Read 6 of 2023. The Possession by Annie Ernaux. Translated from the French by Anna Moschovakis

Jealousy. The rawness of this emotion perhaps cannot be compared to any other. It slices you open, and you lay bleeding – for all to see, because it is visible – that’s what this emotion ensures – to come in plain view. It is as though you are different person under its spell, and hence you are possessed – as Ernaux was when jealous of an ex-lover’s current partner.

There is no timeline in this very slim work about this emotion. And like all Ernaux’s books, this memoir feels as though it belongs to the reader – it is always that close to home (at least for me). “The Possession” made me see myself as that person in love – the one that is obsessed with the other – the one that will not let go, the one that seeks closure but is unable to find it, the one that seethes in his own agony and suffering, day after day, wanting the same for the lover that once was.

She wants him back (is it because someone else has him now?). She years. She longs. She wants. “I want to fuck you and make you forget the other woman”, she says, and you know that everything before and after doesn’t matter. Ernaux’s writing is not only lucid but also it is the story of writing this book – how she wants to pour her emotions on paper, how that is perhaps the only way she will find some comfort – she may have given up everything else in the name of love or desire, but not her writing.

Anna Moschovakis’ translation is stunning, and you can tell by every sentence and every word used in all its glory, and brevity. Ernaux’s emotions I think may not have been easy to put on paper even in the original, and for Moschovakis to translate it the way she has is commendable.

The Possession entered me through its pages, and I have a very strong feeling that it will not let go for a while now. And I also feel the same way. I also want to be the other. The one who has him. The several others who are now with my several hims.

Read 1 of 2023. Tomorrow, And Tomorrow, And Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin

Let me just say, right at the start, that this book is all about kindness, and more than anything about kindness in friendship. I think everyone who thinks of themselves as a friend to someone must read this book. It will only strengthen your bond with that one friend or more than one friend you hold close to your heart. And also, there’s none of the preachy stuff, nor does it try to be a self-help guide in any way. If nothing, Zevin shows relationships for what they are: messy, complicated, but in the end all-enduring.

Yes, this book is about two friends who meet when they are kids – when the meaning of friendship is known, but not about its endurance. They meet in a hospital – playing video games – what they know and love best – and video games chart the course of their lives – well in some manner or the other – through their friendships, loves, falling-out, anxiety, depression, disabilities, and above all making them realise their worth in each other’s lives. It is about misunderstandings, about race and class, about how the other is treated in the United States of America, of privilege, of disability (the most honest portrayal of it I have read in contemporary literature), and of second and third chances – to make us feel how after all we are all waiting to reset whatever happens to us, and start anew.

“Tomorrow, And Tomorrow, And Tomorrow” came to me at a time when I suppose I needed it the most. It made me see the power of relationships, and how flawed we all are in the larger scheme of things. Through video games – across decades, Zevin’s writing takes the reader through so much – the universe in which video games are made, the intricacies of each game, the dynamics of Sadie, Sam, and Marx, of how it is to find solace in a world that is unreal, but is more real to you because of the comfort it provides, and ultimately the question of love, and what it really is.

Through the book, I found myself thinking of my relationships with people – of what they were, what they could’ve been, and what they are. The book moved me to tears in so many places – Zevin doesn’t sentimentalise emotions – she doesn’t write to make you weep or cry – she just tells the story that she wants to, and all emotions come along the way. I experienced the same while reading, “The Collected Works of A.J. Fikry” and recommended it very highly to one and all.

“Tomorrow, And Tomorrow, And Tomorrow” is a book I cannot stop recommending. Please read it, if you haven’t already. I am just so happy that it happened to be my first read of 2023, and just as sad, because it ended.

