to read Murakami but the author always intimidated me. So when I saw that my fellow Bookdiva Jaanaki wanted to read Murakami too, I decided to join her to have a support system.

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The Blurb

“A mystery story about love, the cosmos and other fictional universes

Sumire is in love with a woman seventeen years her senior. But whereas Miu is glamorous and successful, Sumire is an aspiring writer who dresses in an oversized second-hand coat and heavy boots like a character in a Kerouac novel.

Sumire spends hours on the phone talking to her best friend K about the big questions in life: what is sexual desire, and should she ever tell Miu how she feels for her? Meanwhile K wonders whether he should confess his own unrequited love for Sumire.

Then, a desperate Miu calls from a small Greek island: Sumire has mysteriously vanished… “

The Book

The book is narrated by K who talks of his love for his best friend Sumire. When the topic of the dreaded ‘one-sided love’ came up, I thought that it would be the typical guy crying about the girl placing him in friendzone sort of book. However, I had not taken into account that this was a Murakami and Murakami’s modus operundi is to throw the reader off their game.

I did not realise that a mystery could be interwoven into a story so seamlessly. It takes us through emotions of first love, of unreciprocated love, of loss, of longing and finally a sense of making peace with the situation only to have all those feelings resurface together. When Miu calls K from the Greek island, what can he do but hop on a plane and head off into the unknown? This is perhaps what true love is. You don’t worry about the cost of plane tickets to obscure Greek islands, you don’t worry about having to show up to work in a while. You only care about being there for the person when they need you. There were plenty of times where I pitied K. The middle of the night phone calls, the having to move around his schedule to fit Sumire’s moods, all told to me how selfish she was and I found that I did not like the character at all.

On the other hand, the character of Miu intrigued me. I wondered if the splitting of herself and watching a doppelganger do things that were strange to her was a defense mechanism for the trauma that she suffered that night. But that does not account for her hair turning white overnight in a normal universe. In Murakami universe, however it is normal to split yourself and enter a mirror world where things are slightly different from your world. A person that does not love you here will perhaps love you in the topsy turvy world. I was not sure what to make of this but took it in my stride. What I did not like was how the story ended. I found that the episode with his lover and her child was an unnecessary distraction in an otherwise intriguing story.

I am not a fan of ambiguous endings. I need my closure and Murakami seems hell-bent in denying me this. I had my heart broken, my guts wrenched, my tears drained and my brain scrambled. But like a true Murakami fan, both Jaanaki and I are going to continue reading a Murakami a month and go through the joys and sorrows together.

The Author

Haruki Murakami is a popular contemporary Japanese writer and translator. His work has been described as ‘easily accessible, yet profoundly complex’. 
Since childhood, Murakami has been heavily influenced by Western culture, particularly Western music and literature. He grew up reading a range of works by American writers, such as Kurt Vonnegut and Richard Brautigan, and he is often distinguished from other Japanese writers by his Western influences.

Many of his novels have themes and titles that invoke classical music. Murakami studied drama at Waseda University in Tokyo, where he met his wife, Yoko. His first job was at a record store, which is where one of his main characters, Toru Watanabe in Norwegian Wood, works. Shortly before finishing his studies, Murakami opened the coffeehouse ‘Peter Cat’which was a jazz bar in the evening in Kokubunji, Tokyo with his wife.

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TL;DR: A book that takes you on a roller coaster of emotions and gives you a mystery to solve

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Is there any author that intimidates you?

Tell me in the comments below or on my Instagram @the_food_and_book_life

All the Bright Places by Jennifer Niven

Statistics

Format: eBook (Kindle) 

Length: 378 pages

Genre: Young Adult, Contemporary, Fiction, Mental Health

Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf

Date of Publication: 6th January, 2015

Rating: 5/5 stars

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All the Bright Places was one of the BOTM for the Book Club. I love reading for bookclubs and readlongs because it is an almost sure thing that the books are going to be great. WE also find a lot of different interpretations of a story which makes for interesting discussions.

