Literary Mystique

"You are a human being, not a machine. Nobody can be happy one hundred percent of the time. It isn’t realistic. It’s not what we’re made for.." Synopsis :  Trixie isn’t exactly sure what she was thinking when she stopped her car in the middle of downtown Chicago, scooped up a chicken struggling to cross the road, and drove off… but she does know that she has to find a new home for herself and her new feathered friend. The landlord at her apartment doesn’t allow pets and has caught Trixie in one too many pet-smuggling attempts in the past. Bear likes his quiet life with his close-knit family, who own a flower business, but he’s in for a rude awakening when his meddlesome sisters post an ad to rent the spare room in his simple home, without asking his permission. Still, when Trixie responds to the ad, he agrees to let her move in, despite immediate worries about keeping things platonic. Determined to keep her new room, befriend Bear, and give her rescue chicken the care she des...

"We should expect the mind to reel with echoes from our deepest past . It takes the most extreme trauma to trigger the unforgotten forgotten. Our conscious brain says “yes”, but the brain who’s only responsibility is our very survival says, “fuck no”.. Synopsis :  In a lonely valley, deep in the mountains, a ranger watches over the last surviving grizzly bear. With the natural world exhausted and in tatters, Ben has dedicated himself to protecting this single fragment of the wild. One night, he hears voices in the valley – poachers, come to hunt his bear. A heart-pounding chase begins, crossing forests and mountainsides, passing centuries of human ruins. Sometimes hunter, sometimes prey – Ben must choose the bear’s fate and his own. Is he willing to lay down his life for a dying breed? Is he willing to kill for it? Review :  Reading this novel was the ultimate literary shot in the dark for me, as I knew nothing about the author. But seeing one of his previous novels, “Fishbowl...

"It was easy to dwell on the little things when you didn’t think about there being a time when you no longer could.." From The Blurb :  In Mansi Shah’s stunning debut novel, a family tragedy beckons a first-generation immigrant to the city of her birth, where she grapples with her family’s past in search of where she truly belongs. After her parents moved her and her brother to America, Preeti Desai never meant to tear her family apart. All she did was fall in love with a white Christian carnivore instead of a conventional Indian boy. Years later, with her parents not speaking to her and her controversial relationship in tatters, all Preeti has left is her career at a prestigious Los Angeles law firm. But when Preeti receives word of a terrible accident in the city where she was born, she returns to India, where she’ll have to face her estranged parents…and the complicated past they left behind. Surrounded by the sights and sounds of her heritage, Preeti catches a startling g...

"There’s always a bit of enchantment in the world as long as you know how to look for it. Synopsis :  Saint Louis, 1923.. The golden age of flight has just begun, and pilot Mattie McAdams refuses to cede the skies to cocky flyboys. She longs to perform daring stunts in her family’s flying circus, but the men in her life stand in her way—including the show’s star performer, Leo Ward. They can wring their hands all they want; Mattie won’t stay grounded for long. In the Great War, Leo Ward watched his best friend and Mattie’s twin brother, Alfred, perish in the skies over German territory. Since then, he’s vowed to protect the McAdams family, taking on the most perilous stunts himself. But the skies are too big for any one man. Mattie joins a female-dominated flying circus, kicking off a tantalizing aerial dance as the two pilots make efforts to one-up each other in the skies across America. As planes and passions soar, can Mattie and Leo look beyond their egos to see the great heigh...

"Beautiful things are either dangerous or supernatural, at times both, or a deception. Like feelings.." Review :  Before going to the book, I would like to admire the cover, which, despite being very pretty has a slight hint of gloom to it. Since it's a short book of sixty two pages, I would not ruin the interest of readers providing a synopsis. In short, this beautiful story is about how Death felt the essence of love when he came across a girl on Earth. What I loved : • The concept. Generally writers conceive death to be cold and incapable of love. This story is an exception to that.  • Personification of Death. Sakshi Deora has beautifully brought out how it feels to be like Death. • The letter written by Death at the end is very heart touching.  • The unexpected ending. What I slightly disliked : • I felt as if the book ended to quickly for me to connect with the characters. This could have been turned into a novella by providing more insight into the life of the girl...

"But it takes courage to complete the explanation, to say that something  instinctive, doubtless inscribed in the genetic heritage of the species, compels the  great masses of humanity to condone that which promises desolation and  carnage.." Review :   A powerful novella set in a fictional world where a variety of characters collide  : a mixture of characters from just released prisoners, to circus performers,  writers and a string quartet all living under the rule of an authoritarian  government and their military heavies, seeking the strange counterbalance of  hope in a viola player, whose stunning music just might save them all, if only  for a moment.    The leader of the Frondists in the novella is typically buffoonish and  interchangeable with his henchmen, willing to use racism to mobilise the masses.  It’s quite an indictment on the behaviour of people in crowds and the need to  chant insulting slogans.  ...

"Perhaps we only ever have one true chance at anything and the rest, if offered, is always second best.." Review : Loss is integral to life – from birth, we lose the safety of the womb. Often we lose our position in a family to another sibling. Change is all encompassing. We lose the three-legged races of childhood and later career-driven and consumerist ‘races’ imposed by a success-driven world. When we age, we lose our looks and our health. Ultimately, we die. Always, we are at the mercy of progress, risk and accidents; often we are victims of war. Set in 1920, against the background of Poland’s tragic and tumultuous relationship with Russia, through war, revolution and invasion, until 1954 in the Snowy Mountains of Australia, The Tulip Tree revolves around two brothers - Henryk and Adam and their families faced with the struggle for existence. Brothers Henryk and Adam Radecki’s relationship is fraught with love and jealously. Henryk, unhappily married to Lucia, is a clever...