Books and Authors mentioned in the book:

• Homer
• Odyssey
• Ulysses
• The White Album by Joan Didion
• Shakespeare
• Twelfth Night
• Macbeth
• The Marriage of Beth and Boo
• Hamlet
• King Lear
• The Mikado
• The Tempest
• A Brief History of Time
• Kiki’s Delivery Service
• A Chorus Line
• The Call of the Wild
• Call it Courage
• The Hero’s Journey
• The Language Instinct
• Swiss Family Robinson

Read 65 of 2022. In the Language of Remembering: The Inheritance of Partition by Aanchal Malhotra

Title: In the Language of Remembering: The Inheritance of Partition
Author: Aanchal Malhotra
Publisher: HarperCollins India
ISBN: 9789354899140
Genre: Nonfiction, Partition Literature Pages: 756
Source: Publisher
Rating: 5/5

I love Partition Literature – it tells me about my ancestors and their way of life, which I didn’t bother asking about when they were alive. Partition Literature is more than just novels or oral history. It goes beyond grief, loss, and belonging. I love Partition Literature because I was always so safe knowing who I was, not fearing about displacement, not knowing any better, till I did.

My grandparents – both maternal and paternal – migrated to India in July 1947, right towards the end, from Pakistan. I was all of eight years old when my paternal grandmother died and I wasn’t born when my paternal grandfather died. My parents don’t remember much about the Partition either. My mother never asked her parents about it. Neither did my aunts and uncles on both sides. That says a lot about trauma and grief, about what we remember and what we forget, and what we do not want to know about.

In the last couple of years, I have read Aanchal Malhotra’s Remnants of a Separation at least three times to make sense of where I come from – at least some of it. I believe art saves you, and it does, and it has, whenever I have turned to it. It is painful to read about the Partition but in a way it is also very cathartic. As a third-generation resident of independent India – who has only heard about the Partition in snatches of stray conversations – trying to make sense of pain and loss, reading about the events can be a means of providing closure, even if in the smallest of ways.

Aanchal Malhotra’s In the Language of Remembering is a book for me, for people who belong to my generation or after, for anyone who wants to understand the Partition from where we are now. It is a book about remembering – of conversations Malhotra had over the years with generations of Indians, Pakistanis, and Bangladeshis. She speaks to them about identity, about the relevance of the Partition today, whether we wish to talk about the Partition, and the need to preserve the painful past.

While growing up I used to think of the Partition as an event in my grandparents’ lives. It was cut off from my existence. I didn’t realise till much later that I too am a product of the painful past in one sense or the other – of two people whose parents had memories, who could never forget what they endured, about how they crossed the border, and how long it took them to build a new life.

In the Language of Remembering has been published at a time when the country is in the grips of a destructive chaos – when relationships have taken a back seat and religion is at the fore, when Muslims are being othered, and people are being categorised as “minority” and “majority”. The book has been published at a time when we need it the most – to understand where we have come from and how far we have come, and what it will take to be truly secular.

I never understood what the Partition meant to me, and how it perhaps even impacted me till I read about it. It all began with Kamleshwar’s Partitions in the year 2000, and after twenty-two years and having read about some forty-and-odd books on the subject, I feel we still don’t have enough Partition Literature. We constantly need to look and relook at it, to understand ourselves better, and perhaps generate some more empathy within us – to be kinder to each other and ourselves. I admit, it isn’t as simple as that. Sadly, we have a long way to go since maps and borders continue to be an integral part of our existence, whether we like it or not.

In the Language of Remembering makes us aware of what we carry within ourselves. Malhotra’s book is about regrets, losses, hopes, about what we gained, and what we were separated from. It is about the choices one made, about family, about generations, and how some incidents are not passed over, not told as stories, not revisited because of how painful they are and the need to talk about them – both in order to look ahead and constantly keep looking back so as not to lose a part of ourselves.

