Reading Wednesday
Nov. 12th, 2014 05:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
brigdhWhat did you just finish?
A Breath of Fresh Air by Amulya Malladi. A novel about the Bhopal gas disaster of 1984. Anjali was a young woman with a strained relationship with her husband Prakash, on the night when a pesticide company (accidentally? due to poor maintenance? mismanagement? court cases are still pending in 2014) released toxic gases over the city, killing thousands. Anjali survived but in the aftermath divorced Prakash. Most of the novel takes place fifteen years later, when she's remarried and struggling to care for her son, who has several fatal health conditions caused by Anjali's exposure to the poisons. When Prakash re-enters her life, Anjali has to reassess the choices she once made, compare her relationships, and decide if she did the right thing.
For a novel advertized as being about the Bhopal tragedy, there's actually relatively little focus on it. The main thrust is about the love triangle (that's not quite the right word, but close enough) between Anjali, Prakash, and her new husband; the cultural status of divorce in the India of the 1980s and 90s; and comparing arranged marriages to love marriages. An easy, entertaining read, but not particularly deep.
Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons. I'd swear I never heard of this book until a few months ago, but in one of those weird cases of synchronicity, it suddenly seemed like everyone was recommending it. And they were right! In the 1930s, Flora Poste, a sensible, well-organized socialite, decides she'd rather live with relatives than bother to get a job, and so she moves in with distant cousins in rural Sussex. They epitomize every gloomy violent melodramatic cliche of people howling on the moors (from mysterious letters proclaiming that there have always been Starkadders at Cold Comfort Farm to ancient Aunt Ada Doom who "saw something nasty in the woodshed" as a child which drove her mad), and so Flora sets out to fix their lives. The book reminded me a lot of The Grand Sophy by Georgette Heyer and was charming and funny and delightful all in very similar ways (though like Sophy, there's a few moments of uncomfortably period prejudices). And so now I'm here to recommend this book to you all! Thus completing the cycle.
Knife Fight and Other Struggles by David Nickle. Nickle wrote one of my favorite horror novels ever – Eutopia: A Novel of Terrible Optimism, and isn't that the best title? – so I was excited to read this book of short stories. His horror is mostly not the realistic kind – the collection includes demons, aliens, space ships, witches, and things more indescribable – but he always has the right emotional weight to make it seem truly horrifying. My favorite stories were The Nothing Book of the Dead, where a grandmother keeps correcting her grandson's writings, even after he's buried the book in her coffin; and The Radejastians, in which a group of immigrants find themselves unable to escape from the Old Religion (and it's really Old).
I read this as an ARC via NetGalley.
What are you currently reading?
Animal's People by Indra Sinha. Another novel about the Bhopal gas disaster. I figured that since I had two of them, I might as well read them together.
The Shirt on His Back by Barbara Hambly. Book club, yay!
A Breath of Fresh Air by Amulya Malladi. A novel about the Bhopal gas disaster of 1984. Anjali was a young woman with a strained relationship with her husband Prakash, on the night when a pesticide company (accidentally? due to poor maintenance? mismanagement? court cases are still pending in 2014) released toxic gases over the city, killing thousands. Anjali survived but in the aftermath divorced Prakash. Most of the novel takes place fifteen years later, when she's remarried and struggling to care for her son, who has several fatal health conditions caused by Anjali's exposure to the poisons. When Prakash re-enters her life, Anjali has to reassess the choices she once made, compare her relationships, and decide if she did the right thing.
For a novel advertized as being about the Bhopal tragedy, there's actually relatively little focus on it. The main thrust is about the love triangle (that's not quite the right word, but close enough) between Anjali, Prakash, and her new husband; the cultural status of divorce in the India of the 1980s and 90s; and comparing arranged marriages to love marriages. An easy, entertaining read, but not particularly deep.
Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons. I'd swear I never heard of this book until a few months ago, but in one of those weird cases of synchronicity, it suddenly seemed like everyone was recommending it. And they were right! In the 1930s, Flora Poste, a sensible, well-organized socialite, decides she'd rather live with relatives than bother to get a job, and so she moves in with distant cousins in rural Sussex. They epitomize every gloomy violent melodramatic cliche of people howling on the moors (from mysterious letters proclaiming that there have always been Starkadders at Cold Comfort Farm to ancient Aunt Ada Doom who "saw something nasty in the woodshed" as a child which drove her mad), and so Flora sets out to fix their lives. The book reminded me a lot of The Grand Sophy by Georgette Heyer and was charming and funny and delightful all in very similar ways (though like Sophy, there's a few moments of uncomfortably period prejudices). And so now I'm here to recommend this book to you all! Thus completing the cycle.
Knife Fight and Other Struggles by David Nickle. Nickle wrote one of my favorite horror novels ever – Eutopia: A Novel of Terrible Optimism, and isn't that the best title? – so I was excited to read this book of short stories. His horror is mostly not the realistic kind – the collection includes demons, aliens, space ships, witches, and things more indescribable – but he always has the right emotional weight to make it seem truly horrifying. My favorite stories were The Nothing Book of the Dead, where a grandmother keeps correcting her grandson's writings, even after he's buried the book in her coffin; and The Radejastians, in which a group of immigrants find themselves unable to escape from the Old Religion (and it's really Old).
I read this as an ARC via NetGalley.
What are you currently reading?
Animal's People by Indra Sinha. Another novel about the Bhopal gas disaster. I figured that since I had two of them, I might as well read them together.
The Shirt on His Back by Barbara Hambly. Book club, yay!
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