The book is apparently also being adapted into a movie which will be interesting. I am always on the look out for more books that deal with mental health because it cannot be talked about enough so I was very excited about reading it.

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The Blurb

“Theodore Finch is fascinated by death, and he constantly thinks of ways he might kill himself. But each time, something good, no matter how small, stops him.
 
Violet Markey lives for the future, counting the days until graduation, when she can escape her Indiana town and her aching grief in the wake of her sister’s recent death.
 
When Finch and Violet meet on the ledge of the bell tower at school, it’s unclear who saves whom. And when they pair up on a project to discover the “natural wonders” of their state, both Finch and Violet make more important discoveries: It’s only with Violet that Finch can be himself—a weird, funny, live-out-loud guy who’s not such a freak after all. And it’s only with Finch that Violet can forget to count away the days and start living them. But as Violet’s world grows, Finch’s begins to shrink.“

The Book

On the surface, All the Bright Places is a tried and tested story. A troubled boy and a sweet girl with a tragic past are brought together for a project and each one helps the other in ways that they do not understand and they fall hopelessly in love with each other. We have read hundreds of books and watched thousands of movies with the same plot. What makes this book different is the way each issue was handled. Mental health was not made trivial nor was it romanticized. It was reiterated that professional help is required and an individual cannot fight his way out without a strong support system.

I loved the character of Violet. She was not inherently good or bad. Her shades of gray made her endearing. Her struggles with guilt and trying to put on a brave face for her parents were moving. I did not take to Finch’s character so easily. I did not like the way that he expected the world to dance to his tunes while he did what he pleased. This issue cropped up again when Finch threw rocks at Violet’s window and threatened to wake up the whole neighbourhood if she didn’t go out in the middle of the night with him to god knows where. I wish authors would stop turning situations like this into something desirable. It sets a bad precedent when a girl who is clearly not comfortable with a situation is coerced into doing something because ‘it is good for her’.

I was glad that the author stayed true in descriptions of depression and manic. She did not try to miraculously find a cure for it nor suggest that falling in love with Violet and having those feelings reciprocated could cure Finch of his disease. I grew to like his character towards the middle of the book especially with the running for flowers scene. Having said that, I must applaud the author for painting this realistic picture and showing that dealing with mental illness is no joke.

The Author

All the Bright Places is Jennifer Niven’s first book for young adults. By the time she was ten, she had already written numerous songs, a poem, two autobiographies, a Christmas story, several picture books, a play, a series of prison mysteries, a collection of short stories and a partially finished novel.

In 2000 she started writing full-time, contributing to her web magazine and dabbling in TV. Although she grew up in Indiana, she now lives in Los Angeles.

Her work include:

1. The Ice Master (2000)
2. Ada Blackjack (2003)
3. The Aqua Net Diaries (2009)
4. Velva Jean Learns to Drive (2009)
5. Velva Jean learns to Fly (2011)
6. Becoming Clementine (2012)
7. American Blonde (2014)
8. All the Bright Places (2015)
9. Holding up the Universe (2016)

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TL;DR: A beautifully written book that made me cry and put me in a big time book-coma

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What are some of the books that you liked that dealt with mental health?

Tell me in the comments below or on my Instagram @the_food_and_book_life

Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman

Statistics

Format: eBook (Kindle)

Length: 299 pages

Genre: Fiction, Contemporary

Publisher: Harper Collins

Date of Publication: May 18th, 2017

Rating: 5/5 stars

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Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine and All the Bright Places were the books of the month for a book club that I was a part of for the month of August. I love reading in book clubs because it guarantees discussions. I had been meaning to read this book for some time now and was glad to have got a push towards it.

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The Blurb

“Eleanor Oliphant has learned how to survive – but not how to live.

