Book Review: The End of Your Life Book Club by Will Schwalbe

Title: The End of Your Life Book Club
Author: Will Schwalbe
Publisher: Knopf
ISBN: 978-0307594037
Genre: Non-Fiction, Memoirs, Memories
Pages: 352
Source: Personal Copy
Rating: 5/5

I had wanted to read, “The End of Your Life Book Club” the first time I read about it, which was in April 2012 or somewhere closer to that month. I love reading books about books and more so when a selection is made and discussed, just as the title suggests – a book club. For me, it was more than that. It was the story that made me want to grab this one and start and I did when I got the first chance. I have just finished reading this book and I am overwhelmed beyond words. So maybe this review will be a short one, just because I want whichever reader to pick up this book, to be able to enjoy it without any pre-conceived notion of anyone else’s opinion about it.

“The End of Your Life Book Club” is about a mother and a son (the author and his mother), whose love for books is never-ending. They discuss books and talk about books throughout the journey that the author describes brilliantly in this work. Will’s mom has been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and the journey of the book club starts at the doctor’s office and the waiting room as they wait for the chemo appointments and discuss books that they are reading at the same time. The book is a tribute to his mother and books and life and its magnanimity.

What struck me was the way this book is written. It is about Mary Ann Schwalbe and her family, with books playing a major role between her and her second born, Will Schwalbe. The book is simple and yet chronicles a family’s life, a mother’s love and more than that, the woman that she was – compassionate, generous, kind, loving and a reader. I had to pen down this review because I want more people to read this book – it is about books for sure and it is also about connections – about telling your loved ones that you love them and are proud of them, no matter what.

The writing is thread-bare and comes from the heart. It must have been very difficult for Mr. Schwalbe to pen this book, considering how personal it is, and yet at the same time, I am only too glad that he decided to write this book and share his mother’s life with readers around the world. Of how building a library in Kabul was the most important task for her (given her associations with non-profit organizations) to the daily planning of dinners and birthday parties. Mary Ann Schwalbe is a woman I think every reader would want to have known and this book is a perfect way of doing that. To know what she read and why and more so what sort of a woman she was – determined to help others and live her life to the fullest no matter what, not even deterring in the face of a disease.

“The End of Your Life Book Club” comes from an emotional place. There were times I choked and nearly cried and was so happy to have been reading this book. I know for a fact that I will reread this one and also read all the books that Will and Mary read throughout the course of the book. It is a book about reading and how it can save you at most times. It is about love and what family means to you. It is about life. I cannot recommend it enough.

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Book Review: Winter Journal by Paul Auster

Title: Winter Journal
Author: Paul Auster
Publisher: Faber and Faber UK
ISBN: 978-0571283200
Genre: Memoirs, Non-Fiction
Pages: 240
Source: Publisher
Rating: 5/5

When a writer writes a journal or something close to a memoir, it takes a lot from him or her. I am safely assuming that because anything which is personal, when put to paper, leads to memories surfacing and that must be at some level, difficult to deal with. Memoirs or something close to them isn’t easy to document. “Winter Journal” by Paul Auster is one such book and I will add to this and say that it is not your regular kind of biography or journal or a slice of the writer’s life so to say. It is indeed different.

“Winter Journal” to me was more of a life lived and more years to go in the author’s life that was written about in the most beautiful manner. The book is written in the second-person narrative and I loved the approach for two reasons. Firstly, it is personal and yet detached from the self. Secondly, the narrative was easy to get into. Not at any point, did I feel that the book was boring or mundane and that says a lot for a collection of memories.

The best part of this book is that everyone can relate to some part or the other. When Auster writes of his mother and how she died and how he felt, I could co-relate it to my father’s death. The emotions are universal and Auster does a wonderful job of getting them right. I did not mind the fact that the book isn’t a traditional memoir. I loved that it was not that. The writing wrung me inside out. The pages when Paul Auster speaks of the twenty one homes he has lived in right from his birth made me think of the homes I had lived in and what does one truly call home?

