Payal Dhar's Blog: Writer's Log, page 7

Review #41: When She Went Away

What do you do when you wake up one morning and find that your mother has left you all? If you find she’s packed her bags, left a succinct note on the fridge and disappeared from your life. Would you be angry, feel betrayed, be heartbroken? Maria Sulaiman is all of this and more, as she, her brother and father reel from the shock of being a suddenly-broken family.

Andaleeb Wajid’s When She Went Away is a young adult tale of a girl in search of answers, trying to wrest back some control on her life. But sometimes finding the answers you’re seeking doesn’t always make you feel any better.

Full review at Plusminusnmore.rapo.in

~PD

Review #40: Saints of the Shadow Bible

Rebus is back on the force—but he’s now junior to Siobhan Clarke! Well, if that piece of news makes you sit up in disbelief, you must be a fellow-Rebus-fan. Which also means you need to pick up the nineteenth Rebus novel, The Saints of the Shadow Bible, right away.

This one is a slightly mellow story, one in which old skeletons threaten to leap out of long-forgotten closets. A case of police corruption dating back to Rebus’s newbie days on the force intertwines with a suspicous car crash. Malcolm Fox from the Complaints department has a major role to play in this novel, with interesting consequences. Eight out of ten!

Read the full review

~PD

Review #39: The Boy Who Speaks in Numbers

Satire is never easy and satire for young adults would be an especially tough choice. Add to this the fact that Mike Masilamani references the Sri Lankan civil war in his The Boy Who Speaks in Numbers, and you realize what an uphill task he’s set himself. In the story, which is vividly illustrated by Matthew Frame, the eponymous Boy is sent to a refugee camp when his village is destroyed.

For [satire] to be effective, the context has to be firmly in place, and when one is talking about war and violence, this is especially tough…. [E]verything in The Boy Who Speaks in Numbers is a metaphor, a euphemism. It is undoubtedly a clever book—perhaps too clever by half—but it is difficult to see what attraction it might have for a teenage readership that is not familiar with the Sri Lankan civil war.

Full review at Goodbooks.in

~PD

Review #38: Gender Talk

‘Boy or girl?’ That’s the first question that gets asked about us the moment we are born. And from there on, it goes on to dictate just about everything about our lives. Whether male or female, gender restricts us into predefined moulds. Yet most of us are unaware of these unspoken social or cultural codes that accompany our biological sex.

There are few (if any) books that talk to young adults about gender in a sensible manner. Which makes Gender Talk: Big Hero, Size Zero something of a trailblazer. Matter-of-fact in tone, it starts with what gender means and goes on to analyse how it makes a difference in how we live our lives. ‘Imagine you’re on another planet where no one even knows what a boy or girl is,” say the authors, Anusha Hariharan and Sowmya Rajendran. ‘Are there things you would love to do or stop doing because out here nobody cares and there’s no pressure?’

As social norms and popular culture keep reminding boys and girls, men and women the right way to be, what clothes to wear, how to sit, what to like and what to do, it’s ridiculously easy to lose sight of what we truly want to be…. This makes sifting between fact and social conditioning a frustrating exercise. Gender Talk: Big Hero, Size Zero is an attempt to provide young readers a lens to understand this difference.

Full review on Goodbooks.in

~PD

Review #37: Dear Mrs Naidu

What does a studious little 12-year-old have in common with a well-known freedom fighter and the first woman governor of an Indian state? Little, it seems, apart from their name—Sarojini. But as young Sarojini starts writing letters to the long dead late, let’s just say ‘historical’, Sarojini Naidu, we find that this is a fairly well-matched pair. Read this hilarious and inspiring story to find out what happens when children stand up for their rights.

Through her letters, Sarojini alternately regales and informs us of what happens when she discovers the Right to Education Act. From using it to try to get a seat at [her best friend] Amir’s posh school, to demanding that Ambedkar Government School [where she goes] itself be fixed, she finds that having rights and getting them are very different things. Simultaneously reading a biography of Sarojini Naidu, the younger Sarojini finds inspiration from the older Sarojini’s life, which gives her the courage to ask for what she should have.

Read the full review

~PD

Review #36: The Whispering Skull

Our—well, certainly mine—favourite modern-day ghost hunters are back. Yep, it’s Anthony Lockwood, Lucy Carlyle and George Cubbins of Lockwood & Co. fame, and this time they are on the track of a ghostly artefact called the bone mirror. Failure will mean public humiliation at the hands of the snooty Quill Kipps of the Fittes Agency.