Eleanor Oliphant leads a simple life. She wears the same clothes to work every day, eats the same meal deal for lunch every day and buys the same two bottles of vodka to drink every weekend.

Eleanor Oliphant is happy. Nothing is missing from her carefully timetabled life. Except, sometimes, everything.

One simple act of kindness is about to shatter the walls Eleanor has built around herself. Now she must learn how to navigate the world that everyone else seems to take for granted – while searching for the courage to face the dark corners she’s avoided all her life.

Change can be good. Change can be bad. But surely any change is better than… fine?“

The Book

There are some books that you grow to love as you continue to read and then there are some that grab you and pull you along right from the first sentence. Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine was the latter for me. I cannot explain what exactly it was about the beginning but I was hooked!

Eleanor is a thirty-year-old woman who has learnt to live alone and she loves it on most days. I instantly connected with her even though (or because?) she is a bit weird. She takes things literally and does not believe in small talk. I could totally understand where she was coming from and wondered what it said about me. Isn’t that one of the best things about reading though? You identify with characters and thereby manage to understand yourself a little better. What other form of entertainment lets you do that?

I loved the character of Raymond. He is non-judgmental and supportive even though Eleanor insinuates that he disgusts her on more than one occasion. He gets that she does not mean for it to be mean and that is just who she is. It is wonderful when you have someone like that in your life, someone that you can be yourself with. It was also nice to see that her co-workers mean her no harm even though she makes it perfectly clear that she thinks that they are all intellectually inferior. The scenes with the counselor felt a bit too fast to be believable but that is a creative liberty that the author is allowed. It was necessary to keep the story moving and it did not take anything away from the story. I really appreciated the way that mental health issues were portrayed in the book.

I was very moved by Eleanor’s backstory. I did predict the ending but that might just be a result of me having read a bit too many books in this genre. The book put me in a book hangover for an entire day and my emotions were in a turmoil all through its reading. That, in my opinion, is the proof of a well-written story by an accomplished writer.

The Author

Gail Honeyman lives in Glasgow and wrote her debut novel, Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine, while working a full-time job. It was shortlisted for the Lucy Cavendish Fiction Prize as a work in progress. She has also been awarded the Scottish Book Trust’s Next Chapter Award 2014, was longlisted for BBC Radio 4’s Opening Lines, and was shortlisted for the Bridport Prize.

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TL;DR: A moving story that is sure to pull you along for the ride right from the very first page

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What are some of the books that you have read which deal positively with mental health?

Tell me in the comments below or on my Instagram @the_food_and_book_life

Beartown by Fredrik Bachman, translated by Neil Smith

Statistics

Format: Paperback

Length: 414 pages

Genre: Contemporary, Sports, Fiction

Publisher: Penguin Random House, UK

First Publication: 2016; Present edition 25th January, 2018

Rating: 5/5 stars

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I had my birthday in July and was very lucky this year to have found friends who sent book mails as birthday presents. It feels wonderful to think that they have curated these books specifically for me. Thank you #bookdivas Anupama, Chitra, Unnati, Sneha and Nisha for this truly #booksacrossgenres gift!

I buddy read Beartown with Sneha and was glad for her support through the emotional parts of this book.

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The Blurb

“‘Late one evening towards the end of March, a teenager picked up a double-barrelled shotgun, walked into the forest, put the gun to someone else’s forehead and pulled the trigger.

This is the story of how we got there.’

Beartown is a small town in a large Swedish forest.

For most of the year it is under a thick blanket of snow, experiencing the kind of cold and dark that brings people closer together – or pulls them apart.

Its isolation means that Beartown has been slowly shrinking with each passing year. But now the town is on the verge of an astonishing revival. Everyone can feel the excitement. A bright new future is just around the corner.

Until the day it is all put in jeopardy by a single, brutal act. It divides the town into those who think it should be hushed up and forgotten, and those who’ll risk the future to see justice done. At last, it falls to one young man to find the courage to speak the truth that it seems no one else wants to hear.

