The Old Man and the Sea

Old Man and the Sea

Ernest Hemingway

Paperback, 99 pages

First Published:  1952

Publisher:  Arrow Books

ISBN:  9780099908401

Blurb:  Set in the Gulf Stream off the coast of Havana, Hemingway's magnificent fable is the story of an old man, a young boy and a giant fish. In a perfectly crafted story, which won for Hemingway the Nobel Prize for Literature, is a unique and timeless vision of the beauty and grief of man's challenge to the elements in which he lives.

 “I try not to borrow. First you borrow. Then you beg.”

Among the most iconic books written in 20th century, Ernest Hemingway’s “Old Man and the Sea” has a spot of its own. In case you have not been living in a cave since you were born, you’d have heard of its reference somewhere. Published in 1952, The Old Man and the Sea went on to win Pulitzer Prize. It was also cited as the contributing factor to Ernest Hemingway’s Nobel Prize in 1954.

 Santiago, an old veteran fisherman, embarks on a lonesome journey in his skiff to catch a big fish after not catching a single fish for past eighty four days. The book chronicles the struggle of the old man and the marlin in the Gulf Stream. Even with scarcity of basic amenities, Santiago does not let go of the marlin, at the risk of his own life. He does so because he believes in his skills no matter what the other fishermen think of him. The book is the depiction of struggle of man with the nature for his existence.

The writing style of Hemingway is poetic. The scenes are full of imagery. The book contains a lot of monologues, which are masterfully written by the Nobel Laureate. Hemingway is highly economical with his words without leaving any point of the characterization of the old man. Without even ever talking about it, the author depicts the desire of the Old Man to cement his place in the Cuban society and culture. The author also paints the picture of the relation between the young boy, Manolin, and the Old Man. The reader is presented with a vivid picture of their interdependence on each other, even though the young boy’s parents do not let him work with the Old Man.

Although it might take you only a single sitting to read the entire novella, the book will end up giving you enough food for thought that will take a long time digesting. The central theme of the book is man’s capability, strength, bravery and ethics at the time of adversity. Te recurring theme of manhood in Hemingway’s literature is also present in this book. The struggle in the Gulf Stream between the marlin and the old man can also be seen as a metaphor for the adulation, love and respect between two adversaries of equal footing. The turn of the events later on in the book tend to show the ethics of manhood, too.

The book can be summed up as a triumph of an individual. It is the moral code of a life laid bare, where a man has to fight for his even most essential needs.  In modern life we would hardly have to struggle for life’s basic needs against nature like Santiago, but still he teaches us how to accept failure in life, strive alone for our goals with dignity, believe in our capability, and when success comes accept it with humility.

I think every lover of literature should go through this small, yet magnanimous piece of literature. Ernest Hemingway’s Old Man and the Sea is highly recommended!  

Reviewed by: Shadab Ahmed.

A Tale of Two Cities

A Tale of Two Cities

By Charles Dickens

Paperback, 382 pages

First Published in:  1854

Publisher:  Bantam Classics

ISBN:  9780553211764 

Blurb:  'Liberty, equality, fraternity, or death; -- the last, much the easiest to bestow, O Guillotine!' 

After eighteen years as a political prisoner in the Bastille, the ageing Doctor Manette is finally released and reunited with his daughter in England. There the lives of two very different men, Charles Darnay, an exiled French aristocrat, and Sydney Carton, a disreputable but brilliant English lawyer, become enmeshed through their love for Lucie Manette. From the tranquil roads of London, they are drawn against their will to the vengeful, bloodstained streets of Paris at the height of the Reign of Terror, and they soon fall under the lethal shadow of La Guillotine.

A masterful pageant of idealism, love, and adventure -- in a Paris bursting with revolutionary frenzy, and a London alive with anxious anticipation -- A Tale of Two Cities is one of Dickens's most energetic and exciting works. 