Set in present-day London in an alternate reality, we see a world far behind ours technologically thanks to the Problem. Which is the resurgence of the undead in various ghostly forms, who come out in the dark to terrify the wits out of the living. In this creepy world, children and teenagers, the only ones who can see and hear the ghostly beings, have taken on the role of protectors. Thus, it is up to agents like Lockwood, George and Lucy to flush out ghostly sources and shut them down. The Whispering Skull is the second in this fantastic series by Jonathan Stroud.

Read the review here

~PD

Review #35: Smitten

Ranjit Lal’s Smitten is a difficult book to talk about. On the one hand, it will leave you repulsed and enraged. On the other hand, it is a terribly important book because it throws the curtains open on a shameful reality of our world: the sexual abuse of children.

Here’s an excerpt:

Samir is delighted when the Handas move into the flat right across his. He and Akhila, his new fifteen-year-old neighbour hit it off immediately…. But as the narrative alternates between Samir and Akhila, the sinister truth emerges. The reality behind Akhila’s father’s over-affectionate, touch-feely behaviour with his daughter is revealed. His inappropriate advances escalate even as friendship — and possibly a hint of romance — blossoms between the teenagers.

Read the full review here

~PD

Review #34: The Killing of Mr Heathcoate

Mysteries. They are some of my very favourite books. Right since the time I read The Mystery of the Spiteful Letters as a six-year-old, I haven’t been able to resist a whodunit. While it’s true that as a cranky adult I’ve become a lot more fussy about the whydunit and howdunit too, you’ll still find my bookshelves—which includes my ebookshelf—stuffed with mystery and crime novels.

When it comes to children’s books, I’ve been waiting for a long time for a juicy mystery. Over this past year or so, I’ve had the opportunity to read quite a few, thanks partly to Goodbooks.in. The Case Files of PI Pojo: The Killing of Mr Heathcoate has been the latest.

Pratap Pande, a.k.a. Pojo, is a somewhat precocious thirteen-year-old… and a fledgling private eye. [He] solves crimes wherever he goes, from cases of stolen sweets and pilfered newspapers to missing prizewinning orchids…. So, when the school mascot, a cat named Mr Heathcoate, is found dead, Pojo finally lands a “murder” case. And, if the killing of Mr Heathcoate is not terrible enough, the cat’s body disappears overnight. Who could possibly want the beloved school cat dead and why would they go to such great lengths to steal the body? Is it the football captain of the rival school Oakwood, intent on sabotaging Heathcoate’s chances of the football cup? Is it Matron, looking for revenge after being sacked for sneaking a quick smoke on the job? Worse still, is it someone from the student body, or one of the teachers or other staff? As the school reels under the loss of its darling mascot, Pojo swings into action.

Read the rest here

~PD

Reviews #32, #33: Ghost Hunters of Kurseong and Manan

The reviews have been a bit scarce the past couple of months, mostly because I’ve been too busy reading. But I did review these two for Goodbooks.in:

The Ghost Hunters of Kurseong by Shweta Taneja

Having been part of the generation that grew up on a staple diet of Enid Blyton, one does sometimes miss a good old straightforward mystery story. While this is not to gloss over the attendant problems of Blyton’s work, those simple stories about a gang of kids catching thieves, finding stolen stuff, solving ‘safe’ crimes are sorely missed. It’s not that this genre has not been attempted in Indian writing – it has and numerous times, but it is a tricky one to get right. Thus, it was with the anticipation of getting my teeth into a juicy mystery that I approached Shweta Taneja’s The Ghost Hunters of Kurseong.

Read the rest here

Manan by Mohit Parikh

Adults who spend a lot of time debating about the appropriateness of reading material for children are going to have a field day with this one. More about that later; for now, let’s focus on the fact that Manan takes a slightly different approach to one of those staples of YA fiction – yes, we mean the coming-of-age tale. Mohit Parikh’s debut novel reads more like literary fiction rather than a young adult one, and that isn’t necessarily a compliment. Nor is it a criticism. Well, it’s complicated.

Read the rest here

~PD

Review #31: Only Ever Yours

What do you get when you take a brilliantly imagined world and stir in a somewhat disappointing plot and a completely bizarre ending? In the case of Louise O’Neill’s dystopian spec-fic novel Only Ever Yours, the answer is, a chillingly compelling tale that keeps you hooked and horrified in equal measure.

The time is the future—it could well be ours—where girls are genetically engineered and trained for 16 years till they are considered suitable to be chosen by men as trophy wives and the producers of sons. If they don’t make it as wives, they must become concubines. This is a coming-of-age story that you might well wish you hadn’t read because it could make you think twice about some of the ideas our world holds dear.

Read the full review here.

~PD