GJ

I read the first few chapters and put away this book. Around a month later, when a friend shared a beautiful quote from the book, I willed myself into giving it another go. The book grows on you, like Ove.

The quote -
“‘Loving someone is like moving into a house,' Sonja used to say. ‘At first you fall in love with all the new things, amazed every morning that all this belongs to you, as if fearing that someone would suddenly come rushing in through the door to explain that a terrible mistake had been made, you weren't actually supposed to live in a wonderful place like this. Then over the years the walls become weathered, the wood splinters here and there, and you start to love that house not so much because of all its perfection, but rather for its imperfections. You get to know all the nooks and crannies. How to avoid getting the key caught in the lock when it's cold outside. Which of the floorboards flex slightly when one steps on them or exactly how to open the wardrobe doors without them creaking. These are the little secrets that make it your home.'”

The language is quite simple and the concept so straightforward, that it can go on the Books for beginners list. Yet,(although slightly repetitive), it's captivating till the end.

Ove is man who likes things to be a certain way. This inflexible man might rub you the wrong way, in the initial few chapters, but on reading you'll travel through Ove's life in segments; you learn what made him the way he is, what he is capable of, and that he has a really big heart.
As a bonus, you have a severely(yet pleasantly) extroverted pregnant Iranian woman, who pokes Ove out of his hole every now and then, unintentionally saving his life.

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A misunderstood well-meaning man, and technically challenged loving neighbors, create a heartwarming story featuring love, routine, and Saab.

Must read.

Amazing character development. Impeccable, yet believable plotline.
It does take about the first 30% of the book, to actually get into the story, which was kind of annoying. Still, it was a decent thriller. The drama is what I enjoyed more than the plot twists. I never knew I could admire someone like Salander. Thankfully, there's more of her left. Yay!

2 stars for mindless suspense. This book gave me anxiety, I didn't need right now. The author creates a very likable MC, who can memorize his patient's cell number, the phone number of the acquaintance in the apartment below his. He is politically correct, a doctor who works for Medicaid. Lost his wife and never had a serious relationship for 8 years. Perfect hero. When something unlikable is happening to him, however bad the writing is it gives me palpitations and I hated it.

Writing is subpar. I used to enjoy thrillers like this. But after reading books like the Millenium Series and Gone Girl, you can't help but compare every other thriller to these. Plot twists are very appealing. They are the most attractive part of any thriller. But at times it can be one too many. I never knew. Now I know. It's just tiring. Bigger fewer twists are better than numerous tiny twists. Once you start questioning the plausibility it is impossible to stop.

Quality of Writing in thrillers, adds so much to the book, than we assume. It becomes obvious only after we have read stories with different standards. I was in awe at every sentence written in “We need to talk about Kevin”. I kept wondering, so articulate, this lady is. A thriller that triggered emotions.
This book has short matter-of-fact sentences. That barely work to convey information and nothing else.
If you need an analogy, I'll compare the above novels with a sewing machine, and this book with a spade.

If you are beginner, trying to start reading, you may try it. If not, better let it stay on the shelf.

At first, i wondered why this book is rated so high? This is just normal. It reminded me a bit of And the mountains echoed . There were pieces of story, all cute. And then it hit me, this a war story. War stories are about terror and tragedy; and once in a blue moon, about romantic love.
This book is filled with beautiful imagery, little acts of kindness, little acts of faith, innocence and gullibility of childhood. Now, it, to be this beautiful, let alone a war story, for it to be even a children's book, is a feat.
It's like this beautiful bubble, though surrounded by impending doom, trumps it circumstances with its beauty.
When it comes to this darkness of the early 1940s, this book pictures the light we never see.

Sophie's World is a really good book. If only there was no Sophie in it. I'll tell you why.
This is a crash course on Western philosophy for beginners. I had no idea about this. This was just a random book I picked up. And I don't regret it.
Sophie's world is a gateway to western philosophy. Each chapter in the book is about a particular school of thought, arranged chronologically moving swiftly from one to next. We get a crisp and clear yet not too extensive idea of how each branch of philosophy was formed and what it put forward.
All this is explained, as conversation between a 14 year old Norwegian girl, Sophie and a ‘philosopher' Alberto Knox. I'd recommend anybody who has the slightest interest in philosophy, or spends enough time inside their head to give this book a go.
I found the chapters up to Descartes thought-provoking; the few chapters after that went totally above my head, let alone provoke any thoughts.(Spinoza, Locke, Hume, Berkeley, Bjerkely, Enlightenment, Kant - was awesome, romanticism, Hegel, Kierkegaard) My brain started picking it back up at Marxism. Yes, this book reads almost like a textbook. But as someone who has to read even more boring topics, I could wade through the tough pages. The language is easy, but the concepts were too complicated for my understanding at times.