Doctor Alexander Manette has been captured in the prison of Bastille, before the French Revolution, and has almost lost his senses in the eighteen years of exile from the world beyond his cell. When an old friend and banker, Jarvis Lorry, summons Dr Manette’s daughter, Lucie Manette, on the pretext of settling some issues of the property that her ‘dead’ father has left her, she agrees to meet him in Dover. After circumlocution, Mr Lorry eventually tells Lucie that they are to get her father back from St Antoine in Paris. After hearing the news, Lucie passes out. Soon after, they are on their way to St. Antoine, for the Resurrection of Dr Alexander Manette.

I wasn’t acquainted with Dickens’ writings before I picked up A Tale of Two Cities. Although, I had read David Copperfield as a child, I don’t remember any of it now. Except hating Uriah Heep.

 However, a lover of World history, I loved the way the conditions of both France and England have been portrayed with n number of metaphors. Apart from what I had read in high school, I knew nothing of the French Revolution. But Dickens does not show us just history. He shows us lives of people of the Guillotine. Or even that of people in England. Many say that Dickens relied on Carlyle’s The French Revolution for writing A Tale of Two Cities, which in itself wasn’t very correct in exploring the history of the event. While many say, that Dickens corrected over the facts before writing A Tale of Two Cities. Whatever it is, as Dickens tells me of these lives, I take them as gospel.

The second part of the book was quite a task. I couldn’t take much of Charles Darnay’s courting Lucie, Sydney Carton’s drinking bouts, Dr Mantette’s madness, the blabbering of Miss Pross, the messy hair of Jerry Cruncher, and his wife’s praying against his will. I drudged along as I read each paragraph of the Book Two. I was dreaming of the next book I would read after the torment Dickens was doing on me would be over. God! How I hated the second part of the book. I found it agonizing and tiresome with all the stupid and banal details. If I have forced myself to read a book to the verge of madness, it was A Tale of Two Cities’ Book Two. Had it not been in my literature course, I would have stopped right there and chucked it out of my window.

Had this been my first Dickens’ novel, I think I won’t have picked  him up again. But I read a little of A Christmas Carol, and it was damn hilarious. I don’t know if Dickens tried to show off too much with all the symbolism and metaphors deliberately in A Tale of Two Cities, just to prove something. I didn’t like it much.

The Third part of the book was finally where I picked, I mean, the book picked momentum again. I loved the third part of it. It was all business, and no bullshit; unlike book two. I so want to reveal the plot and say how much I loved every aspect of it. But I know, no spoilers.

However, I love Sydney Carton. Hell with Darnay! Carton is my real hero, and I think everybody who has read the book would fall in love with Sydney Carton. I cannot stop thinking about poor Carton since I finished reading ATOTC.

The Book Three is a heart wrencher. It makes the torment of the rest of the book worthwhile.

However, the recommendation would be that if you haven’t read Dickens before, DO NOT ATTEMPT to read A Tale of Two Cities for the first one of his series of books. I would have said that you shouldn’t read it at all, however, just for the sake of Sydney Carton, I say that you definitely should. 

Nude Before God

Nude Before God

By Shiv K. Kumar

Paperback, 184 pages

Published in:  1983

Publisher:  Random House India

ISBN:  9788184003833 

Blurb:  Sex and death meet in a story bursting with laughs and essential life lessons.

Ram Krishna is an artist who paints nudes. He is obsessed with death and with his wife’s possible infidelity. Despite his own conjugal insecurities, he engages in an adulterous liaison. Immediately, Karma strikes: he is murdered by his wife’s suspected lover. Unclad of corporal existence, he hovers above earth and discovers that—apart from his parents, dog, and a few friends—no one misses him. Dejected, he encounters Yama, the Lord of Death, and begins a long conversation that extinguishes Ram Krishna’s airs and affectations, and makes him see that he may have been wrong about life . . . And his wife. 

Armed with a wry sense of humour, Shiv K. Kumar lays bare the questions about humanity’s inescapable end, plying us with a story that gives us new reasons to live and laugh.

Nude Before God was my first encounter with Shiv K Kumar’s writing. A satire on afterlife, the book said. I was intrigued. It seemed like my kind of thing, and once I started it, there was no stopping.

Rama Krishna is a top-notch artist, known for his paintings of nudes. Married to a Christian, Mary, you cannot call him a faithful husband. As soon as he picks up the call one night after returning home, it is some Kenneth George asking for his wife. The seed of doubt sprouts in his heart. Has Mary been having a Christian lover? Before he can look for the evidences, he finds himself dead, and talking to Yama, the god of death.

