Tag: British

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Review: Erotic Stories For Punjabi Widows

Rating: 4 Stars

Well, that was crazy! Of course, I knew that Erotic Stories For Punjabi Widows by Balli Kaur Jaswal wasn’t all about erotic stories. At the same time, that is exactly what it was all about! An adult English literacy class for widows, in a community center, next to a Gurdwara (A Sikh Temple) gets derailed by the determined widows, and turns into a story telling session. This is how the book starts, and this is what the book is all about. Actually, not all.

Nikki, a college dropout, has spent her young life feeling pressured by her parents, and thinks that all brown people are like her family. Until she steps into Southall and realizes that maybe she didn’t have it as bad. Southall is like a mini Punjab; everyone knows everyone else’s business, and honour is held dear. Most of the older generation here doesn’t even speak English. Hence, the need for literacy classes for widows.

The Community Development Director of the Sikh Community Association, Kulwinder Kaur, is a formiddable woman. She herself doesn’t realize that what she wants and what she has advertised are two different things, unknowingly tricking Nikki into applying for the job. During the first class, Nikki realizes that she might not be up to the challenge, but her dismal financial situation stops her from resigning.

And then, these classes turn into something that Nikki could never have imagined! The widows defy Nikki’s expectations. Their ages ranging from relatively young to very old. They are not afraid to speak out. They let Nikki know their real interests. The more Nikki gets involved with them, the more she realizes the advantages of living in a community. Until she comes face to face with the dangers too. Now, it is only a matter of time before someone discovers what is going on, and all hell breaks lose.

Balli Kaur Jaswal has touched upon the gravest of issues with a light hand. At no point does it seem like she is condemning the whole Sikh community for the sins of a few. As with any South Asian community, there is a resisatnce to change and a reverence for norms and traditions. Things like respect for elders, segregation of sexes and contempt of adopting English “ways” is common in all communities, be they Sikh, Hindu or Muslim, from India, Pakistan or Bangladesh. The widows, while dressed in light colours, are the most colourful characters that you can encounter in fiction. Each with their own story and fantasy, they take over the narrative and it’s hard to let them go. I was having too much fun reading about these women who society thinks are demure and paragons of virtue and chastity.

For a book with less than 400 pages, Erotic Stories For Punjabi Widows packs in a lot of relevant issues and ties them in a nice little package. It is a story of hope, determination, breaking off shackles, learning to stand up for yourself and your cause and making a place for tradition; but above all, it is a story about friendship. Friendship that transcends age, status, ethnicity or values; that makes you believe in the other person; that makes you run into a burning house to save them; friendship that you find in the unlikeliest of places.

A surprisingly light read, that needs to be read at least once

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Review: Our Kind Of Cruelty

Rating: 3 Stars

Our Kind of Cruelty by Araminta Hall, is more the diary of a crazy, twisted individual, than an actual story. It is narrated by Mike Hayes while he is in prison awaiting a murder trial. His lawyer has asked him to pen down his story as seen from his perspective, and Mike is only too willing to do that.

From the first page of the book, we realize that we are dealing with an individual whose concept of reality is different from that of the rest of the world. He lives in a bubble of his own, where his most important relationship is with Verity, his girlfriend. Of course, Verity thinks that since she has broken up with him, she is free to fall in love with someone else and get married to him. She is mistaken.

What Verity’s fiancè doesn’t realize, is that it is all a game that Mike and Verity are playing with each other. Verity only wants to pay Mike back for cheating on her, and is only trying to make him repent, which he does.

The book is quite creepy, and I would probably have given it a higher rating, had I not felt it drag in the middle. The reason I continued reading was that I was looking forward to the twist, or maybe Verity’s take on things, or failing that, some other equally deranged outcome. Alas, I was disappointed.

The book is only a look into the mind of Mike Hayes, which is not a bad thing, except that it becomes quite boring to read the same thing for so long. The book could easily have been 50 pages shorter, and it would still be the same story. By the end, I was wishing really hard for some other unthinkable outcome, but it all ended as expected.

