Book review: The Passage by Justin Cronin

Cover of Rose Madder

If there is one thing I cannot resist it is the lure of the printed word. Never has it happened that I have visited a bookstore and walked out empty handed. The last time I entered into one, I walked out with four books in tow, one of which was The Passage by Justin Cronin. Before buying the book I went through some reviews on Amazon, read the back cover a million times, read a few pages of the book to see if I liked the writing style. I kept the book back, wandered around in search of another book, and then came back and picked it up again, oh, about a gazillion times! Why? Because this isn’t the kind of book I typically read. The comparisons with Stephen King left me cold – I liked just two of his books – Carrie and Rose Madder; I’m not a big fan of science fiction, medical research gone bad, zombies and vampires. So I had no idea why I ended up buying this book.

Once I returned home and crammed it onto my overflowing bookshelf, I would often look at it balefully, asking myself what I was thinking to have bought it. So when I decided to read the darn thing and get it over with, I thought the going would be slow, the book intolerable, and maybe it would be another of those very few books that I would be forced to leave unread.

But I was wrong. So very, very wrong.

The first part of the novel gallops full speed ahead, outlining the discovery and creation of an immunity-boosting drug based on a virus carried by a species of bat in South America, its test on 12 death-row subjects and finally on a six-year old girl called Amy, all of whom are brought in by FBI agents Brad Wolgost and Phil Doyle. The virus turns the 12 into vampires, who manage to break out of the maximum security facility where they are kept and the world as we know it changes forever. (If this plot line makes you think of Resident Evil, it’s a bit similar, but only a bit.)

Cover of The Passage

Fast forward about 90 years, and you’re introduced to an entirely new cast of characters. These are the inhabitants of First Colony, who appear to be the only humans to have survived the outbreak of the vampire attack. Governed by the Document of One Law that lays out the daily routine and work assignments of all the souls within the walls of the colony, they have no contact with the outside world and stave off the virals (vampires) with the help of lights running on wind energy and members of the Watch, who guard the walls of the colony. They use horses for transport, grow their own food and scavenge the malls for clothes. It’s a completely different world, and one that is extremely believable.

A lot of reviews I read when deciding weather or not to purchase the book said that the jump between centuries was disorienting, that it took really long to settle in to the new characters, and that it was almost like reading two different books – I experienced nothing of the sort. The transition between the times is made through “A journal entry by Ida Jaxon (“The Book of Auntie”)” in which she chronicles how the army evacuated children from Philadelphia to First Colony, which prepares you for the time switch.

Amy makes her entry once again about mid-way through the novel, and from thereon the book takes another twist, as some members from First Colony embark on a journey to escort her back to Colorado to the hospital where she was injected with the virus. The rest of the novel follows their journey and the many startling discoveries they make along the way.

Once I started reading, this 766-page tome took firm hold of me, leaving me breathless, eyes feverishly running through the pages, unmindful of the time or place. I was up nights, late for work and ignorant of the need to eat. I was right there with Amy and Wolgost in the car, in the hospital and on the run. I was in the First Colony, with Peter and Susan and Auntie. I joined Peter, Susan, Alicia, Micheal and Mausami as they embarked on the journey to get Amy back to Colorado. I was with them as they made one startling discovery after another during their Long Walk.

Overall, The Passage is an edge-of-your-seat nail-bitingly good suspense thriller that addresses the perils of military greed and the depth of human endurance in the face of unprecedented catastrophe and unimaginable danger. It will grab you by the hand and pull you along for a rip-roaring ride, at the end of which you’ll be left gasping, waiting for 2012, and the second part of this trilogy.

Book review: Mosquito by Roma Tearne

The Sri Lankan civil war serves as the backdrop for Roma Tearne’s debut novel Mosquito. It’s the story of Theo Samarajeeva, a Sri Lankan who returns home from England after his wife’s death despite the warnings of his friends to not return to the war torn island nation. It’s the story of Nulani Mendis, a young and gifted artist, who blossoms to life after she meets Theo. It’s the story of their improbable love. And it’s a story of torture.

Tearne writes beautifully about Sri Lanka, capturing it’s beauty and the brutality of the civil war. She writes poignantly about the pointlessness of war, about the brutality of torture and the psychological damage it wrecks on the tortured.