Relationships are most extensively spoken about in the book. The ones he shared with his father and mother to his sister, his ex-wife, the love for his second wife, friends and children. Each relationship is connected with memories, thoughts and emotions that were enough to overwhelm me at various points.

The book is more of an elegy of aging, memory, loss and the relationship of the body and the soul to say. Winter Journal is personal and maybe that is why readers can connect to it, as it is written that way, without the impersonal. Paul Auster’s musings of his life till his sixty-four years is happy, sad, bittersweet and human above everything else. I remember the first time I started reading Auster, when I picked up The New York Trilogy, and since then I have read everything that he has written.

Winter Journal brings to surface life as is. The daily living and the losses that come with age and assessed in the later years are written about beautifully in this book. You should read this book if you want to connect and know about a writer’s life – the intimate details of writing as well, of memories that abound and life only but to be lived.

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Book Review: Everything You Know by Zoe Heller

Title: Everything You Know
Author: Zoe Heller
Publisher: Picador USA
ISBN: 978-1-250-00374-4
Genre: Literary Fiction
Pages: 203
Source: Publisher
Rating: 4/5

There is always a good time to take you out of the reader’s block situation and for me that book in the recent past was “Everything you Know” by Zoe Heller. I remember the one and only book I had read by her earlier – Notes on a Scandal, which I was enthralled by. The writing style, the setting and the plot of the book was beyond great.

Zoe Heller’s book, “Everything you Know” is actually the first one written by her and I was not surprised by the beauty of the language at all. It just gave me an idea of the lucidity that came through in Notes on a Scandal. Everything you Know is about Willy Muller and his life. Willy Muller is an unusual character, someone who you might meet and stop and think about. He could be distasteful and yet he is just like you and I in most ways.

Willy Muller is recuperating from a heart attack in Mexico, and trying very hard to write a script of a celebrity’s memoirs – the writer’s block emerges and he cannot write. His girlfriend Penny, one of the plastically enhanced women and not too bright, is with him. One fine day he receives a call from his sister in England, informing him that their mother is dead. He rushes to England and the ghosts of the past haunt him all over again. Willy had to leave England with a bad reputation of being indicted for killing his wife in a domestic fight. He appeals and is set free. His daughters think he was responsible for their mother’s death. The second daughter commits suicide and leaves a diary. But of course Willy reads it and his life begins to unravel – one piece at a time. His answers and his questions merge and he wonders more, seeking answers, finding a way to live.

It is not easy to write a novel of this kind and accommodate everything in less than 300 pages. The writing is in your face and doesn’t let up for a single bit. Knowing the plot, it is depressive at times, but a fantastic read. Zoe Heller uses her craft very intelligently – without giving away too much and making readers think for themselves.

This is just one example of her superlative writing: “If I am a shit, I used to tell myself defiantly in those days, so be it.”

Zoe Heller has a linear style of writing. The jumping of past to present and back is sometimes overwhelming but works for the plot in most ways. The dialogues are perfectly tuned to the plot, the supporting characters play their part when needed fantastically and the plot is something else – from madness to crime to getting a grip on reality. Everything You Know is a great read that tells a lot about the human condition and the answers we seek, when sometimes they are right there in front of us.

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Book Review: You Deserve Nothing by Alexander Maksik

Title: You Deserve Nothing
Author: Alexander Maksik
Publisher: Europa Editions
ISBN: 978-1609450489
Genre: Literary Fiction
Pages: 336
Source: Personal Copy
Rating: 4/5

You Deserve Nothing by Alexander Maksik is based on a true story and I just came to know of it while I was writing the review. It then may be changes the entire tone of the book for me (but obviously) and goes on to becoming more than just a read which I enjoyed to some extent. However, when the reader knows of the story having its roots in what happened for real then the entire perception changes. Especially in a story like this one – of an affair – between a teacher and his student.