There was one thing that really made me think, and that rings true for court cases all over the world even in this day and age. People will only see what you want them to see, but whatever they see will be coloured by their own prejudices. It is, and always has been, very easy to convince juries about immorality, especially if it pertains to women. So, while they might look at a man with indulgence, a woman will get censure for the exact same thing. The book takes that thought, and runs away with it.

For me, the whole court case was clichéd. The woman will have a woman lawyer, who is a hardcore feminist, while the man will always go with the cunning lawyer, who will bend the truth to suit him and let his client get away with murder (literally!). Why can’t the male lawyer be just that, a good lawyer, who gets his client off on technicalities, rather than lies? And why can’t the female lawyer be the villian who will go to no end to discredit her opponent? It’s time to change the narrative, in my opinion.

Overall, the main idea of the book is quite creepy, and going into the mind of a deranged and obsessed man is quite fascinating. I would recommend this book for lovers of twisted tales.

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Review: The Missing

Rating: 3 Stars

The Missing by C. L. Taylor, is the story of a family torn apart by the disappearance of their son/ brother. Billy Wilkinson, a troubled fifteen-year-old, goes missing after an argument with his parents. Six months later, there is still no sign of Billy, and his family is splintering under the stress and uncertainty.

Claire Wilkinson, Billy’s mother, feels it in her bones that Billy is still alive, and so, she is eager to send out a second appeal for information. At the press conference, things don’t go according to plan, and Claire begins to realise that her family has been keeping secrets from each other. All of them have a reason to feel guilty about Billy’s disappearance, and slowly the truth begins to unravel in front of Claire’s eyes.

On top of all this, Claire starts having blackouts, waking up in most unusual and scary places, with no memory of the preceding hours. In these circumstances, as you read on, you realise that Claire, as a narrator, is not so reliable herself.

The book is fast paced and interesting. It shows the stress that families go through when a loved one goes missing, and how every individual has a different way of dealing with the stress. There is also the element of teenage angst and rebellion, and the unpredictability of a teenager’s mind. The overall picture that is painted here, however, is creepy and somewhat disgusting.

As the mom of a teenage son, I was not comfortable with reading about a delinquent fifteen-year-old and his rebellious attitude. There are some things that become horrifying when read in the context of a teenager. It is so in this book as well. The truth, when revealed, is so disgusting and revolting, that you wish you hadn’t read it.

As a story, there is suspense in the story, until about halfway through, when the message exchanges between two unknown individuals start making sense. From there on, you are almost sure about what must have happened. Still, the story keeps you interested till the end, which in my opinion is a bit of a letdown. After using such language, imagery and story arcs, the end seems too tame and predictable to me. Nonetheless, the book is interesting and worth a read if you are a fan of dark psychological thrillers.
Warning: This book contains sex, strong language, and Paedophilia.

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Review: The French Girl

Rating: 3.5 Stars

I bought The French Girl by Lexie Elliott while I was just browsing around the bookstore, waiting for my kids to make up their minds about what to get. I had never seen this book around and had no idea about ratings and reviews. Fortunately, when I scanned it on my Goodreads shelves, my phone started acting up, and I couldn’t see the rating for this books, nor even one review! So, this was one book I really went into blind.

The story revolves around a crime committed a decade ago, which has just come to light. The body of Severine, a 19-year-old French girl, is discovered in a well on a farmhouse in France. The girl was last seen with six Oxford students who were on the farm for a week during the summer, 10 years ago. With one of them dead, suspicion falls on the remaining five, who have all gone on to have successful careers.

Kate Channing had never liked Severine, and that last night of the holiday remains one of the worst memories of her life. But now, Severine has come to haunt her, and her own memories of that last night seem to be changing. As the investigation proceeds, Kate realizes that for one thing, Severine’s ghost will not leave her alone, and for another, somehow she has become the prime suspect for the murder of the girl. As it dawns on her that she has been wrong about everyone who was with her that week, she must figure out what really happened that night, or risk losing everything she has worked so hard to achieve.

The book started off with Kate getting the news of Severine’s body being discovered, and immediately things start happening. So, the book grips you from the beginning as you follow Kate, who is the narrator of the story. As you get used to the speed of things, the pacing slows down about a quarter into the story. For a while it seems like nothing is happening, and you’re just wasting time. This, however, does not take away the reader’s interest because by now, you really want to know what really happened.