With the town’s future at stake, no one can stand by or stay silent. Everyone is on one side or the other.

Which side would you be on?“

The Book

Beartown is a hockey town. It is on the verge of being something great, of being put on the map of ice hockey when its residents are hit by a tidal wave of tragedy. The golden child is targeted, the town is split down the middle deciding which of the children to believe. In a town as small and as secluded as Beartown, being alone is a death sentence. Everybody wants to make the popular choice even if it means turning a blind eye to the truth that is staring them in the face.

It speaks of a story that we are all familiar with. Children who have adult responsibilities and expectations thrust upon them with no support and are left to fend for themselves in an adult world grow up to realize that they have missed out on all sorts of childhood experiences and haven’t been able to educate themselves. They are bewildered when they come out into the real world and take refuge in various addictions as we see with a frightening number of grown child actors. Similarly, child prodigies who are made to grow up too quickly realize that they have not developed the tools required to survive in an adult world.

The blind loyalty that we see here is common in sports teams. The players are coached as a team and the team takes prominence over individuals. Professional players who spend most of their waking hours with their teammates develop close, bordering on unhealthy, relationships with each other as we see in this story. It might be a necessity for the coaches to build a team that moves and thinks as one but when it involves children, someone needs to take the responsibility of making sure that their moral compass is pointing due North.

I was unable to read more than a couple of chapters at a time in the beginning of the book because there was so much to take in. Each character in intricately created and the story progresses seamlessly to each character’s point of view. I loved how the narration did not lose its momentum even with the translation. The story kept me on my toes all through the book.

It is a story of love, of sacrifice, of parents’ helplessness in not being able to protect their children from the evil in the world. It is a story of growing up too fast, of misplaced loyalty, of stardom, of growth, of children not being taught right from wrong, of parental expectations and panic that accompanies the inability to fulfill them.

The Author

Fredrik Backman is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of A Man Called Ove (soon to be a major motion picture starring Tom Hanks), My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She’s Sorry, Britt-Marie Was Here, Beartown, Us Against You, as well as two novellas, And Every Morning the Way Home Gets Longer and Longer and The Deal of a Lifetime. His books are published in more than forty countries. He lives in Stockholm, Sweden, with his wife and two children.

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TL;DR: A book that is sure to take you on a roller coaster of emotional highs and lows

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Do you like stories based on sports?

What are your favourite sport?

Tell me in the comments below or on my Instagram @the_food_and_book_life

The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas

Statistics

Format: eBook (Kindle) 

Length: 453 pages

Genre: Young Adult, Contemporary, Fiction

Publisher: HarperCollins (Blazer+Bray)

Date of Publication: 28th February, 2017

Rating: 5/5 stars

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I read The Hate U Give as a part of the book club hosted by Rashi. We read When I Hit You last month and had a great discussion on it. This month too we picked something with a social message and I loved it. This was also my read for the second prompt (A book received in a Books N Beyond Box) for the #bnbreadathon for the month of July. I had heard a lot of good things about the book and I was very excited to read it.

The book has won multpile awards and with good reason! For example- National Book Award Nominee for Young People’s Literature (2017), Odyssey Award (2018), Los Angeles Times Book Prize Nominee for Young Adult Literature (2017), Edgar Award Nominee for Best Young Adult (2018), Coretta Scott King Award Nominee for Author Honor (2018) Boston Globe-Horn Book Award for Fiction (2017), Lincoln Award Nominee (2019), Kirkus Prize Nominee for Young Readers’ Literature (2017), Goodreads Choice Award for Young Adult Fiction & for Debut Goodreads Author (2017), Carnegie Medal Nominee (2018), NAACP Image Award Nominee for Youth/Teens (2018), Michael L. Printz Honor Award (2018)

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The Blurb

“Sixteen-year-old Starr Carter moves between two worlds: the poor neighborhood where she lives and the fancy suburban prep school she attends. The uneasy balance between these worlds is shattered when Starr witnesses the fatal shooting of her childhood best friend Khalil at the hands of a police officer. Khalil was unarmed.