The writing is beautifully evocative, as Tearne gives a sensory, color drenched feel to the location and atmosphere of the Sri Lankan coast. I fell in love with the beauty of the country while reading the book – it’s beautiful coastline, verdant forests and rich history.

The characters of Theo and Nulani Mendis are well drawn out. Sugi, Theo’s caretaker and friend, though a rather central figure to the story, may not have a well-defined character, yet, he is someone you can understand and connect with. Tearne also gives a brief sketch of the psyche of a Tamil Tiger recruit, and given the wide-spread terrorism these days, that is enough to help you understand the character of Vikram, the young orphan boy who gets recruited into the LTTE.

This is a hauntingly beautiful novel of love, loss and hope; of the pointlessness of war; of the physical and psychological scars of torture; of the triumph of hope. Highly recommended.

Ramblings of an overworked mind

What a month this has been! Work has been absolutely crazy, leaving me with no time for myself or the blog.

I reach back home tired and drained, with little will to do anything but flop down on the couch with a cold bottle of water and a book.

Sadly for me, though, the book I’m reading is doing little to hold my interest. It seemed interesting enough – a story on Chandragupta’s cunning about 2,500 years ago and a cunning political king-maker in the present day. But the treatment is shoddy, the characters aren’t well developed and the plot is little snippets of political games in the past and future.

But I find it really hard to leave a book mid-way, and so I’m plodding along with Chandragupta’s Chant by Ashwin Sanghi, just waiting for the infernal thing to end.

One good, actually great thing, that I achieved this month was finally understanding the exposure triangle in photography. The combination of aperture, shutter speed and ISO finally worked! I’ll share some pictures when I can bear to open my laptop again.

Just waiting for this month to end!

Book Review: You Beleivers – Jane Bradley

From the back cover:

You Believers is a powerful, cathartic story of casual evil and of how the worst things can be faced so that we might not only survive, but grow. A young woman goes missing, and her mother uproots her life to find her daughter. But it is not just the heartbreak or the deep mystery of the hunt for lost loved ones that Bradley so convincingly explores. Rather, with the help of an amazingly dedicated searcher, family and friends somehow learn to move past unspeakable horror and celebrate the tenacity of the human spirit. Offering a vision that is at once ruthless and utterly compassionate, Bradley renders the search for logic, meaning, redemption and even hope in the domino force that is human nature. Part Southern gothic, part crime, part haunting suspense story, You Believers takes us on an infinitely harrowing journey that rewards the reader with insight into how we might endure horrible events with faith, strength, and grace even while it reveals the ripple effects of random violence.

The book starts with Shelby Waters, a Southern girl from the small town of Suck Creek, recounting how she got her calling to become a searcher. It was because of her sister Darly, who got away from Suck Creek to become a nurse and get married and settle down. Then one day, she went missing. The rescuers found her bones in the woods, her head at one place, her body at another. This isn’t Darly’s story, though. This is the story of Katy Connor, the 30-year old woman who went missing a few weeks before her wedding. It’s the story of a mother’s pain, a fiance’s sorrow and a sociopath’s need to cause pain.

It’s classic, almost. Like the story of Persephone picking flowers in a field one spring afternoon. The earth opens. Hades comes roaring up in his chariot, black horses digging up dirt with their hooves, hot breath swirling from flared nostrils. With a quick swoop of thick, muscled arm, Hades snatches the girl, drags her down to the underworld. You know the story. A mother comes to the rescue, finds her daughter has eaten six seeds of the dark fruit, pomegranate seeds that crunched between the girl’s teeth, red juice running from her lips. And the mother’s world, the whole wide world, is changed.

Bradley keeps the story moving with a lot of the characters narrating parts of the story. Shelby’s character is well-drawn out and you can understand why she does what she does, what keeps her going, her sorrows and her determination. Liz’s (Katy’s mother) sorrow as a mother whose child has gone missing is palpable. Her effort to hold together for the sake of her daughter and her sanity are heart-wrenching. And then there is Jesse, the psychopath who picked Katy up, who raped and assaulted another young girl in his neighborhood, and his arrogance, his need to brag and to hurt and break things.

The narration could have been a bit tighter, but the story itself is gripping, so you can forgive Bradley her few ramblings. Being a woman, it was all the more chilling a read. We take so many things for granted, don’t observe enough, tend to be a bit gullible, and go through life thinking nothing bad could ever happen to us. But it can take a minute for your life to turn upside down – a slight delay in locking the car once you get in or ignoring your gut instinct could be devastating.

