Ex Libris: 100+ Books to Read and Reread by Michiko Kakutani

Title: Ex Libris: 100+ Books to Read and Reread
Author: Michiko Kakutani
Publisher: William Collins
ISBN: 978-0008421953
Genre: Books about Books, Essays, Literary Theory
Pages: 304
Source: Personal Copy 
Rating: 2.5/5 

I love books about books. I do. I’m a sucker for them. I was excited for “Ex Libris: 100 Books to Read and Reread” by Michiko Kakutani, the former chief book critic of The New York Times. I was excited given the kind of reading she has done and the books she must have connected with over the years, but I was mildly disappointed to see only most “white” writers on this list, and more than anything else no variety as such.

There’s the same old Donna Tartt, the good old Tolkien, Steinbeck, Atwood, Orwell, Tara Westover, and David Foster Wallace. Not that there’s anything wrong with it, but I expected more. There is Jhumpa Lahiri, the Márquez, the Zadie Smith, and Colson Whitehead. It somehow doesn’t make me discover or yearn to read a particular title. Some I won’t even bother reading cover to cover. I wish this was a varied and more diverse list. It just didn’t do anything for me. Yes, it’s produced beautifully. The illustrations are quite amazing and all of that. But I wish there was more substance. But by all means pick it up, if you love lists (like I do). I might even try a reading project of this to read and reread all these books (well, or maybe not).

Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up With Me by Mariko Tamaki and Rosemary Valero-O’Connell

Title: Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up With Me 
Author: Mariko Tamaki 
Illustrated by Rosemary Valero O-‘Connell 
Publisher: First Second 
ISBN: 978-1626722590
Genre: Graphic Novels, LGBT
Pages: 304 
Source: Publisher 
Rating: 5/5 

Just as the title goes, the book is about Laura Dean, the popular girl at school who keeps breaking up with her girlfriend, Freddy Riley. Well, in a nutshell, this is what the book is about, but there is so much more to it. This graphic novel goes to the heart of teenage dating, sexual orientation, and how does one cope with all of it and more growing up.

This is about a toxic relationship and what it takes to get out of it, or to even understand oneself better while in it or not. Mariko Tamaki does an amazing job of depicting the on and off, and off and on cycle – so amazing that it hits home too hard. At one point, the reader can see themselves in the book, because of course relationships are the same – well almost, and so is the toxicity sometimes that comes with it. At the same time, though the protagonists are teenagers, this book will resonate with readers of any age. We have all been down that road, after all, in one way or the other.

Rosemary Valero O-‘Connell’s illustrations in pink and grey are gentle, grounded in angst and romance. The LGBT cast so to say in the book is diverse, and the plot makes you turn the page faster.  The narrative is sometimes quirky but it all fits in beautifully at the end.

Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up with Me is about realising your worth in relationships – be it any kind and told with great sensitivity. I wish this book was written when I was younger – basically in my teenage years and needed to know so much more about loving oneself and how sometimes the one you love the most will keep breaking your heart, over and over again. Till you put a stop to it.

The Day Before Today: Lockdown Stories by Gayatri Gill

Title: The Day Before Today: Lockdown Stories
Author: Gayatri Gill
Illustrations: Niyati Singh
Publisher: Speaking Tiger Books 
Genre: Short Stories
Pages: 160
Source: Publisher
Rating: 4/5

This had to happen sooner or later. It happened sooner. The Corona virus is still in the air and we have about four to five (maybe more) books already about the virus, stories of people – the privileged and not-so-privileged, stories of lust and liaisons – the list goes on, I think. And in all of this, I bit the bullet and read, “The Day Before Today: Lockdown Stories” by Gayatri Gill, illustrated beautifully by Niyati Singh.

“The Day Before Today: Lockdown Stories” as the title suggests is a collection of lockdown stories – of people losing their mental faculties, some gaining them, some about the have-nots, and all of them about how our world has changed so drastically, and yet somehow some things still seem the same.

Of children not going to school, of couples bickering and it leading to something more, of mental health issues getting triggered, and taking a life of its own – veering in a direction that could be calamitous – all these stories have the human condition at the heart of them – the condition in times such as these. What happens to people in containment zones, a love story of a ghost, Zoom parties, and in all of this what happens of the essential services workers, Gill lays it all out for the reader in a witty, sharp, and biting manner.

