Review: The Secret History by Donna Tartt

First published:- Jan 1st, 1992

Star Rating:-

Read in:- November, 2013

"Some things are too terrible to grasp at once. Other things - naked, sputtering, indelible in their horror - are too terrible to really grasp ever at all. It is only later, in solitude, in memory that the realization dawns: when the ashes are cold; when the mourners have departed; when one looks around and finds oneself - quite to one's surprise - in an entirely different world."

Oh this vile bunch of snot-nosed college brats, fattened on their parents' money like ticks on blood. Oh their ennui and way of seeking solace in esoteric practices believing them to be the one-way ticket to some metaphysical dimension which will exclude us mere working class mortals with our worldly woes from entering and interfering with whatever unearthly pursuits they busy themselves with. Well guess what kids? We would like to be rid of over-confident, smug, self-important, world-weary bastards like you too. I almost wish I could go on a mad rampage during an eye-roll inducing, unbelievably ridiculous Dionysian rite and kill every single one of you as well.

The Secret History is one of the best crime thrillers I have ever read. And this is perhaps because this is not a crime thriller in the conventional sense of the term but literary fiction with moral ambiguity and loss of innocence as central themes. The actual crime(s) is a minor part of the narrative and doesn't eclipse the gradual build up to it or the domino effect it triggers subtly, a devastating chain reaction which results in the collective crumbling of the fabric of 5 young lives. And it is the shadow of this crime, the anticipation of its occurrence and the crushing psychological aftermath of it that lends the narrative its true substance. A discrepancy between the occasional sting of conscience felt by the perpetrators of the crime and their previous heinously selfish justification of the act of murder is what makes this book so utterly engrossing and a veritable unputdownable. Because here we aren't dealing with the solution of a complicated police case but instead getting acquainted with a thread of events which also happen to include a murder from the narrator's point of view who is a reluctant accomplice to the crime. 

But then why the conflicted 3-star rating? That's because I foresaw every unimaginative turning point or cliched plot device thrown in for the sake of heightening the drama. A third of the way into the narrative, with the grand revelation (which is not very grand to be honest), the unravelling of the rest of the story becomes very guessable. This is not to mention the 'Argentum'-Argentina fallacy. Any attentive reader who has a grasp of high school level basic chemistry will realize that 'Aurum' refers to gold,'Argentum' refers to silver. But these aren't even the major irritants. My biggest problem is with the ludicrous contrivances that are passed off in the name of a premise for the story to build itself on. There's a tinge of unreality to the idea of a super close knit fraternity of 5 snobbish students of classical Greek in a college in 80s Vermont mentored by an even more snobbish and elitist professor, the narrator conveniently finding an entry into this brotherhood sort of grouping out of the blue and becoming a passive spectator to the sequence of events which follow. And lastly the main characters are hardly believable, especially the sole female character who remains a vaguely outlined one at best. 

The 3 stars are for Tartt's writing which is never showy or deliberate but graceful and quite excellent. I hope The Goldfinch is more impressive and free of proof-reading errors.

 

Review: The Pure Gold Baby by Margaret Drabble

First published:- October 1st, 2013
Published by:-  Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (HMH) 
Star rating:-

There are two kinds of rambling I have come across in literature - the good kind of rambling wherein the narrator jumps from one topic to another sub-topic quite abruptly, dwelling on one subject for a good many number of pages before attempting to make a point of some sort and succeeding in that endeavour. And the bad kind of rambling wherein a reader, realizes with a growing certainty, that the author's intention has been merely to dawdle and haphazardly branch out into topics with little to no substantial connection, occasionally inserting a philosophical musing or two to dispel some of the aimlessness of the narrative but with less than satisfactory results. 'The Pure Gold Baby' is an adherent of the latter kind of intolerable rambling. And Margaret Drabble is an eloquent rambler. It's good to hear her talking but there's also the moment of irritation creeping in intermittently when one is tempted to abandon reading and wonder aloud 'is this going anywhere?'.

Is this about the perils of motherhood? a feminist take on the dynamics of a mother-daughter relationship? a commentary on mental illness and neurological conditions? an ode to children afflicted by congenital disorders? 

I could not fathom. And that's majorly responsible for the half-hearted 3-star rating.