‘Remind yourself that you are only living a miniscule part of all nature's life. You are part of an enormous whole.'
‘I think I see what you mean...‘
‘Can you manage to feel it as well? Can you perceive all of nature at one time-the whole universe, in fact-at single glance?'
‘I doubt it. Maybe I need some lenses.'
‘I don't only mean the infinity of space. I mean the eternity of time as well. Once upon a time, thirty thousand years ago there lived a little boy in the Rhine valley. He was a tiny part of nature, a tiny ripple on an endless sea. You too, Sophie, you too are living a tiny part of nature's life. There is no difference between you and that boy.'

The rationalists had almost forgotten the importance of experience, and the empiricists had shut their eyes to the way our own mind influences the way we see the world

Dear Hilde, if the human brain was simple enough for us to understand, we would still be so stupid that we couldn't understand it. Love, Dad.

Historical fiction|magical realism.
Set during the early 1900s with the backdrop of The Spanish Flu and The Agrarian Reform in Mexico. Revolves around the story of a boy with a cleft lip found abandoned who is taken in by a loving family. Weirdly enough, this boy was found covered with a swarm of bees on his body. These bees become a part of his existence as he become theirs. They named him Simonopio.
Murmur of bees is family saga, spanning over generations. In an age when bloodlines are revered and superstitions are abound, the generosity of one family accepts a cleftlipped orphan, swarmed with bees found lying on the road side as one of their own; when people told them it was the devil himself.

Simonopio's ability to communicate with the nature, his ability to foresee what might happen, is a result of his astute observation which he developed over the course of his life where nobody listened to him, but he listened to everything. Felt and saw everything. My attempt at writing this review has proven to be pathetic and never to be tried again. It's an emotional story, pulls at ur heartstrings. It will make you cry. A feel good book.

I thought of giving this a 3 star rating like any other “readable” classic. But the last sentence didn't allow me. What a perfect story arc. It's almost like science. We know how it is going to end, right after Napoleon takes over. Yet unlike other books, we actually enjoy seeing it go the way we expected it to.
Every sentence of this little book hits the bull's eye. How the rules kept on changing, the originality of the Squealer character, the dumbness of other animals, and the best one - when the writer chose pigs to be the intelligent ones, the rulers and them owning protection dogs. I haven't read a better satire. Well, maybe that's because I am not that much of a reader.

Boring. Not relevant, in present day India.

This was the fourth of Austen's novels that I read. Though almost as long as Mansfield Park, it's slightly more readable and relatable. This book strays from the flock of Austen's straightforward romance by the protagonist's declaration in the first chapter that she doesn't intend to marry, ever.

Emma prides herself in being a masterful matchmaker. Emma prides herself in being perfection personified. In fact she takes up the task of  molding Harriet Smith, an illegitimate young girl with no connexions atleast to a small degree to the likeness of herself.

Enter Jane Fairfax. She is beautiful and accomplished. She had no governess like Emma had to guide her through her youth. Yet her musical skills surpassed Emma. Despite being poor, she was better than Emma and the latter couldn't help but acknowledge that. The only fault in Jane Fairfax that could be found was that she is ‘reserved.' Considering how people in this book can't stop talking their head off?, Jane must be one of the few sane people in the book. If written from Jane's point of view, this would have been like any other romance novel.

The Hartfield residence where Emma lives with her insanely hypochondriac father Mr. Woodhouse (reminiscent of Lady Bertram from Mansfield Park), is at a walkable distance from Bates' residence (where Jane Fairfax lives) and Donwell Abbey.

Mr. Knightley lives at Donwell Abbey. He provides healthy criticism for Emma's shenanigans. He is normal, hence boring.
Readers entertainment depends on Miss Bates, there are pages of conversation with only her in it.

And Mrs Elton who's so full of herself, the fact that something doesn't concern her is incomprehensible to her. Of course everything is about her, depends upon her, cannot exist without her, would crumble without her.

