Back again with a Vengance

Hi, it has been years since I posted on this blog. Life caught up meanwhile :)

And the Mountains Echoed
By Khaled Hosseni
216 pages
Genre - Fiction



What would you have done if as a child, you were forcefully separated from the only person you truly loved? How would you react if the people who caused the separation were your own father and uncle? Would you look for the person you lost when you grew up? Would you even remember as you were only a child yourself when the separation happened? Khaled Hosseni asks and answers this and much more in his beautifully crafted novel, “And the Mountains Echoed.”
From the villages of pre-Taliban Afghanistan to the romantic streets of Paris during the hippie days, from a small island in Greece to the sunny restaurants in California, Hosseni tells a powerful story of love and fear, expectation and hope that spans over 60 years in the life of Pari and Abdullah, and through them the ordinary Afghan people and all the others who came into Afghanistan during that time.
The style of writing is simple, elegant, straightforward and unpredictably beautiful. The multiple points of view used works to the advantage as the author slips easily from the Afghan to the Greek, man to woman effortlessly. What is extremely uncanny is it is as if Hosseini can read the soul and mind of a woman! Momentarily, you forget the author is a man until his male characters begin to speak as the story moves forward. The narrator catches you by surprise at every turn at the same time shows the emotional vulnerability of the characters that kills the stereotype most of us use when we think of Afghans and Afghanistan. It also tears apart the stereotype the media feeds us with about Muslims and NATO workers in Afghanistan.
The book is extremely insightful and makes the reader emotionally vulnerable to the various characters and not just one, a rare feat performed with a lack of drama that almost borders on humility that makes this book outstanding. A highly recommended read if only for the simple reason it makes you more humane.

© 2013 by Deepa Kandaswamy

Buy the book here

Weight of Light

Weight of Light
By Andrew Staniland
156 Pages.
Price varies depending on where you are located.
Available on Amazon, Barnes& Noble,Flipkart,eBay,etc.
Genre: Fiction/Literary
ISBN: 1-4116-3409-8

I never realised daily routine like getting up, switching off the alarm clock or just getting ready for work can be expressed so beautifully.

Delphine Romand is a single French woman living in London. The book is about her thoughts, her work, her friends, her music, her likes, her relationships, her family and her life.

The author makes you fall in love with words and Delphine’s world. That he is a poet, gives Staniland the added advantage. His visual style of writing makes the characters come alive. He has a unique style of writing. He uses extremely short sentences, disregards the regular novel format, rebelling against convention adding almost a lyrical quality to the book.

The story is not a poem but prose though the poetic quality is unmistakable. It isn’t narrated directly like Alfred’s Noyes’s poem The Highwayman or the meaning disguised like Robert Frost’s beautiful poem Nothing gold can stay. It is a novel that manages to find midway between the two with a dash of humour. The digs at New Age gurus will make you grin. If you are unmarried or single, you will be able to relate to portions of the world and thoughts of Delphine or her friends. If you are married, it will remind you of someone in your circle of friends or acquaintance who you may have wondered about. It is almost uncanny how the author has managed to get into a woman’s head.

The book reminded me of Bryan Adams’s song “Have you ever really loved a woman”. If you thought literary fiction was boring or just picturesque speech as I did, you will be pleasantly surprised after you read this uniquely lyrical book.

© Deepa Kandaswamy