Homeland Elegies by Ayad Akhtar

Title: Homeland Elegies
Author: Ayad Akhtar
Publisher: Tinder Press, Hachette UK
ISBN: 978-1472276889
Genre: Literary Fiction, Autofiction
Pages: 368
Source: Publisher
Rating: 5/5

Homeland Elegies as a book cannot be bracketed into any genre. It is all of it and more. It is a novel, it is a memoir, autofiction, autobiography, metafiction, non-fiction, and maybe even more. Whatever it is, it is a brilliant book of so many ideas, thoughts, emotions, and how a country once great and known for inclusion has cracked, slipped, and torn at its seams.

The book is about immigrants, their children, and the idea of America. Akhtar’s parents moved to America from Pakistan in 1968. His father took to America like a fish to water. His mother did not. She forever mourned the loss of home. His father, a surgeon loves America for what it is, and believes things will get better (post 9/11 and more). The book is about Akhtar’s life – a kid from Wisconsin, a writer struggling in New York, rubbing shoulders with the greats and yet not fitting in. The book is about so many nameless immigrants, and also the ones that Akhtar interacts with, who are scared about their children’s future in the land of great and plenty.

It is a story of a father and his son and how they both view home differently. Homeland Elegies speaks of so much, there is so much contained in one book – immigration, identity, home, politics, the arts, and decline of hope, though trying very hard to make sense of what goes on with optimism.

Akhtar’s writing is candid, vibrant, introspective, and a brilliantly sketched portrait of a family in a fractured land. I loved the fact that as a reader you don’t realize what’s fiction or fact in this book and honestly, after the first ten pages or so I stopped thinking about that. All I cared about is where the story was taking me, and it took me to all the right places about an unhinged country and its people.

 

 

Tin Man by Sarah Winman

Title: Tin Man
Author: Sarah Winman
Publisher: Tinder Press, Hachette Book Group
ISBN: 978-1472252159
Genre: Literary Fiction
Pages: 208
Source: Publisher
Rating: 5 Stars

A lot of people were talking about “Tin Man” before I got down to reading it. I was the late-comer at the party and I was only too happy about it because I went reading the book without any expectations or knowing anything about it. I am so glad that happened because I loved the book. Me loving the book would be an understatement in my opinion. It was more than love. It was something that I cannot put my finger on and so it is very tough to describe my emotions as I read this book and also after I put it down.

“Tin Man” by Sarah Winman is a story of a painting, of a woman who believes that boys can also appreciate beauty and be tender, of two boys Ellis and Michael who are best of friends and grow up together and a woman named Annie who walks into their lives and everything changes and still remains the same. I am putting it very loosely but let me also tell you that this book is magical. It transports you in the world it creates and will have you weeping for more. I do not exaggerate when I say this. At least, it sure did happen to me this way.

Ellis and Michael cannot be separated. They become men. Annie suddenly enters their lives and stays. The three of them live. Till something changes and then the story begins. Actually, the story begins way earlier with Ellis’ mother winning a painting (Van Gogh’s Sunflowers) at a raffle, which is how the book begins.

The first half of the book is Ellis. The second half is Michael which is heartbreaking. These just happen to be men in love. There is no agenda here. You shouldn’t even read it this way. The prose is so tender, graceful, raw and overwhelming – that for a short book I had to shut it and get back to it after a day or two. I couldn’t finish it in one sitting as I thought I would. I am not going to tell you what happens as I don’t want to give away too much.

Winman writes beautifully. There are so many love stories in this short book and mind you she doesn’t get soppy. We go back and forth through their lives and can only empathize with the men and what it must have been for them. It is heavy on the emotions and a little less when it comes to descriptions which I didn’t mind at all. The loneliness of love, the anguish of separation and the redemption that someday we will be together is what makes you love this small gem of a book so much.