But a few days ago, by a stroke of good luck, I found Margaret Drabble's article in The Guardian on the deplorable treatment of senior citizens worldwide and her well-argued pitch for allowing them their right to die a dignified death (legalizing euthanasia in other words). And I found the connection with 'The Pure Gold Baby' developing instantly. The concept of growing old is inextricably linked with the idea of growing more and more incapable of being in control of one's life and that's one identifiable theme in this book. 

The eponymous pure, gold baby, a differently-abled child of sunny disposition who doesn't comprehend the complexities of the world and smiles and stumbles along her way through an uneventful life with the aid of her competent and headstrong mother has very little to do with the narrative but everything described within somehow revolves around her pitiable existence. Throw in the life story of a single mother, some theoretical anthropology, case studies of Zambian 'lobster-claw' children (born with physical deformities), examples of famed winners of the Nobel Prize for Literature with brain-damaged children like Kenzaburō Ōe, Pearl S. Buck and Doris Lessing, top it off with references to Jane Austen's mentally ill brother George Austen and what you get is a jumbled mess named 'The Pure Gold Baby'. 

To be fair to Ms Drabble, it is quite an aesthetically put together mess since she surely possesses the ability of fashioning a narrative out of sensitive issues without venturing into drippily sentimental territory. But that's about the only redeeming feature of this mess. 
That and the correct usage of the word 'prolepsis'. 

**Thanks to Houghton Mifflin Harcourt and Netgalley for an advance reader's copy**

Also posted on Goodreads and Amazon.

 

Review: The Pianist by Wladyslaw Szpilman

First published:- 1999
Star rating:- None

This is the first time I am reviewing a book that I have tried and failed to rate.

How do I decide on a rating anyway? Should I judge the prose? the content? the author's style of presentation? his narrative voice? the quality of the translation?
Do I even have the right to? 

Awarding a star rating to this man's unbelievably harrowing and miraculous tale of surviving a war which claimed the lives of 6 million of his fellow brethren for no reason at all, seems a more sacrilegious act than calling Infinite Jest a bad book on Goodreads. 

So I choose not to.

Wladyslaw Szpilman, a pianist working for the Polish radio station, takes us through the years of Nazi occupation of Poland and Warsaw, in particular, and the insensate violence that had the Jewish inhabitants of the city (the ones who were fortunate enough to be spared the concentration camps) living the most brutal and unforgiving of nightmares for a period of almost 5 years.

                                                 Wladyslaw Szpilman

Szpilman writes with a kind of unnerving indifference, as if this were someone else's tale of horrors he is narrating and not his own. It is obvious that since he had written this in 1946, immediately after the war, his senses may still have been numbed under the influence of the barbarous acts he had witnessed through the 6 years of the Occupation. His voice doesn't sound sarcastic, debilitated or even a little bit acerbic. Instead, he gives us a neat, uncluttered, unemotional, chronologically ordered account of events which saw him narrowly escaping certain death many, many times.

But this is not just his story. A surprise awaits the unsuspecting reader at the very end, in the form of Wilm Hosenfeld, a Nazi officer who saved Szpilman's life in the last few months of 1944. An astonishingly mild-mannered, generous soul who not only kept the knowledge of Szpilman's existence a secret from the other SS officers, but saved him from certain death out of starvation and the unbearable cold.

But true to the nature of war which justifies countering violence with more violence, Hosenfeld was taken as a prisoner of war when the Soviets finally recaptured Poland. He was tortured to death years later (1952) in some unnamed labor camp in the icy swathes of Stalingrad. His tormentors were especially cruel with him, angered by his claims of having saved the lives of many Jews and Poles during the Warsaw occupation. Which, of course, was nothing but the truth.*

                                             Wilhelm Adalbert Hosenfeld

It goes without saying, while reading this book I had no sense of time or any movement around me, I had no idea whether it was still daytime or whether night had fallen. Turning over the last page, when I finally took note of my surroundings I discovered my pillow was half-wet with tears and that I had a dreadful headache.

Some of the most poignant, haunting and reflective passages of the narrative are in Wilm's journal which was recovered years later and incorporated into Szpilman's memoir -

"Evil and brutality lurk in the human heart. If they are allowed to develop freely, they flourish, putting out dreadful offshoots...."

A mere German officer seems to have had the moral strength to admit - 

"Our entire nation will have to pay for all these wrongs and this unhappiness, all the crimes we have committed. Many innocent people must be sacrificed before the blood-guilt we've incurred can be wiped out. That's an inexorable law in small and large things alike."

And yet the "great" Der Führer, in front of whom a vast Empire bowed down at one point of time, could only choose the coward's way out by committing suicide in the end. 