And of course, in such a collection, as you move from story to story it might seem repetitive, but I think even in that, each story emerges as unique and thrilling. Gill’s writing is precise, exercising great brevity, and not using words for the sake of them. Her observations are point-on and make you a part of the story, without realising it. “The Day Before Today: Lockdown Stories” is a melancholic goodbye to the time gone by and what’s to come, whatever it might be. It is about the uncertain future, present, and reminiscing about the past – intermingling all of it in this unique collection of stories.

Prelude to a Riot by Annie Zaidi

Title: Prelude to a Riot
Author: Annie Zaidi
Publisher: Aleph Book Company
ISBN: 978-9388292818
Genre: Literary Fiction
Pages: 192
Source: Publisher
Rating: 5 stars

“Prelude to a Riot” by Annie Zaidi is a book that needs to be read and reread. It is a book of our times, for our times, and while you are reading it, there is melancholy, a rush of sadness – because we are all trying to hold on to something, a sense of secularism, of brotherhood, of living that isn’t dictated by what you eat or how you pray.

The book is in the form of soliloquies, newspaper columns, letters to the editor, and what goes on in Garuda teacher’s classroom – in a town in South of India – an unnamed town – that is the center of what’s to come, a town that is at the cusp of tension, the rage that is silently brewing – a riot about to happen.

Prelude to a Riot is about the silent emotional riots that take place. Instances of a Muslim girl being forced to eat pork by her Hindu friends, of friends divided and a bright student who fears his family’s safety and just wants them to leave. There is no other side. I tried very hard to gauge if there was the other side to things – but there isn’t. When there is a riot, one community, one religion, one side – always suffers the most, and that sadly is the one of the minority, the outnumbered, the ones whose agency has been taken away from them.

This book is about the current socio-political climate – of the not-so-secular-environment we are living in – of Hindus being pitted against Muslims – this book is about what happens before it all explodes. Of how we pick sides, of how we behave, of how all our relationships are tethered to which side the wind blows, and what comes of it.

Zaidi’s writing hits the bone. It cuts through, and it hurts. That’s the intent. And yet there are moments of empathy, of kindness – far and few in between, but never veering from what she wants us to read and feel. The soliloquies give us some insight to the mind and hearts of characters – and yet it is only one-sided, there is no dialogue, or room for conversation with anyone else – no one to tell what you are going through, and all sentiments are simmering under – way under, till they find a way through tools of anger and resentment.

Dead Girls by Selva Almada. Translated from the Spanish by Annie McDermott

Dead Girls by Selva Almada could have been set in any part of the world, and that’s a tragedy really. Dead Girls, as the title suggests is a story of dead girls – the cases of three small-town teenagers murdered in the 1980s – three deaths whose perpetrators went unpunished, and there was nothing done about it. Three deaths without culprits even – just being overlooked – a casual affair almost. 

Dead Girls is about a time when violence against women goes unpunished (still does, doesn’t it? For most part?). There was nothing specifically outstanding about the women who died, nothing spectacular – just the virtue of them being women. That was enough for them to be dead. And that made me stop and think about India. India and Argentina in that sense are the same. Well, like I said it could’ve been set in any part of the world – given how femicide occurs everywhere. In some parts of the world not very much, in some others too much to want to warrant forgetfulness. 

Almada’s story is about three women – Andrea, Maria Luisa, and Sarita – a journalistic record of sorts (yet fiction and yet not) about what happened – written in the vein of In Cold Blood by Capote. It could be the story of so many women who are victims of violence, and some whose stories don’t see the light of the day. Crimes that go unreported. Bodies that are never found, and lives that aren’t acknowledged.

Almada takes into account all of it – the story morphs from what the narrator’s mother said to what someone else’s friend said – the friend who lived, the sister who survived, and accounts of other lives that are spoken about by way of gossip and nothing else. The writing doesn’t give any closure to the deaths of these women – don’t read this book expecting that. People are always judging these three women – their career choices, what they wore, how they behaved, somehow making their deaths justifiable. What hits the hardest is that it still happens almost everywhere. The negating of women’s voices, the drowning of what they have to say, and almost whitewashing all that took place and happened. 

The translation by Annie McDermott is on-spot – from the smells of a small crowded bus, to the food they eat, to the description of a run-down building, each sentence shines – resonating the original – interspersed with words from Spanish, and making you at times as a reader feel the reading experience is complete. 

Dead Girls is steeped in mystery, patriarchy and what it means and does, and ultimately validating lives lost, not only of these three women, but of so many more, so many – every single day.