This book is in the true sense a classic. I have never ever enjoyed and learnt of the bitterness of the world so good humouredly as it has been depicted in this book. Shiv K Kumar has shown us the world through the eyes of an artist. Who finds love, beauty and sometimes sex, everywhere. Who sees the whole world as a rhythm. I was mesmerised by this aspect of the book.

The best thing about the book was showing the thirteen days of afterlife, and the torture and torment and fun a soul has in the time. I could never have imagined anybody writing a satire on afterlife and making fun of it. Shiv K kumar has become my ideal.

Even apart from the death and its satire, he touches several sensitive topics with all his humour. The infidelity, the sex, the envy, the pain, the hypocrisy, he shows it all. A true mirror to the world you live in and would be considered dead in.

Shiv K Kumar is the man who thought out of the box back in 1983. And his straightforward attitude might still not be taken in by everyone. And that is what I loved him for the most.

A very short book, it can be finished right in one weekend. And that would be the best ever entertaining weekend you would have had in a long time. 

I would recommend the book to everybody who loves reading, especially to those who believe in having ideologies completely opposite to the contemporary. Even if they be superficial.

The Color Purple

by Alice Walker

Paperback, 288 pages

Published on: May 22nd 1992 (first published 1982)

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt 

ISBN: 0151191549 

 Blurb:   Celie has grown up in rural Georgia, navigating a childhood of ceaseless abuse. Not only is she poor and despised by the society around her, she’s badly treated by her family. As a teenager she begins writing letters directly to God in an attempt to transcend a life that often seems too much to bear. Her letters span twenty years and record a journey of self-discovery and empowerment through the guiding light of a few strong women and her own implacable will to find harmony with herself and her home. 
The Color Purple’s deeply inspirational narrative, coupled with Walker’s prodigious talent as a stylist and storyteller, have made the novel a contemporary classic of American letters.

My reason for picking up The Color Purple at the bookstore was simple. It was my favourite color. But, before I started it, I came to know that it was highly praised by critics and had a movie based on it too. It was supposedly a classic. The biggest thing was that it had won a Pulitzer Prize too! Naturally, I was eager to read it.

Celie is a poor black woman whose letters tell the story of twenty years of her life, beginning at age fourteen when she is being abused and raped by her father and attempting to protect her sister from the same fate, and continuing over the course of her marriage to “Mister,” a brutal man who terrorizes her. Celie eventually learns that her abusive husband has been keeping her sister’s letters from her and the rage she feels, combined with an example of love and independence provided by her close friend Shug, pushes her finally toward an awakening of her creative and loving self.

More than half of the book is written in broken English. It is so because it is a narration/diary of Ceilie who knows little of reading and writing. Walker has skilfully crafted several themes in the book like slavery, colonialism, racial discrimination and over the loads and loads of information she gives us about the twentieth century makes her really worth a Pulitzer.

She’s done a remarkable job of indicating the discrimination at that age. She got into the skin of her character and has been marvellous at showing how downtrodden women were at that time. And how ignorant people were. And it is unfortunate, some people still are as bad as they were then.

I love the character of Celie. She has such horrible self-esteem but tells things exactly how they are when it comes to situations and other people. I also liked how she was contrasted next to Shug as a strong female character.

There’s no doubt anyone would hate Ceilie bloody father, but I hated her husband Mr.____ too. You must be wondering who this Mr.____  was. Ah, that is how he was named all through the book. We didn’t have his name anywhere in the book. I wish he had a specific name. So, Mr.____ was an aggressive man who abused Celie, and took advantage of her in many ways. He beat her for no reason, married her because probably he wanted a nanny for his children and kept her because he wanted to sleep with her.

Alice Walker again proves her Pulitzer-worthy skills by potraying different sides of black women in different characters. While Ceilie was submissive, Sophia was a rebel. While Shug was considered to be a slut singing around here and there, Nettie was on a noble mission to educate people down in Africa.