Emma meddles in the natural course of events pertaining to people's relationships resulting in, umm.. complications.
I vaguely remember writing this in some other review, but it is appropriate here too.
If not for the uncommon combination of beauty and precision in writing, unique to Austen, this story would look like nothing other than a soap opera. Jealousy, check. Matchmaking, check. People poking their nose in affairs not theirs, check. Bad communication prolonging the story, check.


The book is looong, and it requires some serious dedication to finish it. The story and characters are not worth the time and effort they demand. So unless you are hell bent on reading all of Austen's books, you'd better skip this.

The first half was more promising after the first book. A fascinating depiction of the dystopian world. And second half was all ‘I wanna save Peeta and die'. All except Katniss knew what was coming from a mile away.

Preachy at times. Amusing though.

Few lines into the book, I was racking my brains, as I absent mindedly read through a few more lines, trying to put a face to Elinor Oliphant, who seemed really familiar. And then all of a sudden she fell into place. This is Amy from the Big Bang Theory. Though I do not have vivid enough imagination to read a whole story with an image of a character in my head, at certain moments her face pops in; it fits just right.

I am pretty sure, the number of high ratings this book has a direct correlation to readers who can relate.

“If someone asks you how you are, you are meant to say FINE. You are not meant to say that you cried yourself to sleep last night because you hadn't spoken to another person for two consecutive days. FINE is what you say.”

Loneliness has certainly had its share of portrayal in many books. This is the first one I read where it takes the center stage. Every moment I am struggling, to not make this review personal. Precisely because there isn't a ‘Loners' club', none of the loners know what their kindred feel. This is a brave attempt(given how completely Eleanor disregards the conventions of polite society, thereby creating a character slightly leaning over to the area of ‘unlikability') to unite the loners at some level, to remind that we are not alone in being lonely.

Eleanor holds one her hands in the other to feel how it feels when someone holds your hand. Eleanor realizes that there is no Eleanor shaped slot in the society for her to fit in. Standing alone staring into the middle distance, is a ‘familiar social scenario' for Eleanor. It was ‘absolutely fine'. And she means it.

The whole thing is all too familiar. I feel too close to this that I can't analytically review. I can see only what I want to see, and there's plenty for me to look at here. There are metaphors and word plays, it's all very nice. That said, it's not a sob story. Eleanor is funny, rudely pragmatic often upto a point of hilarity and a woman of her mind, who finds her way in the world, with little acts of kindness from people surrounding.

Raymond, like a ray of sunshine, tenderly opens the shy and obscure little bud into
a beautiful flower, confident and proud.
(Okay maybe that was a little over the top.)

If you feel lonely too often, read it.

Bunch of 30yr olds, behaving like teenagers.

This was one immensely satisfying book. And it wound up the trilogy beautifully. I don't intend on reading the Lagercrantz books. This is where I'd like it to end.

The novel is a continuation of the events of the 2nd book. It's huge, it's detailed yet as described in a blurb on the back cover - it is “to be read in great hungry chunks”.

We get to see a lot more of Salander this time. Her interactions with other humans, thoughts running around in her head, her personality, sassy replies and the cool confident demeanour, without being a “perfect person” is my favorite part of the trilogy.

From the beginning till about 80% of the novel, Blomkvist and allies make tactical moves to worthy opponents. Controlling the information flow, with a touch of (totally necessary) paranoia,an insanely motivated group of people on either sides fight to their wits' end that culminates quite eventfully in a court room - a chapter that will give you goosebumps.

I felt this book as an improvement over the last one. Without question, a must-read if you have read the previous two books.

When we start a book, with no clue about the plot, we form a certain idea about the characters from the first few sentences about them. The idea is an extrapolation based on what we want the character to be, the kind of characters we have seen before. I took this book to read on a 12 hour overnight train ride; thought I'd enjoy it more that way. I thought the whole thing would happen on the train; a mystery surrounding a young girl on the train - someone notices something wrong - gets themselves into something bigger than they thought it would be and so on. Sadly, the book is more about the girl that uses a train rather than one on a train.
Someone suggested me Gone with the Wind, said that it's so good that once I read that I'll comparing all other books I read, with that. I never read the book, but I realize what he felt. I couldn't help but compare this book with Gone Girl, at least somewhere in the middle of the novel, the diary entries-the skeptical woman police officer, the type B men, infidelity. (For some reason, every woman in this book smells all the men, and almost kisses them, what's up with that??) I found it hard to empathize with any of the character, even the baby; but I guess I shouldn't be so ‘judgy'.
Jump in, if you want hold hands with Rachel Watson on a downward spiral of her path to self destruction as she narrates to you her totally unreliable past. Enter - two other apparently level headed women; you'll end up deciding one of them is lying. Or are all of them lying? Or are all of them innocent?
Even though, it's a fifty pages too long, it's engaging, a good one-time read.

