Shreya's Treasures

KAFKA ON THE SHORE HARUKI MURAKAMI GENRE: MAGICAL REALISM, FANTASY, NOVEL FIRST PUBLISHED: 2002 "Kafka on the Shore contains several riddles, but there aren't any solutions provided. Instead, several of these riddles combine, and through their interaction the possibility of a solution takes shape. And the form this solution ta kes will be dif ferent for each reader. To put it another way, the riddles function as part of the solution. It's hard to explain, but that's the kind of novel I set out to write"                                     - H. Murakami It is easier to be bewitched by Haruki Murakami's fiction than to figure out how he accomplishes the bewitchment. His narrators tend to be a bit passive, and the stakes in many of his shaggy-dog plots remain obscure. Yet the undercurrent is nearly irresistible, and readers emerge several hundred pages later as if from a trance, more curious tha...

A THOUSAND SPLENDID SUNS KHALED HOSSEINI  GENRE: NOVEL, FICTION FIRST PUBLISHED: 2007 “One could not count the moons that shimmer on her roofs, Or the thousand splendid suns that hide behind her walls.” In his novel A Thousand Splendid Suns, Hosseini provides a vivid portrait of a country shattered by a series of ideological leaders and wars imposed on it by foreign and internal forces. The narrative, which spans several decades, is driven by the stories of two women, Laila and Mariam, who, despite starkly different beginnings, find themselves intimately connected and dependent upon one another. Hosseini’s women, much like the country of Afghanistan itself, appear to be propelled by the whims of outside forces, familial and societal, with little chance of influencing their own lives and futures Yet Laila and Mariam are neither passive nor helpless as they make choices and accept consequences to affect desired ends, both hopeful and tragic. This portrayal of their dreams, trials, an...

THE SUBTLE ART OF NOT GIVING A F*CK MARK MANSON GENRE : SELF-HELP FIRST PUBLISHED :  2016 Charles Bukowski was an alcoholic, a womanizer, a compulsive gambler and, to use the words of the author, a “lout”, “cheapskate” and “deadbeat”. Well, as all of us know, Bukowski was also a poet. As far as Manson is concerned, Charles would be the last person to ask life advice from. He would also be the last person to be quoted in a self-help book. And that’s exactly why Manson begins his book by telling us his story. Bukowski spent more than thirty years living like this. Then, one day, the manager of a publishing company gave him a chance. The poet wrote his first book and thus became, at the age of fifty, a renowned novelist and poet. In Manson’s opinion, this man embodies the American dream. Indeed, he fights for what he wants, never gives up and finally realizes his wildest dreams. Nevertheless, the author doesn’t believe it is that determination that lead Bukowski to success. A...

THE BOOK THIEF MARKUS ZUSAK GENRE : HISTORICAL FICTION, WAR NOVEL, YA FICTION FIRST PUBLISHED : 2005 "Together, they would watch everything that was so carefully planned collapse, and they would all smile at the beauty of destruction." Try­ing to make sense of the hor­rors of World War II, Death in Markus Zusak's book "The Book Thief" relates the sto­ry of Liesel, a young Ger­man girl whose book-steal­ing and sto­ry-telling tal­ents help sus­tain her fos­ter fam­i­ly and the Jew­ish man they are hid­ing, as well as their neigh­bors. Fortunately, this book isn't about Death; it's about death, and so much else. It is about love, kindness, friendship, trust, books, and lots of thievery. It is about finding small happiness during the dark times, and having faith in humanity. Liesel Meminger's little brother dies just before her mother leaves her with the foster parents in a dismal town in southern Germany (her father, a Communist, has been take...

CATCH 22 JOSEPH HELLER GENRE : SATIRE, DARK COMEDY, WAR NOVEL, ABSURDIST FICTION FIRST PUBLISHED : 1961 ""You mean there's a catch?" "Sure there's a catch," Doc Daneeka replied. "Catch-22. Anyone who wants to get out of combat duty isn't really crazy." There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one's own safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind." Reading Catch 22 wasn't for me. It was a kind of book I had never expected it to be, with an altogether different writing style which I had never experienced before. So, I will be honest; it took me much more time than I had initially thought I would take to complete this novel. A novel full of satire and dark humour was definitely what I had signed up for when I started reading this, but I had no clue how very intelligent and mad this novel was going to be. Catch 22 is a slo...

THE LOTTERY SHIRLEY JACKSON GENRE : HORROR FICTION FIRST PUBLISHED : 1948 When I first read Shirley Jackson's chilling story "The Lottery", I was curious, almost uniformly bewildered and disgusted in the end. And maybe this unprecedented, unexpected shock the story presents before its readers, makes it a so very popular read. Although, when the story was released, it gave rise to a very strong avalanche of negative reaction and backlash, it is, with a number of literary devices, a story that is almost impossible to forget. Before you proceed on with the review, I would seriously recommend you to read the story, if you haven't yet.  "The Lottery" takes place on a beautiful summer day, in a small rural village in America, where all the residents are gathering for their traditional annual lottery. Though the event first appears festive, it soon becomes clear that no one wants to win the lottery. Tessie Hutchinson seems unconcerned about the traditi...