The book was beautiful and moving in its way, yet ultimately failed to excite me in the author seems to expect. To me, this book dragged on and on. At times I really did wonder what the point of the story was all about, and it felt like it was going nowhere.

Yes, I know the book is about a woman who was abused by a father, a husband and invariably didn't know what it was like to exist in a normal life but sometimes it was written in such a monotonous way that I longed to put an end to it. I merely felt that every page I turned, the author was re-writing the pages I'd just finished. Like the old saying, "Same nonsense, different day."

While the letters by Nettie from Africa were nicely done and are my favourite part of the book, but on the whole, the book bored me to death. There was an excessive sexual content in the book and what killed me was the broken English. It confused me throughout the plot. I know it was necessary but still feel that I might have liked it better if normal English had been employed.

If you are one of those serious feminists, and like reading about lives of earlier people, you might like it. But, the risk would be entirely yours. And who knows, if you read it you may give it an A, since it is one those Pulitzer kinds.

Review originally published on: http://vaultofbooks.com/c/review-the-color-purple

To Sir, With Love

by E.R. Braithwaite

Paperback, 192 pages

Published on: October 1st 1990 (first published 1959)

Publisher: Jove

ISBN: 0515105198 

 Blurb:  The modern classic about a dedicated teacher in a tough London school who slowly and painfully breaks down the barriers of racial prejudice. It is the story of a man's own integrity winning through against the odds. When a woman refuses to sit next to him on the bus, Rick Braithwaite is saddened and angered by her prejudice. In post-war cosmopolitan London he had hoped for a more enlightened attitude. When he begins his first teaching job in a tough East End school the reactions are the same. Slowly and painfully some of the barriers are broken down. He shames his pupils, wrestles with them, enlightens them and eventually comes to love them. To Sir, With Love is the story of a dedicated teacher who turns hate into love, teenage rebelliousness into self-respect, contempt into consideration for others.

I had never heard of this book until I read an excerpt from it last year. The excerpt was half a chapter of the book which was in our Functional English syllabus for the second terminal exams in Eleventh Standard. I found the excerpt very, very intriguing and that day I decided that I was going to read this book for sure.

When I read the excerpt last year, I had a different idea about the book. I thought that it was a book about a teacher who has been wound up completely by a bunch of crooks and rogues who’re his students. But when I read the book, it was an entirely different story.

Set in the 1940’s, it traces the journey of a black man named Braithwaite who has suffered a lot due to the color of his skin. In London, it is hard for him to earn a living because he is either said to be too qualified for the job or too ‘black’ to be bossing the whites in the offices. Finally Braithwaite meets an old man sitting in St. James Park in London who gives him a piece of advice that as Braithwaite says ‘…changed the whole course of my life’.

I liked the line said by the old man to Braithwaite to raise his spirits and it will be one of my favorite quotes I have ever read.

“A big city cannot have its attention distracted from the important job of being a big city by such a tiny, unimportant item as your happiness or mine…. A great city is a battle field. You need to be a fighter to live in it, not exist, mark you, live. Anybody can exist, dragging his soul behind him like a worn out coat; but living is different. It can be hard, but it can also be fun; there’s so much going on all the time that is new and exciting…”

Reading the book, I could relate to each and every character of the book. Being a student, I related to the students at the Greenslade School. Knowing that I might have to teach at some point of my life, I could very easily relate to Mr. E. R. Braithwaite. It is not just these. All the characters from Gillian to Pamela Dare’s mother seemed so close to me.

Although it is an autobiographical account, you would at no point get bored while reading it, even if you’re just a fiction lover. Braithwaite successfully reaches the heart of his readers writing with the skills of a novelist.

The book is mainly a school drama but the main point of the book, racism, is no where neglected. It clearly shows the plight of the colored people living in the white majority societies. It goes way beyond your history books that tell you the blacks were looked down upon. It makes you live the life of a black man himself.

The language used in the book is absolutely marvelous. But the ones who are not regular readers of modern classics might find it a little difficult to get the hang of it easily. It primarily uses the language in a way that is a British dialect of East End Londoners.

And talking of language, the students at Greenslade live in slums and have a very bad mouth. The way Braithwaite quotes the slang is as if you are yourself sitting in front of them, hearing them swear. A beautiful thing about the book is that Braithwaite has no where used the F word in his entire book although you do come to know when the students say it.