MUST READ BOOK. If you have patience. It has long sentences.

The grey area between right and wrong has certainly been the subject of hundreds of books. Stories of starving thieves, retaliation, and retribution could all be justified in one way or another. The unpleasant side of the right-wrong dichotomy is where this book parks itself, and it moves in the direction of total and utter degeneration of everything, mental, physical, and spiritual.

Dorian Gray is blessed with wealth, class and good genes. Basil Hallward an artist and a good friend, finds in him a muse, and helps him create his best work of art of all time. Dorian is dumbstruck by his own portrait and makes a peculiar wish.
“How sad it is! I should grow old and horrible and dreadful. But this picture will remain always young. It will never be older than this particular day of June. If it were only the other way, If it were I who was to be always young and the picture that was to grow old! For that I would give everything! Yes, there is nothing in the whole world I would not give! I would give my soul for that!”

In the above quote he wishes for an eternal life of untarnished youth in exchange for his soul. Would you take this deal?
If you see it appropriate to consider a human being as a sum of senses and soul, losing his soul, leaves a man, whose only goal in life is to please his senses to the maximum. Actions are driven by senses. Consequences of actions are borne by the soul. Guilt and empathy are functions of the soul. With his new super power, Dorian is driven by his senses alone, in constant search of beauty above all else. Morality and guilt become mere impediments. If you haven't read the book, this would give you an idea of someone who is wasting away their life, drinking and smoking and sleeping around.
But that's not who Dorian is. Dorian is enlightened, like Buddha, only in the wrong direction.

“ He sought to elaborate some new scheme of life that would have its reasoned philosophy and its ordered principles, and find in the spiritualizing of senses its highest realization.”
It's like a uno reverse on the Bhagavad Gita.

This is my favorite quote from the book.
“The worship of the senses has often and with much justice been decried, men feeling a natural instinct of terror about passions and sensations that seem stronger than themselves, and that they are conscious of sharing with the less highly organised forms of existences. But it appeared to Dorian Gray that the true nature of the senses had never been understood and that they had remained savage and animal merely because the world had sought to starve them into submission or to kill them by pain, instead of aiming at making them elements of a new spirituality of which a fine instinct of beauty was to be a dominant characteristic”
This is the statement he puts forward. It is enticing; for a moment I'm confused as to whether I agree to his philosophy or not. Dorian's words can confuse your moral compass. He is capable of this because, he has no restraints of a soul, and thus is capable of ignoring consequences. And beauty, though ephemeral, is enticing to everyone.

“There had been mad wilful rejections, monstrous forms of self torture and self denial, whose origin was fear and whose result was a degradation infinitely more terrible than that fancied degradation from which, in their ignorance, they had sought to escape.......There was to be as Lord Henry had prophesies a new Hedonism”

Dorian lived with no checks. “There were moments when he looked on evil simply as a mode through which he could realize his conception of the beautiful” His knowledge of all things beautiful, is incredible. There is whole, very long, boring chapter dedicated to that; as a statement of his knowledge.

People loved Dorian; his beauty and manners. People looked up to him with awe and admiration, but looked back on him with hatred and disgust. The sensation destination train chugs on till something happens. For once Dorian deviates from his pursuit of beauty, when a need arises to cover up the origin of his new life. What if that hadn't happened? Would his hedonistic life have given him everything he wanted till the end of his life? Or was that an inevitable consequence of his deal with the portrait?
The last few chapters are better than many psychological thrillers. A point reaches where his own mind and the people around him turns against him. His past and acts of evil catches up with him when he's weak.

I would not call this a descent into degradation. I have too much respect for him, for that. He failed at life with class. I wouldn't go within a mile of him in real life, lest I be tempted. I would look at him from afar. He is a work of art.

It's really good, if you are into it. Which is a completely useless statement for someone who hasn't read it, but I don't want to give away anything, except a trigger warning maybe. It's violent. There is death and cruelty.