Soon afterward, his death is a national headline. Some are calling him a thug, maybe even a drug dealer and a gangbanger. Protesters are taking to the streets in Khalil’s name. Some cops and the local drug lord try to intimidate Starr and her family. What everyone wants to know is: what really went down that night? And the only person alive who can answer that is Starr.

But what Starr does or does not say could upend her community. It could also endanger her life.“

The Book

Starr is an African American kid from a poor neighbourhood who goes to a predominantly white school in a white suburb. She has learnt to have two separate versions of herself- the Starr around the people of her school and the Starr around her family and neighbours. She works extra hard to not appear ‘Ghetto’ to the privileged kids in her school. She has been instructed on the correct way to act around cops when she was only 12. Even with all of this to keep in mind, she is a happy 16-year-old who spends her days doing school work and playing basketball. That is until she sees her best friend Khalil get killed by a cop over nothing.

The book deals with the difference in people’s behaviour to people of different races. Some people are watched more closely than others, some people are accused before acquiring proof, some people are expected to be subservient, some people are supposed to take what comes and keep mum about it. When they fight back, they are dealt with more severely than other people who have committed actual crimes.

The title of the book is drawn from the explanation by the rapper Tupac for THUG LIFE which is sometimes misinterpreted and taken as a philosophy to create trouble for the authorities. But as Khalil and Big Mav explain, it is actually about the marginalization and differentiation of the downtrodden that comes back to bite the society. The everyday fight against racial discrimination, the need to do things that are illegal just to survive even though they know better and the constant fear in the face of authority are realistically described. The first person narrative by Starr makes the book even more heartbreaking. The book had me reaching for the tissues from the very beginning, for instance when she sees Khalil being covered by a sheet she says, “he can’t breathe under it, I can’t breathe”. Her guilt over not being able to help Khalil and not being able to speak up enough for justice to be given to him was hard to read.

The adults explaining to the youngsters of the need to be better and to be careful reminded me of a dialogue in a movie where an immigrant parent tells the kid that they need to be twice as good at everything that they do since they are under scrutiny both by their motherland as well as their country of residence. The police brutality shown here, unfortunately, is much too common an occurrence to be shoved under the rug. When Starr decides to speak up, she has to deal with not only the backlash from the society in general but also from the drug lords who want nothing more than to keep their businesses safe. This is, unfortunately, a sad reality with most of the people who speak up against inequality or corruption. Living in such an environment cannot be healthy and I was glad to see that a lot of people like Big Mav work their hardest to help improve the conditions in the neighbourhood. Being a young-adult novel with such a heavy theme, the book was also peppered with humour, especially with Starr’s white boyfriend Chris trying to fit into her world. The book made me think, made me cry and also made me smile. I absolutely loved the book even though (or because?) it has left me in a two-day book-hangover.

The Author

Angie Thomas was born, raised, and still resides in Jackson, Mississippi as indicated by her accent. She is a former teen rapper whose greatest accomplishment was an article about her in Right-On Magazine with a picture included. She holds a BFA in Creative Writing from Belhaven University and an unofficial degree in Hip Hop. She can also still rap if needed. She is an inaugural winner of the Walter Dean Meyers Grant 2015, awarded by We Need Diverse Books. Her debut novel, The Hate U Give, was acquired by Balzer + Bray/HarperCollins in a 13-house auction and will be published in spring 2017. Film rights have been optioned by Fox 2000 with George Tillman attached to direct and Hunger Games actress Amandla Stenberg set to star.

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TL;DR: A beautifully written book that deals with many important social issues with a strong female lead. A must read for everyone

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What are some of the books that have affected you a great deal?

Tell me in the comments below or on my Instagram @the_food_and_book_life