This book got me to give thanks for each day that I am safe, and to make sure that I take every precaution that I can – when I’m out and even when I am home.

Read it, it just might give you the push you need to make you more aware of your surroundings no matter where you are.

An ode to books – Marginalia by Billy Collins

There’s an ebook revolution of sorts happening out there, which I am stubbornly resisting. I tried ebooks, still read them sometimes, but there’s something about a real, physical book that an electronic version just cannot replace. The smell, the feel, the notes scribbled in the margins.

June Abbas, "In the Margins: Reflections on Scribbles, Knowledge Organization, and Access"

Billy Collins captures this love I feel beautifully in Marginalia. Enjoy!

Marginalia – Billy Collins

Sometimes the notes are ferocious,
skirmishes against the author
raging along the borders of every page
in tiny black script.
If I could just get my hands on you,
Kierkegaard, or Conor Cruise O’Brien,
they seem to say,
I would bolt the door and beat some logic into your head.
Other comments are more offhand, dismissive –
“Nonsense.” “Please!” “HA!!” –
that kind of thing.
I remember once looking up from my reading,
my thumb as a bookmark,
trying to imagine what the person must look like
why wrote “Don’t be a ninny”
alongside a paragraph in The Life of Emily Dickinson.
Students are more modest
needing to leave only their splayed footprints
along the shore of the page.
One scrawls “Metaphor” next to a stanza of Eliot’s.
Another notes the presence of “Irony”
fifty times outside the paragraphs of A Modest Proposal.
Or they are fans who cheer from the empty bleachers,
Hands cupped around their mouths.
“Absolutely,” they shout
to Duns Scotus and James Baldwin.
“Yes.” “Bull’s-eye.” “My man!”
Check marks, asterisks, and exclamation points
rain down along the sidelines.
And if you have managed to graduate from college
without ever having written “Man vs. Nature”
in a margin, perhaps now
is the time to take one step forward.
We have all seized the white perimeter as our own
and reached for a pen if only to show
we did not just laze in an armchair turning pages;
we pressed a thought into the wayside,
planted an impression along the verge.
Even Irish monks in their cold scriptoria
jotted along the borders of the Gospels
brief asides about the pains of copying,
a bird signing near their window,
or the sunlight that illuminated their page-
anonymous men catching a ride into the future
on a vessel more lasting than themselves.
And you have not read Joshua Reynolds,
they say, until you have read him
enwreathed with Blake’s furious scribbling.
Yet the one I think of most often,
the one that dangles from me like a locket,
was written in the copy of Catcher in the Rye
I borrowed from the local library
one slow, hot summer.
I was just beginning high school then,
reading books on a davenport in my parents’ living room,
and I cannot tell you
how vastly my loneliness was deepened,
how poignant and amplified the world before me seemed,
when I found on one page
A few greasy looking smears
and next to them, written in soft pencil-
by a beautiful girl, I could tell,
whom I would never meet-
“Pardon the egg salad stains, but I’m in love.”

– Billy Collins

Book review: These Things Hidden by Heather Gudenkauf

These Things Hidden is an interesting and well-told story. Starting with Allison’s early release from prison for good behaviour, the narrative gathers pace slowly, revealing how her fateful actions on a night five years ago are still affecting the lives of the four main protagonists.

Allison was the blue-eyed girl of the small Linden Falls community. The darling of her parents and teachers, she could do no wrong, until that fateful night… Now, she is out of prison and in a halfway house, where the rest of the women are unable to reconcile with her heinous crime. Low on confidence and abandoned by her family, Allison gets a new lease of life when Caroline offers her a part time job at Bookends.

But when Allison sees Joshua, Caroline’s adopted son, the past comes rushing back. A past that Bryn is working hard to forget. Unable to take Allison’s place in her parent’s heart, heckled and stared at as “the killer’s sister,” Bryn leaves Linden Falls to stay with her grandmother, where she looks after broken and maimed animals. By fixing those broken creatures, she hopes she can mend herself, torn as she is by guilt over the events of that fateful night, when she helped Allison give birth to her child while their parents were out for the night.

