The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas by John Boyne

My daughter was prescribed this book in school and when I learnt that it was about the Holocaust, I was somewhat excited and I picked up the book myself. Was I disappointed? Big time! The book is supposed to be about the terrible and horrible things that happened in the Auschwitz concentration camp... Except that it is NOT!!! 

The story is narrated by a 9 year old German boy who develops an unusual friendship with a Jewish boy inside the camp. They interact and meet secretly for months and apparently talk a lot and yet there is not a single mention of what goes inside the camp. The names are all masked and "Auschwitz" becomes "Out-with" and "Führer" (Hitler) becomes "Fury" with the excuse that the 9 year old boy cannot pronounce the words correctly. Although the attempt is to portray that the children didn't understand the holocaust (neither the one outside the camp, nor the one inside it) but even the incidents that happen in front of the boy's eyes are missed out in explanation on the pretext that the boy cannot bring himself to mention it (such as the incident with the waiter Pavel when he spills wine on Lieutenant Kotler). It's highly surprising that in all those conversations Shmuel never once tells Bruno why he hates the soldiers and what he is going through (maybe he doesn't understand the why of it but he could have talked about the beatings or the bruises and how he got them).

I felt that in doing away with the disturbing stuff, the author is not doing the readers any favour, even if they might be young adults. On the contrary, he is absolutely undermining the holocaust. He is misleading the readers about what may have gone inside the camp - like a kid could everyday wander about and spend hours undetected; or a child go actually go under the fence (I had heard that the fences were electrocuted).

Coming to the book otherwise, although this is a young adult fiction, it can very easily be read by younger children. The language is very simple, words and phrases were repeated again and again and, as already mentioned, there was nothing disturbing in the story to trouble the innocent minds. If you want to introduce your 9-10 year olds to holocaust literature, this could be your pick. But, if you want to actually understand what the Jews went through during that horrifying period of History, avoid this book and pick some other.

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#JohnBoyne
#HolocaustLiterature
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#12BooksToRead2020
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Animal Farm by George Orwell

Animal Farm is a well known classic and probably read by many people my age when they were in school. But I hadn't read it yet. My daughter was prescribed this book in school and I took it up also an opportunity to read it.

A small and easy read, all I knew about the book when I started reading it, was that it is a satire on communism using animals. As I read a few chapters, I started noticing similarities with the Russian Revolution although I only vaguely remembered studying about it in school. A little more into it and I kept picking up interest and started surfing the internet about which character in the book represents whom. Now, I don't plan to go into a critical analysis which has already been a subject of many Thesis worldwide. I would just say that I enjoyed the book overall. The end was quite predictable and although it didn't leave me with a smile at the end, I also didn't feel stupid having read the book.

#AnimalFarm

#GeorgeOrwell

#Satire

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#justfinished

#booklover

The Night Manager by ‎John le Carré

Seldom does it happen that I find screen adaptation of a book better than the original; and this must be one of those rare occasions. 

It all started with when during one of my travels, I was surfing TV channels in a hotel in Prague because I just couldn't sleep. I was passing through one of the German language channels when I spotted Tom Hiddleston and Elizabeth Debicki on the screen. I stopped just to make out what movie that is and I got so hooked to it that I watched 4 episodes 4 days in a row, skipping sight seeing to watch a series in a language I was not very comfortable in. Also, I had read the Wikipedia page too on the first night itself. I watched the series twice again in English and had already fallen in love with Tom Hiddleston even before he spoke his first word on the screen.

Now, having read rave reviews of the book and having heard a Tom Hiddleston interview where he was all praises about the book, I picked it up. How severely disappointed I was with the same. Not only I found the narratives overtly stretched, I did not find my interest building up in the story either. It is one of the reasons that it took me so long to finish the book as I felt bored and distracted. The only reason I carried on and finished the book was to see how different it was from the BBC series.

The screen adaptation is excessively modified and I think makes for a more realistic and interesting plot. But I must make allowances for the time period in which the novel is set in and remember that there were no gadgets or cellphones or GPS trackers or satellites to track people; and there were no wire and online transfers of funds either. But for me the biggest sore point in the book was the climax. Apologies for the spoiler but I cannot forgive le Carré for not giving a proper closure to Richard Roper and his illegal transactions. Just rescuing Jonathan Pine, and Jed along with him, is simply not enough for me.

