Here’s a question for you — Is it enough to be happy?
Would it be alright if one existed in a permanent state of happiness, the struggle and strife of life swept away somewhere? Would it okay for one to shut one’s eyes to the reality of life, if that was the only way to be happy?
Would that make one truly happy?
That last one is a rhetorical question, I know.
However, it is in one such dystopian world that Bradbury sets his novel.
You know what’s the next best thing to living your dream life?
Reading about an endearing character leading your dream life.
So well, that’s what Paper Moon was for me.
Fiza is a college student leading a rather uneventful (read boring) life comprising soporific lecturers on English Literature. She lives with her mom, her father having deserted them when Fiza was a few months old. She is in a long-term relationship but cannot find it in herself to commit.
Then her father passes away, leaving her an inheritance with the hope that she would set up a book store. Her hitherto uneventful life is thrown into fourth gear. She busies herself scouting locations, planning decor and — my absolute favourite part — visiting books dealers and buying books by the cartload.
Even as her mom refuses to come to terms with her father’s ‘other’ life since he left them, Fiza has to contend with his other family that includes a step-brother. Also thrown into the mix, is a gentlemanly, urdu-speaking, mystery admirer.
What I loved most of all
…was that the book was brimming with book-talk and book references — something I missed sorely in my last read Once Upon a Curfew. I found Mulk Raj Anand and Joseph Heller. Albert Camus was there with his The Stranger as also Tolstoy with War and Peace. Each passing mention was like brief glimpse of an age-old friend. Sample this:
She stepped out of her bus at Marble Arch one evening and walked towards Hyde Park. The place had planted itself in her imagination via Iris Murdoch’s The Word Child.
That’s exactly how it happens, right? When you see a place you’ve read about?
And of course there had to be a mention of Kathleen Kelly and her Shop Around the corner (how could there not be?).
Fiza’s store was my dream store – a place stocked with books, cosy corners strewn with cushions you can sink in, window seats where you can read peacefully and also a cafe within the store with delectable tarts and croissants. My idea of heaven!
Fiza’s mom is a Jazz singer and I was reminded of old favourites like A Streetcar Named Desire while Paper Moon (which I hadn’t heard before) is running on a loop even as I write.
What could have been better
My one complaint with the book was that there were no real conflict areas. Or rather – every conflict was resolved way too easily. Fiza finds the perfect location, at a low rate, has a designer at hand to help her and a family friend to run the cafe in her store. Other members of her team also come together a little too easily. Whatever tiny hiccups the author did build up were resolved conveniently.
Also, in the latter part of the book the setting shifts to London. While I did enjoy that bit as a separate entity, the change of scene broke the flow of the narrative. I would have liked it better had she stayed on in Bombay while her family drama played out. Another thing, I couldn’t help but wonder how Fiza could desert something as dear to her as her book-store, for months together. Specially, since it gave her such a sense of purpose and happiness.
That aside, Paper Moon made for a light happy read.
Last Thought: A light read if you’re looking for a bookish fix.
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Book: Once Upon a Curfew Author: Srishti Chaudhary
Nothing entices a book-lover more than a book about books. And then there are books about a building full of books, a library! And if it’s set in an intriguing time-period, it’s a book-lover’s happily-ever-after.
For all those reasons I began Once Upon a Curfew with great expectations.
Title: The House in the Cerulean Sea Author: TJ Klune
What a delightful delightful book The House in the Cerulean Sea has turned out to be. I couldn’t wait to finish it to begin writing about it. Let’s go then.
I picked up The Tenant of Wildfell Hall because I’d long wanted to explore the works of Anne Bronte — the third Bronte Sister. She wrote just two books and this one was highly acclaimed. The other one is Agnes Grey and I still have to get to it.
To write an honest autobiography one needs perspective. Perspective, that comes from distancing oneself from ones life events. Often, age creates that distance.
It brings fearlessness, a couldn’t-care-less attitude that allows one to be honest, brutally so. It allows one to name names, to call out people or practices or ideas. It allows one to admit ones mistakes, to look upon them with mellowed eyes, to feel genuinely sorry to or to laugh them away.
Those are the things that make for a good read and that’s where Unfinished loses out.
Book Title: The Housekeeper and the Professor Author: Yoko Ogawa Translator: Stephen Snyder
Relationships spring up in the strangest places, between the most unlikely people. And it is these relationships that make for the best stories. The Housekeeper and the Professor is one such tale – the story of a friendship between a housekeeper and a professor. ‘Friendship’ might not even be the right word here. It’s more a connection forged through the housekeeper’s kindness and empathy.
When I sat to do this piece, one thing became clear that if I had a choice and the ability, the occupation I would have crafted for myself would have involved books, food and magic and of course people, friendly people.
Not for me the life of an adventurer, not a spy or a mountain climbing braveheart. No sir! I’d much rather be with a bunch of people I like, talking to them about books in a cafe, weaving some kind of magic and/or cooking up something delicious.
It’s entirely another matter that I can barely cook to save my life and also that outside books, I’m a practical Capricorn who hardly believes in magic.
After much deliberation, I decided to read Anxious People. It had been on my TBR for the longest time but I kept putting it off because I couldn’t bear to be disappointed. There has been so much hype about Backman, and more specifically, about the book that I was almost afraid to pick it up.
I just finished The Flat Share and I haven’t stopped smiling. Sometimes a simple sweet funny story is all one needs. After Dracula, my last read, this light and fresh book is all I needed to put me in the holiday spirit.
