Read 203 of 2021. Are You Enjoying? : Stories by Mira Sethi

Title: Are You Enjoying?: Stories
Author: Mira Sethi
Publisher: Bloomsbury India
ISBN: 978-1526643957
Genre: Short Stories, Contemporary Fiction Pages: 208
Source: Publisher
Rating: 4/5

With the onset of the lockdown last year, my mother and I watched Pakistani serials. We were reeling under the influence of Dhoop Kinare watched years ago and thought that Pakistani serials would be made the same way – with nuance. We were mistaken to a large extent. They were just like the K serials of India, barring a few. The same old upholding of values, same old serials seeped in patriarchy, the same old stories of sacrifice and love.

Why do I speak of these serials? Because Mira Sethi’s collection of stories set in Pakistan are refreshingly different and real unlike these shows. Or maybe these shows are also real, each depicting their own universe of events, and the truths that reside in them.

Mira Sethi’s collection of six stories and a novella is not only extraordinary but also immensely detailed, with an eye for pointing out the quirks, eccentricities, and to a large extent satirical. These stories are the much-needed representation we needed of the country. Maybe some of them even made me think of Zoya Akhtar’s movies. They seemed to be set in the same milieu. The rich with their immense set of problems, insecurities, constantly finding ways to escape what is being served to them by life or by fate as a consequence of their deeds (maybe). Whether it is a man who is recovering from his divorce and falls in love with a neighbour in “Mini Apple” or a young actress who wants to make something of her life in “Breezy Blessings”, or even if it is the matriarch in “A Life of Its Own” (which is in two parts) – all of them are struggling with something or the other – their lives are no different than what you and I live. Sethi draws from people she knows, irrespective of whether rich or not. The stories matter and they speak for themselves.

My personal favourite was Mini Apple till I read “Tomboy” and fell in love with the story. The understanding between the friends Asha and Zarrar, as they get married and continue living, hiding their sexuality from society at large, spoke volumes to me as a gay man living in India. We think we have managed to break free, but have we really?

Mira’s stories constantly defy, they are thinly veiled in wit and humour, sometimes even to make a point, but mostly these stories reveal the human condition and the spaces we inhabit. These stories could be set anywhere in the world, but Mira’s Pakistan is the modern country we need to know of – its contradictions, the complexities, the night life, the lives that are not supposed to live to the fullest, and the constant battles of power and desire. It is the Pakistan that speaks volumes, if you read carefully between the lines.

On the surface these stories look simple but let them not fool you. They are anything but easy. They are an easy read for sure, but their impact lasts longer than you think it would. Sethi’s writing is brazen, feisty even, it is refreshing and more than what you have already heard of it. It is a collection that has rightfully earned every bit of praise. Read it.

Here is the Beehive by Sarah Crossan

Title: Here is the Beehive
Author: Sarah Crossan
Publisher: Bloomsbury Circus
ISBN: 9781526619518
Genre: Literary Fiction
Pages: 288
Source: Publisher
Rating: 5/5

Here is the Beehive is a story of a relationship, of love, of loss, and how the world seems when the beloved is no longer in it. At what point do you start doubting love, only because both of you were married to different people? At what point do you not trust what was said, proclamations made after sex, vows declared after being drunk, the world offered on a platter when they were in a good mood?  Here is the Beehive is a story of all of this and so much more.

I had not read any Crossan before this. With this book, I think I will break that and read everything she has written (though most of it is YA literature, if I am not mistaken). Here is the Beehive is also perhaps about every relationship that we have with others – family, friends, acquaintances, best friends, lovers, and more. Though on the surface it is about the death of a lover, and what happens after to the lover left behind, it is also about all of the other relationships and the role they play in your life.

This verse novel has so much to say and yet sometimes it says so little and does a great job of it. Connor and Ana keep telling each other that they will leave their spouses but they don’t. They break up, come back together, break apart, and repeat the cycle, till he dies, and that’s the end of the relationship. Ana is left with nothing but grief and memories. The relationship isn’t healthy. Crossan shows its toxicity in full splendour, however, there is love.

Crossan’s writing is real – the small instances of validation when in love or lust, the small instances of grief that turn big, the need to know that you were loved – and that wasn’t just something you made up in your head – all of it is tended to with great attention and eye for detail. There are no winners or losers. There is only love and what happens when you fall hard without understanding the implications. No one is right or wrong. It just is.

January 2020 Reading Wrap-Up

The start of the year has been great. I wanted to read 20 books. Ended up reading 13. Not bad though, out of which two were graphic novels and one a picture book for children (seemingly). .

Books read transported me to so many lands and made me explore my own stance on issues and life in general. From a story of a marriage to a story of how a movie on Manto was made to a novel on racism in modern-day America to a book on Dara Shukoh, I’m quite pleased with the diverse reading. At the same time, it so happened organically that I ended up reading 12 books by women and 1 by a man. Also, thank you to all the publishers who sent these books.