GOING TO MEET THE MAN JAMES BALDWIN GENRE : SHORT STORY, FICTION FIRST PUBLISHED :  1965 It was indeed a great risk for Baldwin, an African - American author, to insinuate himself into the mind of a character of a different race - a political risk as a writer. He explores - from the inside - a character who is a southern white racist, Jesse. The story is a bold statement that transcends the festering sore of racism on the face of American history and cries out for the reader to examine all of the values which he or she subscribes to and to honestly appraise the foundations on which these beliefs have been constructed. We see how the novel begins with Jesse, a police officer, and his wife in bed. It seems Jesse is impotent. Blaming tiredness and heavy work for this, his wife goes off to sleep but Jesse moves into a recollection of his day's affairs with a black man, who "had caused them much trouble".  The narrative is in the form of flashbacks and soon enough...

THE GREAT GATSBY GENRE : SATIRE, TRAGEDY, BIOGRAPHICAL FICTION F. SCOTT. FITZGERALD FIRST PUBLISHED : 1925 "This is a valley of ashes — a fantastic farm where ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens; where ashes take the forms of houses and chimneys and rising smoke and, finally, with a transcendent effort, of men who move dimly and already crumbling through the powdery air." The Great Gatsby, The Great American Novel, is F Scott Fitzgerald's ultra-modernist novel about jazz-age America. The novel tells the tragic story of Jay Gatsby, a self-made millionaire, and his pursuit of Daisy, a wealthy young woman whom he loved in his youth, which ultimately led to his own destruction. It's highly unreliable protagonist is Nick Carraway, who recounts his story of the two years he spent with Gatsby. Almost 90 years later after its publish, The Great Gatsby is regularly named one of the greatest novels ever written in English, and has annu...

JANE EYRE CHARLOTTE BRONTË GENRE : BILDUNGSROMAN, GOTHIC FICTION, ROMANCE NOVEL FIRST PUBLISHED : 1847 “I remembered that the real world was wide, and that a varied field of hopes and fears, of sensations and excitements, awaited those who had the courage to go forth into it’s expanse, to seek real knowledge of life amidst it’s perils.”   -- Jane Eyre. Brontë's iconic novel of 1847, Jane Eyre, is subtitled ‘An Autobiography’. It is an example of a Bildungsroman: a work that traces the education and development of its heroine, and follows her journey through life. The text combines realism with fairy tale and Gothic motifs.  During the Victorian era the ideal woman's life revolved around the domestic sphere of her family and the home. Middle class women were brought up to “be pure and innocent, tender and sexually undemanding, submissive and obedient”. A woman had no rights of her own and; she was expected to marry and become the servant of her husband. Few professio...

THE SWIMMER JOHN CHEEVER GENRE : ALLEGORICAL FICTION  FIRST PUBLISHED : 1964 “A masterpiece of mystery, language and sorrow. It starts out, on a perfect summer morning, as the record of a splendid exploit... and ends up as a kind of ghost story.” — Michael Chabon on The Swimmer Cheever, "the Chekhov of the suburbs", wrote this story when alcohol had started to take over him in his early fifties. A masterful blend of fantasy and reality, it chronicles a middle-aged man’s gradual acceptance of the truth that he has avoided facing—that his life is in ruins. The story immediately became an object of fascination in literary circles for its surprising blend of realism and surrealism and the emotional punch it delivers. Neddy Merrill "Ned", a man with the “vague and modest idea of himself as a legendary figure”, one day inexplicably decides to “swim home” via a trail of his neighbours’ pools. The people he interacts with on this bizarre odyssey include form...

A VERY OLD MAN WITH ENORMOUS WINGS GENRE : MAGICAL REALISM, FICTION GABRIEL GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ  FIRST PUBLISHED : 1955 “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings” was first published in the pages of the New American Review (1955), much before the majority of his work and twelve years before One Hundred Years of Solitude, probably the most familiar of his stories. What we have here is a children’s story about a place warped by sadness and visited by a distressed, lost Daedalus. Yet its vibrant colour is all its own. It is a story deeply overlapping the febrile plenitude of fiction’s strangeness and the complex relationship we, as humans, have with each other. Like so much of Márquez’s writing the story aches with a luxurious language of sadness and beauty.  "He had to go very close to see that it was an old man, a very old man, lying face down in the mud, who, in spite of his tremendous efforts, couldn’t get up, impeded by his enormous wings” We are introduced to a world ...

BLACK SWAN DIRECTED : DARREN ARONOFSKY RELEASED : 2010 Black Swan is a cracking psychological melodrama and an artistic masterpiece. At its centre is young ballerina Nina Sayers, played by Natalie Portman. She is beautiful, vulnerable, sexually naive and susceptible to mental illness. To play the role of a lifetime, Nina must delve deep into her own dark side. As her hallucinations and anxiety attacks escalate with her progress in rehearsal, artistic break-through fuses with nervous breakdown. This is a movie about fear of ones body, fear of being supplanted in the affections of a powerful man, love of perfection, love of dance, and perhaps most importantly of all, passionate hatred for ones mother. Nina, constantly striving for perfection, lives with her controlling mother who gave up dance to have her daughter. They live in a tiny New York City apartment. When the ballet's director decides to replace the aging prime ballerina for the new season production of "Swan ...