A million stars to the courage of Wladyslaw Szpilman, who aided the Jewish resistance in the Warsaw ghetto, disregarding the constant threat to his own life. A million stars to his unflinchingly honest attempt at looking back at a terrible past. A million stars for enabling the citizens of the world to read, know and derive lessons from the story of his life. A million stars to Wilm Hosenfeld for holding on to his conscience at a time when morality and compassion were in short supply. 

And a million stars to the triumph of the human spirit. 

(So you see the correct rating of this book should be 5 million stars which is beyond the scope of any conventional rating system.) 

*Wilm Hosenfeld was posthumously recognized as a Righteous among the Nations in 2009 by Israel.

P.S.:- This review maybe updated after I watch the movie.

 

Review: The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann

First published:-1924
 Star rating:-

Imagine being stuck in a place where all sense of time is lost in the web of inactivity, a place which enables people to lead a life devoid of any greater purpose and only focused on recuperation from a queer illness, a place almost hermetically sealed and self-controlled, successfully keeping the repercussions of wars and diplomatic feuds between nations at bay. Imagine being rid of all your earthly woes of finding means of survival and all the elements that stand as pillars supporting the normative structure of life during a sojourn in a special, secluded place. Imagine a miniature diorama of a society thriving on its own, divorced from society at large. 
If you haven't been successful in imagining a real life scenario fitting aforementioned descriptions, do not despair. You can always discover this specially constructed safe haven in a certain fictional sanatorium in the Swiss Alps where our protagonist Hans Castorp languishes for seven whole years.

The experience of reading this book is akin to a painstaking hike up a dangerously steep slope. (Excuse the overused analogy but it happens to be quite apt)
There are long dry stretches requiring ritualistic finding of one footing after the next, ensuring that as a reader you do not slip and tumble headfirst into the gaping chasm of incomprehension. And then there are the moments of perfect clarity when snippets of Mann's wisdom filter in like errant rays of sunshine through the drear of many tedious descriptions of long walks and repetitive conversations, making the long and difficult climb seem worth it all of a sudden.

"But he who knows the body, who knows life, also knows death. Except that's not the whole thing - but merely a beginning, pedagogically speaking. You have to hold it up to the other half, to its opposite. Because our interest in death and illness is nothing but a way of expressing an interest in life..."

The summit of this "magic mountain" becomes the location of a metaphorical watch tower from where the spectacle of our collective civilizational march is viewed, dissected and analyzed with precision. The quirky patients inhabiting the sanatorium become mere proxies for some nations or disparate points of view, their inter-relationships often symbolic of some deeper ideological conflict woven intricately into the fabric of existence.
But despite the sheer brilliance of this premise, there's something off about this book. Something that prevented me from according that final star. 
Even if this remains a lengthy and eruditely presented discussion on Europe's inner contradictions, its juxtaposition of progress in all spheres of life and violence brewing under the veneer of that sanctimonious progress, as a work of literature it is somehow imperfect and rough around the edges. Since I was often tempted to believe it would have worked better as a nonfictional philosophical discourse. It's sort of like what my eloquent friend Dolors says - 'The book lacks a soul.' How succinctly put. (Read her well-argued review here)

The characters are employed as mere mouthpieces, never resembling well-drawn sketches of actual people with their own stories. The situations and backdrops are mere contrivances specifically begotten to tout ideas on life and death. It's as if the whole narrative is an elaborate ruse developed to convey Mann's thoughts on the state of Europe prior to the First World War. During my moments of exasperation with the book I was able to recall a few of Nabokov's thoughts in his article onLolita- 

"...All the rest is either topical trash or what some call the Literature of Ideas, which very often is topical trash coming in huge blocks of plaster that are carefully transmitted from age to age until somebody comes along with a hammer and takes a good crack at Balzac, at Gorki, at Mann."

Clearly a jibe at TMM if I have ever seen one. 
Not that I agree with Nabokov's opinion on TMM being topical trash but it surely gives rise to the suspicion that if you strip the book of all its allegorical significance, almost nothing substantial remains. And with the turn of the last page, it leaves the reader with a sense of indescribable dissatisfaction about having just finished a journey neither very rewarding nor enjoyable. 

Maybe a re-read some time years later on in life will restore the elusive star. Maybe it will not.


 

Review: What W.H. Auden Can Do For You by Alexander McCall Smith

First published:- 2013

Published by:- Princeton University Press

Star rating:-

How should we like it were stars to burn 

With a passion for us we could not return? 