He quotes the sentences like “Bastard. You f__ing bloody Bastard.” And “If I’d had the wood I’d have done the f__er in and no bleeding body would have stopped me.” There are a lot of examples like this in the book.

There’s  nothing about the book that I disliked particularly except that at some points it has a lot of narrative summary and no dialogues in two or so pages together. But this being an autobiographical account, we can’t expect dialogues after every paragraph.

A fantastic book meant for the ones who teach or aspire to teach sometime in their life. If you like school dramas, go for To Sir, With Love and you too will fall in love with this Sir.

Review originally published on:  http://vaultofbooks.com/a/review-to-sir-with-love

The Broken Wings

by Kahlil Gibran

 

Paperback, 132 pages

Published on:  January 1st 1912

Publisher: Citadel 

ISBN: 0806501901 

 “Solitude has soft, silky hands, but with strong fingers it grasps the heart and makes it ache with sorrow.”  Kahlil Gibran, Broken Wings

 Blurb:  Kahlil Gibran deeply stirred readers the world over with "The Prophet", a modern classic of surpassing beauty and moral grandeur. In "The Broken Wings", the Lebanese poet-philosopher reveals the same artistry and wisdom that have enshrined his name in the hearts of millions as an "Immortal Prophet" and a "Dante of the Twentieth Century".

This is the exquisitely tender story of a love that beats desperately against the taboos of Oriental tradition. With great sensitivity and lyricism, Gibran describes his passion as a youth for Selma Karamy, the beautiful girl of Beirut who first unfolded to him the secrets of love. But it is a love that is doomed by a social convention which forces Selma into marriage with another man.

This was the first book I read that had been written by Kahlil Gibran. It was truly a touching and delightful piece of writing. The book was basically written in Arabic as Gibran was actually a Lebanese but translating this work into English is one of the greatest gifts to mankind. Though written in prose, it reads like poetry.

The opening lines of the book say “I was eighteen years of age when love opened my eyes with its magic rays and touched my spirit for the first time with its fiery fingers and Selma Karamy was the first woman who awakened my spirit with her beauty and led me into the garden of high affection, where days pass like dreams and nights like weddings."

Gibran always wrote short novels, and this one too is a short, but intense read. The sentences are rich with poetic descriptions, and the way author describes nature and love is refreshing, soothing, and beautiful. Though it has this compact size, yet it can give you the feel that a mammoth of a book cannot.

Portraying the exalted happiness and infinite sorrow of his relationship with Selma, Gibran at the same time probes the spiritual meaning of human existence with profound compassion. And he does so in a poetic prose that has magic and majesty. The descriptions, the metaphors, the words are absolutely wonderful. There couldn’t be anyone other than Kahlil Gibran, who could create such magic with his work.

This book is about love, holding on and letting go. This is a very simple story of the love between Gibran and Selma but, believe me, it will leave your heart wrenched. With every other line in the book, I could get the meaning of the world. In this, his story of his first love, the author presents a completely non-sexual romance with the utmost intense emotion.

In the book, Gibran talks of love, plight of women, hypocrisy, false values on which human societies are built, and true prayer and sacrifice. And all is told in very few majestically beautiful words without malice to anyone. It is about a world where loving someone is prohibited, and those who love are looked down upon.

I could feel Gibran’s pain, I could feel the helplessness of Selma, I could feel the sense of duty that Selma’s father felt, I could feel the possessiveness that Selma’s husband had. Though Gibran was supposed to give only the idea of his pain, he has very sincerely shown the monologue related to the others.

Gibran was not just yet another writer, he was a great philosopher. There’s no such part in the book where I would disagree with his philosophy of love. I remember reading this book when I was down with severe fever in the bed. But I couldn’t stop reading.

I have hardly seen anyone who has read The Broken Wings and didn’t love it and didn’t feel bad about their lost love.

If you have ever loved someone or lost him/her somehow, you will connect with it. And if you have not loved, you will know what it feels being in love.

Review originally published on:  http://vaultofbooks.com/aplus/reviewthe-broken-wings