Alexander Maksik worked as a teacher for the senior English class at the American School of Paris for five years before he was expelled for having an affair with one of the students. The book opens with three perspectives – of one teacher and two students, who have now aged and reflect on the year of their school life that changed everything. Will (the teacher) is now thirty-eight and his students, Gilad and Marie are twenty-four and twenty-five respectively. The book deals with not only the affair, but also the meaning of life. What does it take to life? What does literature mean to people? What can be made of literature and relate it to life?

The story starts when Gilad and Marie are students at an International School in Paris, the IFS (the name was changed). They are from privileged backgrounds – living life in the fast lane (some of the students) and Will Silver is a popular tenth grade English teacher. Marie is not Will’s student and cannot help but flirt with him and be enamored by his existence. Gilad on the other hand is his student of existential literature and wants to impress him at any cost. Both Marie and Gilad are in love with Will or may be the idea of what Will represents – confidence, charm, intelligence and the drive to live than just survive. Will then has an affair with Marie and things start spiraling down to another level. That is what the book chronicles – literature, life, art and an affair.

The writing is told from three perspectives, so the tone changes with every character. The setting does as well, most of the time. What I liked about the writing was that it did not take sides, considering it would have been easier to do so. What I didn’t like was the fact that there should have been more detailing to characters. For instance, something more about Marie’s background than just cardboard cut outs for parents. At the same time, the biggest plus of reading this book was the fact that literature was so seamlessly merged into it. Will’s passion for teaching and literature were made evident and also were metaphorical to some extent – choices such as “The Stranger” by Camus and “As I Lay Dying” by Faulkner convey Will’s state of mind in an effective manner. At some point though, while writing this review I am compelled to think of the girl (Marie) and what came of her after the affair and the expulsion of the author. However that may be is not for me to decide or draw an assumption on. Gilad’s voice on the other hand is real and honest and about coming to terms with how he feels for his teacher.

I would recommend this book to readers who love a little literature in their books and who want to know something more beyond what lies on the surface. You Deserve Nothing may be a true story, but I like how it has transformed itself on paper as a work of fiction.

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Book Review: Narcopolis by Jeet Thayil

Title: Narcopolis
Author: Jeet Thayil
Publisher: Faber and Faber, Penguin Books
ISBN: 978-0571283071
Genre: Literary Fiction
Pages: 304
Source: Publisher
Rating: 4/5

Narcopolis by Jeet Thayil is a book that doesn’t leave you till you have finished it. It is not only a disturbing read, but also highly intense. It captures all elements of Bombay, who is coincidentally the hero or heroine of the story, which is what I loved the most about the novel. Bombay is the protagonist as it always is – harsh, sometimes sweet, sometimes bitter, sometimes cunning and sometimes giving, and the action of the book is set here, for its characters to play on this wide canvas, to let their emotions and feelings take a different turn altogether.

Narcopolis is everything you imagined but were too scared to say it out aloud – blue smoke, drugs, opium drug dens, heroin and Bombay at the heart of it all – the glitter of the city juxtaposed with its bleakness, its gutters and its diseases of race, class, religion, violence and death.

Amidst all this is Dimple and this is her heart-breaking tale. Dimple is a eunuch and her story unfolds as does the story of the city and then there is also the enigmatic Mr. Lee from China who lends a totally different approach to the story. The story takes you on a roller-coaster ride – and sometimes the funny part is, you don’t know which turn is going to come next. Bombay has various aspects to it as a city and Mr. Thayil has beautifully explored each and every one of its aspect.

The writing is packed with punches and more. It will not make you want to keep the book down at any point. At the same time you feel really bad when the book ends, because you don’t want it to. I remember Jeet Thayil reading poetry once at a book launch and I wondered why he didn’t write fiction. Now that he has, I am wondering when the next book will be out. All in all, Narcopolis is a great read and I would recommend it to all.