Blackwood is a huge estate, owned by a handsome gruff recluse. Intent on doing a survey and for other personal reasons, Elise who is doing research in archeology, knocks on the owner's thick wooden door to ask for permission. As the door opens all see can she is his dirty black fingers, and unkempt beard as he yells at her to go away. She doesn't.

It's not safe out there in the woods. People hear women screaming at night. That could be a local myth, only Elise herself hears a scream one night.

Romance and suspense is decently mixed throughout the novel, making it a quick read. Although not entirely predictable, there's no mind blowing revelation at the end. The suspense only serves to flip the pages faster, not as the main skeleton of the story. There are enough creepy, squirrely and face less characters introduced in the beginning of the novel to raise our antennae in all directions. There is a confusion of who is good and bad throughout the novel.

There is not much story in the development of relationship between MMC and FMC. They have sex once, she finds out that she had a kink she didn't know she had, and she's all in love with him. The author could have tried a little to make it a little original. Good one time read.

Thought provoking. This book will make you thank for every single aspect of your life. The book is short and a concentrated depiction of people's lives in North Korea.

Horror must be the genre that gets outdated the quickest.
And this story is more than 50 years old.
This didn't scare me in the least. I don't know if it's empathy or imagination that I'm lacking. I fail to understand the scope of horror novels. I haven't read many of them, so it might be too early to judge.

A popular actress' daughter starts showing signs of demonic possession; doctors and priests take turns trying to find a cure. A murder or two to complicate it further.

1.There is a buildup to the revelation of the supernatural, which any reader would catch up on; like the beginning of a familiar song. The noises in the attic, the chill in the nape of the neck, a cold draught air. Same old same old.

2.There is the confusion ensuing, as to what box to check, science or paranormal.
This was funny, whether it was intended to be or not I'm not sure.

The girl rises above the bed, almost a foot, jerks in the air, spins like a top, arches with toes touching her forehead and falls back. And one doctor asks the other after around a 2 page description of similar stuff.

“I tHInk sHe cOnvULseD, don't you?”
“Yes, I think so”

Then comes the priest who can't make up his mind; with demons of his own.

3.Followed by acceptance and resolution.
Assisted by the deus ex machina priest who comes to meet his long lost friend.

I only have a distant memory of watching the movie years back and had forgotten the plot points. So it was pretty new to me. I might read this again, not for the element of horror, but the writing style.

There is a specific mood to the story that changes along the course of it.
The initial surprise/horror gives way to an emptiness and weariness in every character in the story, without forgoing the uniqueness of each of them. It doesn't feel like the author just conjured up ‘a priest', ‘a police officer' or ‘a manservant', for the sake of it. All of them though not contributing much to the course of the plot, have distinct personalities that are somehow peculiar and likable.

Ah! The flitting thoughts. From the weariness and despair that has consumed our characters, there are moments of escape; often by some idyllic scene as a simile.
“The psychiatrist seemed to be choosing his words as carefully as flat, round stones to skim over a pond”
It's like the other-worldly feeling at the top of the swing, right before you fall back to reality.

“......he ran back through Regan's symptoms, touching each like a schoolboy making sure that he taps every slat as he walks along a white picket fence”

And at times poetic

“He sat on the cot and drank in darkness. Wet came the tears. They would not cease. This was like childhood, this grief.”

I wish the origin of the villain was better elaborated. And it would be nice if the plot wasn't obvious from a mile away too.

Nevertheless, it's a timeless classic. You won't be disappointed unless you expect to be scared. So much for “the greatest horror story of all time”. Or was that the movie?

This is the story of how Catherine Earnshaw ended up being Catherine Earnshaw.
This is a story of two men, of one who took everything the other valued, one by one.
This is a story of romance in two generations that are strangely mirror images, only slightly different.

For those who are looking for a light-hearted novel with fun and charm, stay away. This is far from it.
And you understand the relations only by Chapter 9. It's confusing; I think figuring that out is what made me stick to the book in the beginning. (Things don't get “pretty” until Heathcliff grows up.)
Many books have characters we grow to love, respect. Many books (unfortunately) have characters we couldn't care less about. Only a few books have characters, we develop a passionate loathing towards.
Every significant character in this book is AWFUL. Every single character we either hate or feel sorry for. The reading experience is like sitting wrapped in a wet blanket on a cloudy day. Everybody dies. It's gloomy, it's sad. Nothing good EVER happens.
Yet I enjoyed reading this book, being a passive observer, like Mr. Lockwood, of this queer couple families that by the end got mangled up into one.