Here are the titles with my ratings:

1. A Small Place by Jamaica Kincaid (5/5)
2. Grass by Keum Suk Gendry-Kim (5/5)
3. Exquisite Cadavers by Meena Kandasamy (4/5)
4. I Remember Beirut by Zeina Abirached (5/5)
5. Jaipur Journals by Namita Gokhale (4/5)
6. All my Goodbyes by Mariana Dimópulos (5/5)
7. Manto & I by Nandita Das (4/5)
8. North Station by Bae Suah (5/5)
9. The Beach at Night by Elena Ferrante (5/5)
10. Interior Chinatown by Charles Yu (5/5)
11. Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid (4/5)
12. So All is Peace by Vandana Singh-Lal (5/5)
13. The Emperor Who Never Was: Dara Shukoh in Mughal India by Supriya Gandhi (5/5)

This is my list. What have you read this month that has got you excited or made you want to recommend it to everyone you know? .

The Dutch House by Ann Patchett

Title: The Dutch House
Author: Ann Patchett
Publisher: Bloomsbury
ISBN: 978-1526618757
Genre: Literary Fiction
Pages: 352
Source: Publisher
Rating: 5 stars

The Dutch House by Ann Patchett is a novel of many wonders. It is a box of things that are seen at first glance, only to discover a secret opening, where new things emerge from. This book gives, and gives, and gives some more. As a reader, as a fan of Patchett’s works, as an ardent admirer of what she puts to paper, my experience with The Dutch House has been surreal, mixed with nostalgia, and snatches of memory of my own childhood (though not this morbid or unfortunate).

What is a novel? What should be a novel? Is there such a thing as an ideal novel? Who decides that, if there is something like that? The critic? The reader? Or all of us, trying to find answers to questions of meaning of life, hope, and love as we turn the pages of novel after novel, searching for truths unknown as we move from one work of fiction to another?

The Dutch House is a fairy-tale. It is also gothic in nature when you least expect it to be. It is also full of misery, and then surprises you with moments of hope and togetherness. It is the story of two siblings – how they lose their home, how they understand each other (or not), and how they reclaim some of their lost home.

We are introduced to Danny (the narrator), and his older sister Maeve right at the beginning of the book. Their introduction to their would-be stepmother Andrea is where the book starts, and that’s when the series of events unfold in front of the reader – travelling between the past and the present of the novel.

The fairy-tale element runs strong, with a fair share of the Gothic that adds to the strong plot. Not to forget the way Patchett builds on the characters – from the housekeepers to the people that enter and exit from the siblings’ lives. Each character and each plot point is thought of to the last minute detail and maybe therefore this novel is as close to being perfect or it already is in more than one way.

What I found most interesting was the use of narration – by using the first-person narrator technique in a novel where time is of most importance, we see events unfold through two perspectives – the younger Danny and the older Danny. A doppelgänger effect, adding another layer to the complexity of the book.

The Dutch House is deceptively simple. It is a book that seems so easy to read on the surface, and it is. However, it is in joining the dots that are far and wide that adds to the reading experience. It is for this reason and more that Patchett is one of my top 10 favourite writers and will always be. She makes you feel, she makes you internalise how you think and feel as you read her books, and more than anything else she reminds you that being humane is the heart of it all.

City of Girls by Elizabeth Gilbert

Title: City of Girls
Author: Elizabeth Gilbert
Publisher: Bloomsbury
ISBN: 978-1526615237
Genre: Contemporary Fiction, Historical Fiction
Pages: 480
Source: Publisher
Rating: 4 stars

I am just going to go on record and say that I absolutely love Elizabeth Gilbert’s writing. I remember the time Eat, Pray, Love had released in India and had become an overnight sensation. The literary snobs (as they are called) were pretty hesitant to even read it, often dismissing it as “chick-lit” (hate this term by the way). And then “The Signature of all Things” was published a couple of years later and it was a literary sensation. More than anything else, just the way it was written – the characters, the setting, the prose – all of it. But this review is about City of Girls.

 City of Girls is a novel that seeps you into its timeline, makes you feel for the characters, and makes you aware of the fact that you are under a spell as long as you’re reading it. City of Girls may not also be everyone’s cup of tea. It is slow and takes time to build up, but I loved every bit of it because it is atmospheric and lures the reader in – with every turn of the page.

 The book is set in New York of the 1940s – the world of theatre at that. Vivian Morris is eighty-nine years old, looking back on her life in the 40s – freshly kicked out of Vassar College, arriving at Manhattan to live with her aunt Peg who owns the crumbling theatre called the Lily Playhouse. This is where the story begins with oddball characters, and a mistake committed by Vivian that sends her world twirling headlong upside down and more.

 This is the plot of the book to put quite simply. The book is about growing-up at a time when the world was changing at a neck-breaking speed and to keep up with all of it. Of course, the book is also about war and what it does to people. Gilbert writes about it realistically and yet not losing her touch of empathy and emotional quotient.

City of Girls may seem extremely slow in bits and parts (especially in the middle), however, just like any other book it works for some and doesn’t for the other. Gilbert’s writing prowess is the same or even better when it comes to this read, and please don’t compare The Signature of All Things to this one, because they are vastly different. What most certainly worked for me was the transition from the 1940s to the current time and Gilbert has done a stunning job of bringing it all together, in one book. Read it if historical fiction interests you, or if you are comfortable with a book taking its own time.