If equal affection cannot be, 

Let the more loving one be me.

My association with W.H. Auden and his literary output has been restricted to the occasional browsing through poets.org which gave rise to a somewhat fickle love for Lullaby (which I couldn't help but read more than once) and As I walked Out One Evening. But somehow the lines faded away from memory as soon as I closed the browser window, sometimes mere beautiful words and perfect cadence aren't sufficient to stimulate further intellectual curiosity. But Alexander McCall Smith's near fanboyish enthusiasm for one of the greatest English poets of the 20th century has forced me to reconsider my views on Auden and maybe even provided the much needed push to delve into his oeuvre further.

This is not literary criticism per se, but rather a mixed bag of Smith's views on the poet's personal life, his body of work and the way his worldviews figured in his poetry. It goes without saying, literature students may find this book vastly redundant as it contains nothing that hasn't already been recorded by academicians who have analyzed and dissected Auden's poetry from all probable angles. And Smith acknowledges this right at the beginning, very clearly stating that his intention behind writing this has been to offer a tribute to Auden who was, in a way, his personal literary icon.

There are separate chapters devoted to Auden's early years at Gresham's School, another one in the long tradition of stiff upper-lipped English boarding schools, and later at Oxford, his lifelong friendship with Christopher Isherwood who had been inspired to write the renowned Goodbye to Berlin after Auden's visit to Berlin in 1928, his homosexual dalliances, his desire to drive an ambulance during Spanish Civil War which resulted in one of his celebrated, but subsequently disowned, poems 'Spain'(vehemently denounced by George Orwell who of course was accredited with a deeper understanding of the politics of the Civil War), his growing admiration for socialism in the wake of the rise of fascism in Europe prior to the Second World War and his eventual disillusionment with Communism. 

Auden's poetry is widely criticized as a hollow compilation of sublime imagery and flowery writing with little to no depth but Smith, in the tradition of most Auden lovers, defends the sanctity of his work with assertions like the following:- 

"'In Praise of Limestone' contributes greatly to the appeal of what he wrote. It is easy on the ear - and ease here has no pejorative implications: the fact that something is easy to listen to does not make it less intellectually significant."

"There are plenty of poets, especially those given to the writing of confessional verse, who are ready to tell us about their particular experience of love. We listen sympathetically, and may indeed be touched or inspired by their insights. But few poets transcend the personal when talking about love. They are talking, really, about how they felt when they were in love; Auden digs far deeper than that. He talks about love and flesh as it can be experienced by all of us - he transcends the specific experience in a particular place and time, to get to the heart of what we are."

Smith also makes a significant point in regard to Auden's disposition as a poet, he was known to acknowledging misrepresentations of facts in his earlier poems instead of quietly hoping for the work in contention to be erased from public memory like the other writers of his time did. He humbly acknowledged whenever he was wrong and was extremely self-critical.

To conclude, this is a fine book to gift to the random Auden devotee and perfect for introducing Auden to a neophyte who knows virtually nothing about the great Anglo-American poet (like myself for instance).

Also published on Goodreads and Amazon.
 

2013: A year in books Part 2

7)Apocalypse after Apocalypse

My only Stephen King this year and it had me thoroughly engrossed from beginning till end. First there is a worldwide breakout of a killer flu (Which is of course a biological weapons experiment gone wrong. What else do you expect from the US military?) which turns our dearest planet into a graveyard. A handful survive and picking up the pieces split up into two rival camps led by the son of Satan (called the Dark Man) and Mother Abagail (an old Black lady with some supernatural powers) who take a stand against each other. Sounds clichemax right? But King is a writer who just knows how to draw his readers in irrespective of how unrealistic the premise sounds. This is your good-triumphs-over-evil tale but with a Stephen King-esque flavor. 

Read my review here

6)That summer of her awakening

Doris Lessing passed away this year leaving behind a body of work touching upon diverse issues and nearly every genre out there. This one was published in 2009 and essentially encapsulates the thoughts and feelings of a middle-aged woman anticipating the onset of old age and her declining significance in the lives of her husband and children. I know this sounds very banal but Lessing's masterful writing unveils hitherto unknown dimensions of a woman's misgivings about growing old, about rendering selfless service to maintain her family's welfare making this an absolutely rivetting read. She didn't win the Nobel prize for nothing people!

Read my review here.