Whatever happened in this book seems unlikely at first. But imagine having just one neighboring house 4 miles away, for your entire life, in an era of digital sophistication where, “call” means visit. With no external stimuli, literally a closed environment with semi-incestuous relationships, no wonder everyone was either psychotic or neurotic or dying probably of some disease.

It's amazing how everyone made everyone else miserable and themselves ended up being miserable.
Read this book for the sake of reading it. It's food for thought.

As a med student and as someone who watched the whole of Six Feet Under series in under 6 days, in the recent past, I would characterize the first three chapters of this book as mildly interesting and the rest of it as sleep inducing - not curious, definitely not. No one suggested this book to me. I picked it as a random read. It is my fault that this terrible thing has happened. You see, the first image that came to my mind as I read the catching title of the book was that of a middle-aged introverted bespectacled pathologist elbow deep in a cadaver's body cavity standing in a dimly lit morgue in the basement with flickering lights and a buzzing refrigerator, walls painted green. I imagined some good soul coaxed this recluse to share her knowledge and the secrets of the dead she gleaned over decades of dedicated work. I hadn't heard of Mary Roach before. And I didn't this media-like person butting in while science people doing science. You could call me elitist. But I have seen the other books she wrote, there is an image of her in zero gravity simulation on Google. I don't really mind her writing this book, I'm just envious that she gets do all that without even a degree in science.

Over 11 chapters the author narrates an account of her visits to experts in various fields that make use of cadavers for different purposes. I went into the book with only the idea of medical and academic uses of cadavers in mind. It is true that 80% of cadavers end up in anatomy labs, but there are few other intriguing final resting places too. Like the compost or someone else's stomach. The author gets into all this in a really detailed fashion (only detailed not deep) and at times veering off to obscure history.

Humor is an essential part of the book. It's what makes this palatable. Though at times I felt that it was a little overdone, I have no complaints in that regard. It is a funny book. You get to read stuff like:
“Compost should not be ugly,” she is saying. “It should be lively, it should be romantic.”“There are ten fetuses here, all aborted this morning,” the Express reporter claims she was told...“Normally we doctors take them home to eat, Since you don't look well, you can take them.”

I have a new found appreciation for modern medicine and the people who contributed to it (alive and dead). Humor in a book about dead bodies does not come out as disrespectful. In fact how people, who have to shoot at cadavers, put them in cars and simulate head on collisions, everyday as part of their jobs is discussed multiple times, throughout the book. There are also chapters on beating hard cadavers (brain dead people for organ transplant) and cannibalism and early experiments on brain transplant.

Someone who is not acquainted to the topic and is not too squeamish might find this interesting.
“Because all the bacteria in the mouth chew through the palate,” explains Arpad. And because brains are soft and easy to eat. “The brain liquefies very quickly. It just pours out the ears and bubbles out the mouth”
If you are okay with that sentence, you may try this book. Happy reading!

p.s : you may skip the shroud of turin chapter, some guy trying to prove the shroud was real after crucifying recently dead cadavers. It adds nothing to the book.

The story is about a woman in the 1800s who has to spend a lot of time alone in a house, with an ugly yellow wallpaper. The circumstances/events or a lack thereof, results in a relationship forming between the woman and the wallpaper.

The slow transition into insanity appears to me as a means of escape.

“I really have discovered something at last. Through watching so much at night, when it changes so, I have finally found out. The front pattern does move - and no wonder! The woman behind shakes it! Sometimes I think there are a great many women behind, and sometimes only one, and she crawls around fast, and her crawling shakes it all over. Then in the very ‘ bright spots she keeps still, and in the very shady spots she just takes hold of the bars and shakes them hard. And she is all the time trying to climb through.”

I was hopeful about the situation first, then came the hopelessness and later the bliss of insanity at the end. I was surprised, that so much could happen in a short story. It was never rushed. The gradual blending of the psyche of the wallpaper and the woman is quite believably portayed; which is horrifying.
Appeals to my morbid interests.