Read 236 of 2021. Five Tuesdays in Winter: Stories by Lily King

Title: Five Tuesdays in Winter: Stories
Author: Lily King
Publisher: Picador
ISBN: 978-1529086485
Genre: Short Stories
Pages: 240
Source: Personal Copy
Rating: 4/5

I love short stories and this collection was no exception. I had read Writers & Lovers sometime last year and remember enjoying it a lot. Lily King’s writing is so precise and sharp, that every page shines with clarity of thought and emotion. Even so some stories are weaker than the others, but you tend to ignore them as a reader because the overall collection works for you.

The writing is tender and beautiful. She writes about big themes and spaces – complicated relationships between parents and children, former colleagues, a coming out story, marriages that do not work, and to most specifically focus on feelings in almost every story makes you marvel at the skill of also not meandering and not being too melodramatic, where it could have gone that way.

There are stories that are also dark, but they are made up for stories that offer moments of sweetness and generosity of emotions. The title story is about a jilted spouse left with an only child. A bookseller whose wife left him years ago and now he doesn’t know what to do with all his emotions and his preteen daughter trying to fill the void in his life.

Lily King’s stories are all about human feeling – they cover the entire range of emotions and do not make you choose any as a reader. For me, each was told with a different tone – though the underlined broad strokes were the same – of hope, failure, success, and a chance at mending the broken.

Read 229 of 2021. To Paradise by Hanya Yanagihara

Title: To Paradise
Author: Hanya Yanagihara
Publisher: Picador
ISBN: 978-1529077476
Genre: Literary Fiction
Pages: 720
Source: Publisher
Rating: 5/5

To Paradise isn’t A Little Life. It will not break your heart. It will not make you cry. It will not torment you days after you finish it. It will not haunt you or your memories. It is not that kind of a book. But what it is – for its writing, multiple plots, characters that are engaging and well-fleshed out, it is about family and relationships and how we are forever stuck or not with them, it is about inheritance, and passion, love and lack of it, and more so about Hawai’i.

It is not The People in the Trees, yet there is enough science for people who loved that one. It isn’t what you think it is – even though the blurb is given, and you think you know what this book is about, but you do not. To Paradise is nothing like I have read this year, and this is what I expect of Yanagihara.

To Paradise is divided into three parts and each part feels like a different novel. I failed to see the larger connect and that to me is alright, because I will reread it and see where I missed out. The first story is set in an alternate version of 1893 America, New York is a part of the Free States where anyone can do what they please, love and marry whoever they want – it all seems very idyllic. The nubile and young scion of a very distinguished family David is smitten by a music teacher Edward, who has nothing to show for, when he is almost betrothed to a wealthy suitor Charles, way older than him and perhaps incapable of understanding him. Yanagihara’s characters take time to grow and for readers to even get to know them. It is almost a slow-burn of a novel in that sense.

The second part of the novel plays out in 1993 Manhattan with the AIDS epidemic taking more lives by the minute. This part of the novel looks at the relationship of a son and father, both Davids this time. The son, David is living with his older and richer lover Charles and the father is combating a serious illness, contemplating on life – past and present through a series of monologues. This by far was my favourite section of the novel. Yanagihara writes prose like no other. Even though like I said this book isn’t traumatic, it has its moments of melancholy, grief, and loss.

The last part of the novel is set in a not-so-distant future where pandemics are a common thing and charts the relationship between a grandfather, Charles and his granddaughter Charlie. This is the part where science (as it played out beautifully in The People in the Trees) comes to fore along with questions of identity, climate change, and uncertainty.

The themes of the book are so large and interconnected that it makes you want to keep turning the pages. Love, loss, loneliness, the need for someone, shame, death and fear keep getting played out in several ways. The writing is taut and perfect. Not a beat is missed, and nothing is out of place. The book may seem chunky, but it is needed. Yanagihara works on details – this is the only way to get to know her characters and understand the world she creates.

To Paradise left me stumped as well in a lot of places – there are a lot of questions unanswered, too many loose ends that weren’t tied, too much left for assumption, but it is alright. I think some books are meant to be that way. I will most certainly reread it when it is officially out in January.