No one knows of the child except for Charm, sister of Allison’s boyfriend Christopher, and Gus, her step-father. Allison left her son at Charm’s house, saying her parents knew nothing about her pregnancy and that she couldn’t care for the child. Torn between the love she felt for the baby boy and tired as she was looking after Gus, who was battling with lung cancer, Charm was forced to make a difficult choice. She left the baby at the fire station, hoping that he would find a loving family.

Joshua gets that family with Caroline and her husband Jonathan. But with Allison working at Bookends and determined to re-establish contact with Bryn, things are about to come to a dramatic head. Only the two sisters know exactly what happened on the night Joshua and his twin sister were born, and the secrets are about to explode.

As the story unfolds, so does Allison’s character – she isn’t the two-dimensional cardboard cut-out she is initially made out to be. There are hints of a dysfunctional family and a younger sister who is deeply disturbed. Heather also does a wonderful job of exploring motherhood from the point of view of the four protagonists. Allison’s dysfunctional relationship with her mother leads her to be detached from her own children, as she refuses to even acknowledge that she is pregnant. Brynn, who lives in her sister’s shadow, is given a few opportunities to rise to a mothering role, but her failure leads to her mental complexities and to her outpouring of love for crippled animals. Charm is already playing the role of caregiver to her step father, and is unable to take on the added responsibility of looking after a baby herself, but even after giving him up, she checks in on him to see that he is well and happy. And then there is Caroline, who wants nothing more than to be a mother, and fulfills that role well. Her only shortcoming, if you can call it that, would be her over-possessiveness and the extra care she takes of Joshua.

On the whole, this is an interesting read. While you might be able to guess some of the plot twists, you won’t be able to guess them all! The writing is wonderful and the plot development and characters are well-rounded. You won’t regret picking this one up!

On My Bookshelf: March

stack of books, Ballard, Seattle, Washington

Image by Wonderlane via Flickr

March has been an excellent reading month! I was fortunate to have read a variety of books, all of which I enjoyed. How often does that happen? 😉

What seemed to be a Young Adult novel was actually quite interesting and complex. Heather Gudenkauf’s These Things Hidden was a beautifully crafted story with well-rounded characters (look out for the review, coming soon!)

A diet rich in soy and whey protein, found in ...

Image via Wikipedia

I read Gary Taube’s excellent book titled Why We Get Fat and What to do About It. Debunking the calories in calories out approach to weight loss, he takes a look at nutrition research and the obesity epidemic, making a strong case for a high protein, low carb diet.

Amish Tripathi’s The Immortals of Meluha, part 1 of his Shiva trilogy, was a rip-roaring read! He’s combined legend and stories from Indian mythology and pained Shiva not as a God, but as an ordinary nomad from Tibet. Absolutely brilliant! I’m waiting for the next part with bated breath!

I’m currently reading Kunal Basu’s The Japanese Wife – a collection of short stories. Interesting, so far!

What have you been reading this month?

Book review: Mornings in Jenin – Susan Abulhawa

Mornings in Jenin tells the story of the Abulheja family. The patriarchs of the family, Haj Yehya and Basima, live in the small village of Ein Hod. The novel opens in 1941, during the olive harvest season as Yehya and his family and neighbours gather to pick the fruit. The first few pages (and years) set the stage for the family, introducing us to Yehya’s sons Hassan and Darweesh, Hassan’s Jewish friend Ari Perlstein, and Dalia, the Bedouin girl who steals their heart.

“In a distant time, before history marched over the hills and shattered present and future, before wind grabbed the land at one corner and shook it of its name and character, before Amal was born, a small village east of Haifa lived quietly on figs and olives, open frontiers and sunshine.”

Their idyllic life is shattered by the “nakba” (cataclysm) in 1948, when the Israelis forced the villagers of Ein Hod off their land and sent them to the refugee camp in Jenin. Narrated by Amal, Hassan and Dalia’s daughter who is born in the refugee camp, Mornings in Jenin traces the story of her brothers – Yousef, whose love for his wife Fatima and for Palestine will set him on a collision course with his brother David (Ishmael), who was lost during the nakba and brought up as a Jew. It also interweaves Amal’s tale of love and loss, of her enduring friendship with Huda and mornings spent with her father, of living through the loss of her parents – her father as a casualty of the Six Day War, her mother as she lost her mind after that war – of moving to a Jerusalem orphanage to study, settling in the US, falling in love, and returning to Jenin with her daughter.