I was binge watching ‘The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel' for the second time, when I came across the dialog, “....here's the number of a psychiatrist, he helped my friend Sylvia Plath.” I turned my neck from the tiny screen of my mobile phone over to the shelf full of unread books and thought of giving this one another go.
Strangely enough, it was like Mrs. Maisel. At times we can see her building up a joke. It's smart, witty, honest, sarcastic and honey-coated with feminism all over; until the first half. I'd like to review this book as 2 parts. The first half is all wit and funny as hell, whereas for the 2nd half her mental health issues piggy-back over it, and at times fun takes the backseat.
When faced with the choice of going to the fur show or Coney Island, Esther chooses to

lie in the bed as long as she wanted to and then go to Central Park and spend the day lying in the grass,.... in the duck-ponded wilderness

was a secret voice speaking straight out of my own bones

After 19 years of running after good marks and prizes and grants of one sort and another, I was letting up, slowing down, dropping clean out of the race

I know my baby wasn't like that...... like those awful people, those awful people at the hospital. I knew you'd decide to be alright again

I took a peek into the prologue and fell into the story.
The freefall was a fantastic experience with garden variety romance, only chronologically misplaced. Nearing the end when the looming ‘thud' was apparent, I knew I had to start another book to soften the blow.

Henry travels in time and has no control over when or where that happens. He meets his wife for the first time, when he is in his late 30s and she is six. He has to leave Clare, with no promise of a time of return. It's like a love story written twice, because neither has the memory of the other when they first meet.

“I'm at a loss because I am in love with a man who is standing before me with no memories of me at all.”

There is something about describing or atleast mentioning smells and textures, that makes reading a book a more immersive experience. By the first few chapters, I was comfortable and cozy lying around in the dimly lit recesses of this unshapely story. It's quirky and fun, with writing that made my heart melt.

“Each moment that I wait feels like a year, an eternity. Each moment is as slow and transparent as glass. Through each moment I can see infinite moments line up, waiting. Why has he gone where I cannot follow?”

Just to get this out of the way. The rating for this book is polarized. The one star-haters' main complaints are
1) It's a little Humbert humbertish.
It is reasonable that people find it creepy that a 40 year old guy meets his wife when she was 6, and could (in fact he couldn't), influence her whichever way he wanted. But the point is, that is not denied in the story at all. The author as well as Henry, seems apologetic, that it couldn't be any other way. It is just the way it happened. Which brings us to the second part.

2) Neither of them had a choice.
The novel stems from the premise of fate; that all of it has already happened and time is just flowing past us, rather than we moving forward. Henry himself says that, if you think you have no free will, it gets depressing. That's a note to the reader too. If you think too much of the choice they had, you wouldn't like it. Don't think. Just enjoy.

My only complaint is that the story was slightly, unnecessarily sad. It could have changed a teeny bit and still be able to pull at the heart strings, even without the gratuitous sadness.

“...had we but world enough and time”

I might read this again, in the know.

I am a total noob, only dipping my toes into sci-fi. I am 100% sure that my intelligence and knowledge is not equipped enough to give this book the analysis it deserves. I am only here to mention a few thoughts I had whike reading the book. I have nothing to compare it to. I haven't seriously read about capitalism, socialism or anarchy anywhere else before.

For those who haven't read the book, it takes place in a fictional world where of 4 planets. Urras, Anarres, Terra, Hain. Of these Urras and Anarres are twin planets, earths and moons of each other. On Anarres is a newly formed civilization by the Anarchists of Urras, who mass migrated generations back.
In Anarres, there is no hierarchy or property. People don't own, they share. Consider the consequences.

I have always associated anarchy with chaos and violence. The anarchists in this book are peaceful people, whose survival depends on their solidarity. There is no chaos, there is order.

This book does not deny that, the functioning of it's society is dependent on the limited population and adequate resources, that it will not survive a tipping of scales. It is utopia. A perfectly functioning society, given certain prerequisites are followed.
People who have a better grasp of sociology, might appreciate this better. Nevertheless the concept is thought provoking.

Personally I found it difficult to find a connection with the characters. The are cold and distant. That is the whole point within the story too. There is some sort of delineation happening between love and relationships, that I didn't quite understand. What kind of love is it, in a world where one can't say “You are mine.”?
It's not “your smile is beautiful”, it's “the smile is beautiful”, because possessive word don't exist/are not used.

I haven't read a utopian novel before, and have always wondered how it would be. This one I found is only a prettily dressed dystopian. It makes you realize thay the negative elements in our society exists for certain unavoidable reasons.

The book is easy enough to understand. Appropriate as a foray into sci-fi.