Although the review pertains to the book (I hardly comment on technicalities anyway), I would like to write a few words about the casting. Maybe because I had seen the screen adaptation first, but every time I read anything about Jonathan Pine, I could easily visualise Tom Hiddleston as Pine; same with Hugh Laurie as Richard Roper; or Tom Hollander as Corky; in fact, pretty much every character except Burr (for obvious reasons) and Jed. Elizabeth Debicki is not even remotely close to the Jed in the book both in terms of physical description or in terms of characterisation.

Now, I need to catch up on the series once again to get over my disappointment.

#TheNightManager

#JohnleCarré

#SpyNovel

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When Breath Becomes Air

Nopes... I haven't finished my second book of the year already. But I had read this while I was traveling in last November and I remembered that this book of all deserves to be here as a review. To be honest, I was skeptical about picking this up because I had heard that it has a lot of medical jargon and I wondered whether I would even be able to get a hang of it. Also, this is supposed to be an autobiography and I am just not a non-fiction person. But, I did pick it up even if out of curiosity around what is in it to generate such hype and have amazing reviews.

For start, it was an easy read. There were all those medical terms but I had kind of blocked my mind from delving too much over them. Moreover, it helped that it was gripping right from the word 'go'. The writing is actually pretty neat, thoughtful and well structured. So much so that I felt that Paul was not wrong in thinking about career options in literature though he didn't pursue them until this book.

Unlike some of the reviews, I didn't really find it heavy. I didn't shed a single tear and believe-you-me I shed tears on snaps. So, I don't know why most of the readers say that it's heart-breaking. I mean, the book is an auto-biographical account by a terminally ill person so the scenario is heart-breaking but other than that, I did not think it was a sob-story. In fact, I had an image of Paul as someone very optimistic and a happy person to be describing his life so beautifully even while on death-bed.

I found the climax abrupt but to be fair to the person, his death was too sudden and that's how the story ends. And then one thinks that is exactly how fragile life is. For me though the best part of the book was how Paul sheds light on the patient-doctor relationship in a deep and humane manner. And the rest was all about transition of this person from leading a normal life with the eventuality of death only at the back of your head to a life where that eventuality is in the foreground of everything you do. Under the same shadow of a meaningful life, Paul comes to the conclusion that suffering and striving are the main components of a meaningful life.

#WhenBreathBecomesAir

#Autobiography

#PaulKalanidhi

#booklover

The Institute by Stephen King

I have re-adopted / re-kindled the reading resolution this year. I am not a fast reader so 12 books in a year (i.e. one book each month) looks both reasonable and not overtly ambitious considering that I more often than not struggle for time. What helped was that my daughter's exams are around the corner so her Kindle was free which I borrowed and kept in my handbag. So, every free time, no matter how short, has kind of become reading time. I was able to wrap up my first book yesterday. It took a couple of days over a month but that's okay as I might be able to make up few days if I pick up some shorter book.

The reason it took over a month was two-fold. First, I was not able to decide which book to read. I have quite a few unread books with me but I wanted to pick up something which I could recommend to my daughter to read after her exams. Something that meets her interests but is one level above from what she has been reading off late. Now, Science Fiction or Scientific Thrillers (I hope I mentioned the right category where this book falls into) is not my cup of tea but that's my daughters favourite genre. So, I searched the most well-known author of the genre and tried to select a book which might be of interest to her and also has really nice reviews on Goodreads. Second, since it was not my preferred genre, I had a really sluggish start. I dragged the book initially but took over it seriously only once I had hit February.

Now coming to the book... As I already mentioned the start was sluggish. I found the book boring in the beginning. It picked up my interest only after the entry of Luke Ellis, the lead protagonist, which happened well after a quarter of the book. But, did it pick my interest or what? The book thereafter was almost un-put-downable, if that is even a word. The characters were well-etched (although - spoiler alert - I wondered if Luke is such a brilliant child prodigy then why is his talent not any useful or displayed during his stay in the Institute but people may argue that there is some explanation to that in the book) and you almost are able to form a mental picture of how they might look like. The language is crisp, smooth and simple enough to keep you hooked. There are swear words used freely (and that too by 12 year olds) but that is not any problem for the adult readers although that is the only one thing which is making me indecisive about letting my 13-year old read the book. Not that 13-year olds nowadays are not aware of these words. Last, I was slightly disappointed with the end, especially the climax which let me slightly down. It was quite dramatic but just not the kind I would have liked. Then again, it's my personal view totally. In the reviews, people had mentioned that the plot is similar to the Netflix series "Stranger Things" but I cannot comment on that since I have not seen the series myself.

#TheInstitute
#StephenKing
#Thriller
#FirstBookOfTheYear
#12BooksToRead2020

#recentread
#justfinished
#booklover