Kids at the Jenin camp (Image via Flickr)

This is by no means an easy book to read – it’s filled with pathos and loss, sorrow and separation, death and loss – but the prose is lyrical and the writing fluid. I came to love some of the characters and found myself wishing and hoping they’d pull through, but unfortunately, not all of them will.

This is the first book I have come across that presents the Palestinian point of view. It isn’t unbiased – there is the matter of Hassan’s Jewish friend Ari Perlstein who disappears after the first few pages and only puts in an appearance at the end of the narrative and of Israeli attacks on Jenin apparently without any provocation from Palestinians – but it is an important book.

“The story of one family in an obscure village, visited one day by a history that was not its own, and forever trapped by longing between roots and soil. It was a tale of war, its chilling, burning, and chilling-again fire. Of furious love and a suicide bomber. Of a girl who escaped her destiny to become a word, drained of its meaning. Of grown children sifting through the madness to find their relevance. Of a truth that pushed its way through lies, emerging fro a crack, a scar, in a man’s face.”

The Jewish suffering is well-known thanks to the many excellent books available on the holocaust and the creation of Israel – Leon Uris’ Exodus, Schindler’s List, Anne Frank’s Diary and Man’s Search for Meaning are just a few examples. With Mornings in Jenin, readers will finally get to hear the Palestinian voice, to know of the many atrocities committed in refugee camps in that area, and maybe, to gain a better understanding of the “Palestinian situation”.

In closing, I’d say that this book is a must read for anyone who is interested in the Israel-Palestine issue, and even for those who are not.

The Book of Tomorrow – Cecelia Ahern

The Book of Tomorrow tells the story of 16-year old Tamara. Born with a silver spoon in her mouth, she’s like almost any other girl her age and of her class – interested in boys and flashy stuff, lashing out at her parents, rebelling against things around here. Until tragedy strikes and her family is bankrupt, at which time they move out to the country to stay with her mother’s brother at a ruined castle.

While there, Tamara finds a book at a traveling library – an empty book that miraculously has an entry for the next day’s events. Using those entries and clues, Tamara is about to uncover a secret that has been hidden 17 years.

I think the novel is aimed at tweens, and with this category, it should be a hit.

Cecelia Ahern has done a great job of writing from a 16-year old’s point of view, and she builds up her characters and the plot well. You pretty much find things out along with Tamara, and can feel her excitement and frustrations. The novel is pretty well-crafted, but then you’d expect that from Cecelia Ahern, and should keep tweens (and maybe some adults too) engrossed as they wait to find out what comes next.

If you were hoping for something along the lines of P.S. I Love You, though, you just might be disappointed.

Overall, I’d say you could pick it up for a quick, light read on a rainy day.

Book review: Angel Words – Doreen Virtue

I’ve read a few of Doreen Virtue’s books and worked with her Angel cards, which I love, so when I saw Angel Words, I was curious to see what the book was about. Co-authored by Doreen and her son Grant, the book takes a look at the vibration, as represented by sound graphs, of different words.

The mother-son duo noticed that whenever Doreen said the word angel during her podcast, the recording graphics were shaped like angel wings. This led them to study other words, and they realized that those with a spiritual or loving basis had large graphs, while those with negative words had tight and small graphs.

Doreen calls positive words Angel words, and through stories and illustrations of sound graphs, she shows how just changing the way we talk (even self talk) can dramatically change our circumstances. One of the stories she shares is of Carolyn Purchase, who owns a metaphysical store in Nova Scotia. She noticed that whenever asked about her business, she said “I’ll never be rich but it pays the bills,” and that was exactly what she experienced. When she noticed what she was saying, she had an epiphany and said instead, with total conviction, “Fantastic! This place is a gold mine!” In a year, her sales have increased by 40%.

The chapters on “Words that can heal your life,” “Positive, high-energy words” and “Negative, low-energy words” are very interesting. The only chapter that I didn’t quite agree with was “Life-affirming clichés and expressions,” where she offers a more positive spin on some common, negative clichés. Some of her positive takes on clichés are a bit absurd. For e.g., “I’m between a rock and a hard place” versus “I move through life with grace and ease” or “It’s like stealing candy from a baby” versus “The sweetness in life is plentiful for all of our inner child’s needs” The positive replacements do seem a bit lame!

Overall, though, I think it is an interesting book that illustrates the vibrational frequency of different words and makes a compelling case to try to talk positive.