There is no real mystery about the culprit here. Even though a couple of characters are made out to be mysterious and cryptic, there is only one who is the villain of this story. The thing that keeps you reading is the great narrative, and that very, very thin thread of what seems like a creepy, supernatural phenomenon!

The plot itself is average, and there are many things that are too predictable. From the first time you read about Tom and Kate’s friendship, you know that there will be a romantic angle somewhere along the way. Similarly, as soon as you learn about the pregnancy of one of the characters, you know that the author is too kind-hearted to make anything bad happen to the woman! There are many such things that come in the realm of cliches, but it still doesn’t matter, because you like where the story is going.

The French Girl is the kind of novel you take on a holiday or to the pool. You don’t need to be glued to it all the time, or having palpitations just reading it. It is a good thriller, which, while not your average egde-of-the-seat affair, is still interesting and engaging. I really enjoyed reading this one.

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Review: Anatomy of a Scandal

Rating: 2 Stars

Anatomy of a Scandal by Sarah Vaughan is a book I’m not too sure about. I have mixed feelings about this acclaimed courtroom drama that has everyone singing its praises. I gave it 3 stars on Goodreads, because I can’t see anything extraordinary in it. We all know that when it comes to legal thrillers, John Grisham is the master of this genre. There was a time when I used to read every book that he wrote. Compared to those, this is a very tame affair.
Warning: This review contains spoilers, and is reflective of how I felt while reading this book. Not everyone is expected to agree with me.

When James Whitehouse, a junior minister and the Prime Minister’s closest friend, is accused of rape by a colleague, his wife Sophie, knows that he is innocent. He may have indulged in a short-lived affair with the woman, but he was no rapist. So, even with all the anger and hurt about the affair, she is willing to stand by her husband when he needs her the most.

QC Kate Woodcroft knows that Whitehouse is guilty, and she will do everything to prove it in front of the jury. She might come off as insensitive and unfeeling when it comes to grilling witnesses, but she knows how to sway a jury, and she feels very strongly about making everyone see the truth.

As the drama unfolds in the courtroom, I couldn’t help but feel bored. The book was about fifty pages too long. There are no real surprises. I was able to make the connection between Holly and Kate almost from the beginning. I knew what had happened to Holly quite early on too. And the secret being alluded to since the beginning of the book, the secret that Sophie knows, is not as explosive as the writer would have you believe.

In the middle of all this, is something that I really didn’t like. There was this general thread that men are incapable of being faithful, as evidenced by both Sophie’s and Kate’s fathers, as well as Sophie’s husband. The thing that had me feeling uncomfortable was the tone of acceptability in the book. There are many books about women who won’t leave their cheating husbands because of one reason or the other, but those books make you feel that what these women are doing is wrong.

This book felt like the author was implying that staying with a cheat is better than not having a man in your life. Sophie was like all women in such situations, not wanting to leave but not wanting to stay either. So, there isn’t anything blatant which I can pinpoint, but I got the general feeling that as Sophie justifies James’s actions, the reader is also supposed to do so.

And then there is the whole underlying lesson of not taking anyone to court for sexual assault or rape. Because that is what I learned from this book. If Kate had won the case that she was prosecuting at the beginning of the book, or if she had sounded optimistic about the outcome of any such cases, it could be said that she was up against a master and she lost. But she lost the previous case, and keeps dropping gems like, “Juries are keen to convict the predatory rapist….yet when it comes to relationship rape, they’d really rather not know, thank you very much.” She keeps telling us that she wins cases, unfortunately we don’t see much evidence of that. Even in the courtroom scenes, she never comes across as the brilliant QC she is supposed to be.

So after reading 350 plus pages, we come to know that nothing much has changed, except the lives of the women involved, while the man is free to go back to his life, both public and private. There is hardly any mention of what happened to poor Olivia after the trial; Sophie is a shallow woman all through the story, with the sole aim of landing and then keeping a husband in her life; and Kate is destined to be alone and unloved because she chose to have a demanding career.

For a fan of outstanding courtroom dramas like To Kill A Mockingbird, A Time to Kill and Pelican Brief, this book is very mediocre, with forgettable characters and a weak storyline.

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