5)A matter of sadness

A dark and brutal look at a man's coming to terms with his new identity of being a father to a brain-damaged son. And the 'man' in this case is none other than Kenzaburo Oe himself. Semi autobiographical, deeply moving, yet mercilessly realistic. This is a book which does not make one shed tears or become mawkishly sentimental anywhere but assaults the reader with the most hideous truths of our existence. 

Read my review here.

4)Book inside a book inside a book...

Well what to say about this one? Either you have heard of this book, read it already and have been won over by the deviously metafictive tricks that Calvino pulls on his readers. Or you haven't. In which case, do yourself a favor and read this without delay. This is a book within a book within a book. You are a character as well as the reader and the writer makes you go through a set of events. Don't understand what I am saying? Just read the book okay?

Read my review here.

3)Born equals

There's so much to say about July's People that I don't know where to start. It is a meditation on race relations, an acknowledgement of the humanity of the ones considered inferior. This is a highly atmospheric novel and Gordimer skilfully creates an environment taut with repressed violence and turbulent emotions threatening to boil up to the surface. An unforgettable read without a doubt.

Read my review here. 

2)She

What do we say about Jane Eyre that hasn't been said already and much better than I ever could? This is Charlotte Bronte's classic tale of a young woman who lived life on her own terms and never bowed before pressure be it from the might of the wealthy, be it from the tyranny of religious dogma, stubbornly remaining true to her own lofty worldviews. Brilliant book. Brilliant writer. Brilliant Jane. 

Read my review here.

1)To the lighthouse, towards salvation

My most favorite read of the year and most favorite Virginia Woolf novel till date. I believe everything there is to know about life lies ensconced within the pages of this gem. Read it and discover Virginia and her genius.

Read my review here.

And this concludes the list of favorites for the year. I hope the new year has many more excellent reads in store for me and everyone. 

 

2013: A year in books Part 1

A year in which you have read 126 books (and still counting ) does put a strain on your ability to decide your top 10 favorites from an already long list of favorite books. So what I'll do to make this problem a bit more approachable is make a list of my personal top 15. Just cannot shorten it anymore.
So here are the first 8. I would list the remaining 7 in another post soon. Hopefully.

15)No magic up on the magic mountain but....

If you are not acquainted with Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain, perhaps his most revered work aside from Buddenbrooks (which was mentioned by the Nobel committee), then either you are living under a rock or your preferred mode of entertainment is more new age and of little depth. Or you are 12. (Just kidding!) This is famously touted as his literature of ideas and that's largely true, but what isn't mentioned in the blurb is what a rigorous slog this is. I spent three excruciatingly slow months navigating the world of Hans Castorp's queer illness, his bizarre invalid set of companions keeping him company in a sanatorium in the Swiss Alps with their quirky and often provocative worldviews. It was a rewarding read, a book which must be read for Mann's elegant language (get the John E. Woods translation not the Lowe-Porter one which is pathetically horrendous) and his statement on Europe's inner conflicts prior to the onset of the First World War. But it didn't leave me with any sense of satisfaction and slightly cheated to be honest. 

Read my review here.

14)The embers that refuse to die

Don't worry I won't chastise you if you haven't ever heard of this book. Sándor Márai is an obscure Hungarian writer after all who was virtually unknown all his life and hounded by the Communist government who eventually drove him away first to Italy, later to the United States. He was published first in the U.S. where he lived till his death in 1989. Now Embers is a very quiet, introspective kind of book. It delights in recalling the old-world extravagance of the Austro-Hungary empire and merging the past with the present. It has some ornately crafted sentences which are bound to be admired by any reader with an appreciation for great prose. Embers is atmospheric, melancholic, eerie and drips with a regret and longing for that which is no more. 

Read my review here.

13)Ooh scandalous!

Zoe Heller is known for this one book which was shortlisted for the Booker prize in 2003 and unfortunately enough she is often questioned by fans, readers and reviewers alike about why she creates such perfectly despicable characters (seriously people why do you ask such silly questions?). My point is, do not be so narrow-minded like them. What makes literature so priceless is that we get to be acquainted with alternative points of view, even the blasphemous, contentious and seemingly taboo ones. This is one such book which challenges the reader's idea of social decency and walks the thin line of divide between deviance and normalcy. Her characters are all wonderfully crafted, realistic and their conflicts force us to question established notions of morality. Her prose is beautiful and elegant yet easily readable. I couldn't stop myself from giving this book 5 stars. 

