What Are You Reading Today?

A study on privilege, disguised as a thriller. Meet Toby – straight white male, forever lucky. Then his luck runs out when he is viciously attacked, and becomes the center of a murder investigation. You have seen such oblivious Toby’s of the world, probably been one yourself. Blinders on, you navigate the world with your limited worldview. This book says – look around you. Is it enough to be detached in your cocoon? Do you have a larger responsibility? And what will you do when you must confront the ugliness of “real” life? As always, French’s writing digs deeper than your traditional whodunnit.

The harrowing tale of the Gwangju student uprising and its violent suppression by the military. As our world is in upheaval with crimes against humanity going unaccounted for, this book compels you to ask – what does it mean to be human? It’s a tribute to human spirit in the worst moments of history; it’s also inhuman acts laid bare – the brutal apathy of it.  It asks, “why must we fight oppression when nothing changes?”, but it also asks, “why exist at all if not for others?” Unimaginable cruelty and unimaginable kindness – for these are all human acts.

Olga’s marriage, nurtured at the sacrifice of her own identity, falls apart as her husband abandons his family for a younger woman. Ferrante has no penchant for subtlety or the cliché of delicate femininity. She throws all the anger of abandonment at your face – the rage at having given everything and having got back nothing. The ugliness of absolute deterioration as she fails at every minor duty. The infallibility and confidence of being a man; the vulnerability of being a woman.  A society that expects her to forgive, forget and recover. The anger is not just Olga’s, but every woman’s.

Vignettes about several interconnected flawed lives, spanning decades. The core premise being just this – “time is a goon”. Time passes, everything ends. All your hopes of belonging and dreams of climbing unreachable heights – all end. Thinking you will one day be a different, glorious person and have the perfect career, a passionate love, the kind of friends to whom you say “forever!” In the end, just regrets and silences aplenty. Yet, with every ending, there is still a chance of growth and recovery. Egan captures several truths about the agony and the disappointments that accompany adulthood.

The epic tale of humanity’s good and evils played out among a multitude of characters in the Parisian underworld. This is the book you need if you have looked around and seen injustice prevail, and your reaction has been escapism, for it teaches you to have your eyes wide open to the plight of the society. This is also the guidebook if you have ever felt hopeless, for this will teach you that to hope, to dream and to love are the biggest weapons to counter circumstances. Above all, it says this – you are not alone.

Commonwealth follows two dysfunctional families and their intertwined tragedies over the years. The book makes you think – what is home? Is it something intangible – just a feeling or a memory? For all the times you have felt selfish and failed to live up to family’s expectations, this tells you that there are bonds that survive your weaknesses and failures. That familial relationships, no matter how imperfect, hold us together. That no matter how far you run from this “home”, it is always where you will belong and come back to.

An examination of the psychology of a murderer, Raskolnikov. What do you do when you are forced to confront the ugliest parts of yourself? Reason gives away to paranoia. When all rationalizations fail to prevent your fall into the bleakest parts of yourself. When a sense of extreme alienation from your peers, the society and your life threaten to unravel any semblance of reality. Your mind becomes a chaotic prison. You ask yourself – is this madness or is it the society which surrounds me that is mad? Through the erratic mind of Raskolnikov, the author portrays the turmoil of existence.

An estranged family comes together to care for a dying family member. All the bitter memories, so carefully kept at bay, come crashing back in. Past becoming the third person in every interaction – permeating into every present feeling; becoming a comfortable anchor that one holds onto, not letting ourselves heal or re-evaluate history from the lens of empathy rather than anger. Seeing the past in tones of grey and black, as if any interlude of light was unreal. The bad decisions; insecurities; the unforgiving oppressiveness of families. A look at how the only way forward is to let go.

Stories that portray the quiet desperation of women in the post-war, middle-class England.  Bending under the weight of duty. Waking up one morning and realising you have not lived at all. The contradiction of having everything you ever wanted but feeling as if you are still waiting.  Yearning to express, yet hiding because you are scared. All the respectable, organised, confident exteriors that make up lives; all the fragile, frustrated, messy interiors. And despite all the daily disappointments, the comfort of good people and knowing that you are loved. You will find yourself in each of these stories.

Nora, a repressed school teacher, is transformed when she meets Sirena, an artist. We have all been the “woman upstairs” – nice, selfless, forgotten.  She is the controlled façade who you look to for stability and look away when she seems human.  Outside she is marble; inside, feeling the weight of an uneventful life.  Dreams of a transcending life stabbed through by reality.  She is the bastion of duty.  While she smiles benevolently at everyone, she is raging inside, overwhelming despair threatening to come to the surface. Nora is not one woman – she is every woman you have known or been yourself.

The lyrical exploration of grief through the eyes of 6-year-old Rufus in the aftermath of his father’s death. Along with Rufus, we understand what death means – how it can seem so incomprehensibly absolute. What do you do when the life you have so carefully nurtured collapses? When the unthinkable happens and life comes to a standstill? The endless waiting to make sense of an unknowable world, the hoping, and the fading optimism. What and who can hold you together then? This book says that while one cannot escape unscathed, it is still possible for life to move again.

In the immediate aftermath of a terrorist attack, Mrs Delahunty, a middle-aged woman, invites her fellow survivors to recuperate in her villa.  A tragedy shared between people who would have never crossed paths.  We have been here. Halted lives when faced with indescribable grief. Feeling as if you are disappearing into yourself. Then there is a kind voice, a helping hand to lift one from a seemingly endless pit. Compassion received from whom you had never even considered before. Suddenly, life moves again. Trevor celebrates the power of humanity to heal one another.

Olivia, on her seventeenth birthday, awaits her first dance with a mix of excitement and terror. Being on the threshold of womanhood, when you are just beginning to become fully yourself. Being the awkward one in the corners of rooms. Moments divided between daydreaming and despairing. Suddenly maturing into a new-found wisdom, suddenly retreating into the safety of childhood. Everything seems possible. Adulthood beckoning the encounter with “real” people – kind, miserable, cruel, grasping – and also “real” issues. In a single night, along with Olivia, you will relive your first encounter with life.

Penelope’s uneventful life takes a heady turn when she meets the charismatic Charlotte and plunges into her eccentric world.  The dreamy teenage years. Stumbling your way towards an adulthood imagined in vivid colours. Waiting for real life to begin but being so afraid. When that real-life bursts in, feeling terrified and joyful all at once! New friendships and first loves. A head-reeling, heart-pounding journey into life as it begins. Opening yourself to astounding new experiences, but also to vulnerabilities. Rice evokes an immense nostalgia for what one used to be in one’s uncynical years.

An American in 1950s Paris engages in an affair with an Italian bartender while agonizing over his sexual identity. The divide between heterosexual masculinity and his true core widens. The only solution is a complete annihilation of his identity. Imprisoned by the stifling cage he built himself.  Yet, a preference for this cage to the terror of social ridicule. When love doesn’t resemble the rose-tinted pictures we have been told to imagine but becomes an instrument of self-flagellation and searing shame. This book says the worst violence is that of not accepting yourself.