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.

 

The Last House Guest by Megan Miranda

Title: The Last House Guest
Author: Megan Miranda
Publisher: Atlantic Books
ISBN: 978-1786492913
Imprint: Corvus
Genre: Thriller
Pages: 352
Source: Publisher
Rating: 4 stars

I’d forgotten how much fun it is to read a thriller. I was too caught up reading literary fiction, till I picked up this thriller I had requested from Atlantic Books UK, and couldn’t stop reading it until I was done. That’s the true worth of a great thriller, I guess. You have to read it in one-sitting. The Last Guest House has all the tropes of a good thriller – environment, the right kind of pace, characters that are being looked on with suspicion, police that are clueless and earnest at the same time, and a local detective who seems to know it all.

The Last House Guest is about a wealthy woman named Sadie who dies unexpectedly on a holiday. The destination: Littleport, Maine – a vacation spot for the wealthy, and the people in the town who take care of them. Friendship strikes between a visitor and a local – Sadie Loman and Avery Greer. A solid friendship – that comes to an abrupt end when Sadie is found dead, and well of course the one under big-time suspicion is Avery.

You might think you know how this will pan out (as did I) but you are wrong (as was I). The thriller elements of The Last House Guest , like I said are just about right – including the timeline jump – past to present which works all the time for me as a reader. The twists and turns seemed generic sometimes, but I am willing to let go of that because the story reads in a very straightforward manner and that helps. The book does pack in the right amount of punch (apologies for using this word), just that sometimes you also wish that there was more of the characters’ backstory and motivations. All in all, a great read – a thriller I enjoyed after a long time.

Bingo Love by Tee Franklin, Jenn St. Onge, Joy San, and Genevieve FT

Title: Bingo Love
Author: Tee Franklin
Illustrators: Jenn St. Onge, Joy San, and Genevieve FT
Publisher: Image Comics
ISBN: 978-1534307506
Genre: Comics, LGBT,
Pages: 88
Source: Personal Copy
Rating: 3 stars

Maybe it was just me, but I was expecting a lot out of Bingo Love after reading so much about it online and it being included in almost every 2018 best book list. While it is a great book, it yet disappoints in some ways. I was very happy reading it, and that too month of Pride and all that, yet something felt less and not up to the mark. Wish there was more to it.

To cut to the chase, the story is about two women Hazel Johnson and Mari McCray, who meet as girls at a church bingo in 1963 and fall in love at the very first sight. They hesitate to tell each other and when they do, their families tear them apart. They then meet again, decades later, now in their mid-60s, once again at another church bingo (Loved this part by the way. It made me weep and how), and then the story begins from thereon.

What I love about the comic is of course that it is diverse, of course that it is about two women who love each other very deeply and the love is still alive and lit even after decades of changes taking place. What it didn’t work with me was the entire time thing – racing to 2030s and then 2050s I think, which wasn’t needed. Also, the book was too rushed to encompass or make the reader feel the love between Hazel and Mari.

I am elated that comics such as Bingo Love exist. I really am. I just feel that it should explore more, and not be dealt with in a rush. It left me wanting a lot more. But you must read it, to understand love is love. Give it to children, to young adults, and to adults who also need to understand that love is love.

 

Rules for Visiting by Jessica Francis Kane

Title: Rules for Visiting
Author: Jessica Francis Kane
Publisher: Granta Books
ISBN: 9781783784646
Genre: Literary Fiction
Pages: 304
Source: Publisher
Rating: 4 stars

Jessica Francis Kane’s book, Rules for Visiting grows on you. Much like the trees and grass spoken about in the book. Much like how they are an intrinsic part of the book, as the protagonist is a gardener. May Attaway, is a 40-year-old gardener who lives in her parents’ home with her father, an 80-year-old man inhabiting the basement (his own accord). May’s mother died when she was 40 and this kicks off May’s choice to change some things about her life. The primary one being to go and visit four of her women friends, with whom she has lost touch.

Thank God that this book isn’t one about intimacy of women that will give you the warm cuddly feeling. It is an honest book about honest relationships, and how they are in life – twisted, damaged, complicated, and yet the kind that leave space for repair.

Her friends’ lives are something else altogether – one of them is going through a divorce (quite expected), another is a new wife and a stepmother to two boys, and as the book progresses you see how May changes as a person (not altogether but in small ways). Kane’s May is flawed and knows it. She is aware, and tries not to be a bother when visiting her friends. The rules for visiting comes from there – it also signifies how we have to make our spaces without it being an intrusion in homes we visit.

Rules for Visiting is hilarious, often a lot of fun, and also has a lot of twists and turns to it that are touching and ironic as well. The book is about friendship – what we take for granted and let go for years, and what we come back to. And then it connects to the environment beautifully with descriptions of trees, and what they stand for when it comes to life and living.

Also, the character of May that tries very hard to be reliable, but is sometimes just taken in by what she sees around her. I loved the fact that she was so human. Rules for Visiting is about the lost art of friendship and what it takes in our world clogged and bogged down by social media to rekindle it, to get in touch without any guilt or fear, and ensure that relationships last beyond just a screen. Rules for Visiting is the kind of book that perhaps most people will relate to instantly. A must-read, in my opinion.

Comics For A Strange World: A Book of Poorly Drawn Lines by Reza Farazmand

Title: Comics For A Strange World: A Book of Poorly Drawn Lines
Author: Reza Farazmand
Publisher: Plume Books, Penguin Random House USA
ISBN: 9780735219885
Genre: Comics
Pages: 197
Source: Personal Copy
Rating: 5 stars

First read of June 2019. Yes it’s a book of comic strips and yes it counts. I’ve been following Poorly Drawn Lines since some time now and love what Reza does with not only his seemingly simple art, but also so profound when it comes to the writing of the comics.

Comics for a Strange World is the kind of book that worries and also strangely comforts as well. It is the kind of comic that upsets you, because what Reza has laid out – some of it might actually come true. Global warming is a reality. So is our dependency on technology. There are alternative realities, taking us through space and time, and some really bizarre scenarios.

The entire book is a parody of human life, much like the account here on Instagram. Follow him if you aren’t. Also, the book mocks modern age like no other. It’s a testimony to our troubled times and honestly nothing is too weird. The book is divided into 5 sections: The Human Experience, Social Creatures, Changes, A Strange World, and Thoughts on Things. Each is superbly funny and outlandish. Read it.