(Just in case you are still debating whether or not to read this, the story features a juicy sexual affair between a young attractive female teacher and her underage male student, a boy her son's age. Incentive enough? Also remember the Oscar-nominated Cate Blanchett-Judi Dench starrer based on this novel?)

Read my review here.

12)The gift of tragedy

This is one of the most hauntingly beautiful and tragic books I have read this year. And since the tragedies that descend on the life of the protagonist here are more clearly delineated than say in Embers, the entailing heartbreak is greater in intensity. Set against the backdrop of the turbulent years of Japanese occupation of Malay (present day Malaysia), this tale of troubled times connects the lives of people of different nationalities and conflicting allegiances in the most poignant manner and creates a moving picture of a collective human tragedy. In terms of narrative sweep, it can almost be called an epic. For a debut novel this book was nothing short of a towering literary achievement and its Booker longlisting in 2007 is thoroughly deserved. The prose is lush, there are gorgeous descriptions of Malaysian culture and its landscapes with a generous sprinkling of Chinese history and Japanese arts. This is the perfect book on south east Asia. And I certainly look forward to reading more of Eng in the future. (His The Garden of Evening Mists was shortlisted in 2012)

Read my review here.

11)Misogynyland

That sub-heading may not sound ingenious or witty but it's the best I could come up with. And frankly, no phrase or sentence will accurately describe this book without the word 'misogyny' in it. Particularly here in India, where we are exactly one year ahead of the barbaric gang-rape of the medical student which sent shockwaves through the fabric of our society and misogyny is deeply ingrained in our psyche and our way of life, this book is relevant now more than ever. Horrifying, coldly brutal and prophetic, The Handmaid's Tale imagines a dystopian society in which women are nothing but baby-producing machines, stripped of their basic human rights and personal liberties, only utilized like inanimate incubators to ensure mankind's survival in terms of numbers. This book will make your hair stand on end. Literature students worldwide are acquainted with this book as a very standard feminist novel and I believe the entire canon of feminist literature will be incomplete without the inclusion of The Handmaid's Tale. And dear men of the world, READ THIS if you haven't already. Please? (This was also shortlisted for the Man Booker in 1986)

Read my review here.

10)An ode to the third sex

Virginia Woolf and Vita Sackville-West need no introduction and their memorable affair led to the creation of this slightly under-appreciated masterpiece. Woolf's Mrs Dalloway, The Waves and To the Lighthouse are more universally worshipped while Orlando is often overlooked whenever Woolf's oeuvre is under discussion. Magical, otherworldly, beautiful and fraught with symbolism, Orlando talks about the woman, the man and their mystical united exploration of all dimensions - spiritual and physical. Virginia Woolf is not everyone's favorite but for someone like myself, who will perhaps adore even a meaningless mark she had made with a pen, Orlando was pure bliss. Exquisite prose, phantasmagorical imagery and an unforgettable protagonist. This was Woolf's tribute to Sackville-West and their affair and lifelong friendship. And boy what an incredible homage this is!

Read my review here. 

9)Collages

A collage of the human consciousness is what this is. Hauntingly beautiful images stitched together with the patience and devotion of a true mistress of the craft. Eerie, surreal and utterly breath-taking. For all those who know Anaïs Nin as a writer of only literary erotica, do not believe that piece of false information. She has written literature, proper literature with the capability of triggering flights of fancy and infusing your reality with the color of your most bizarre dreams. See talking about this book is very difficult without going into hyperbole. So hey, read my review here.

8)The price of motherhood

This is one of those unheard of books that you discover on your random visit to a well-stocked library or a used book store or after a whimsical clicking of the 'request' button on the Netgalley page for Open Road Integrated Media (in my case). And this is one of those surprisingly moving and relevant books that make a powerful statement on a subject less talked about, less discussed. Written in the first person narrative voice, Letter to a child never born, tackles issues like the seriousness of giving birth, a to-be mother's misgivings and the controversial matter of abortion rights. Oriana Fallaci, a powerful Italian war correspondent wrote this book in the 70s when it supposedly became quite a publishing phenomenon. But I believe it has become buried in recent years (only less than 200 reviews on Goodreads) which is why the Open Road Media guys decided to republish it in a new avatar. (Thank god for that!) Even though this book deals with a host of predominantly feminist issues, Ms Fallaci has also done well to give the humanist's point of view here. 

Read my review here.

Phew that concludes the first part.