Mark Haddon, RK Narayan and Lavanya Sankaran...

These are the authors whose books I had dipped into recently and had a taste of their wares. Mark Haddon's "The curious nightime incident of the dog" was written from the perspective of an autistic child. As a story telling method, it was very striking, effective and poignant due to the detailed (miss the forest for the trees), non-emotional (almost like tunnel vision) nature of a typical autistic child. The actual narrative was sometimes tedious trudging along very slowly. I had to keep at it over a length of time, but, the end result was touching.

A fellow booklover friend of mine dropped it in my lap...I am referring to the "The Story of Nagaraj" by RK Narayan. In his typical style, RKN weaves a contemporary story of one Mr. Nagaraj who has all the qualities that a typical hero is not expected to have (lack of a sense of purpose, weak willed, diffident, low self esteem etc.) and this story is about how he deals (or actually does not) with certain emergencies of having to take care of his brother's wayward son etc. In the end, he remains as what he started out with...with a displacement of ZERO after 250+ pages of narrative.

Lavanya Sankaran's "The Red Carpet" is a series of 8 stories resulting from the confluence (or perhaps, collision) of old and the new generations. Though the story telling is quite good, I am not too keen on modern contemporary fiction. I feel as if I can see these stories all around me. These don't have the sense of surprise or newness for me.

Cheers till later.
Krishnaprasad

The 3 mistakes of my Life..

Well...not my life...it is Chetan Bhagat's! The namesake book that I had read (and tossed recently) is the third book (or mistake?) he has written. I have nothing against him. I picked up his books as I just wanted to finish those off my list. They are what I call "Throw-away fiction"...you just read and throw ..totally guilt free!

In fact, it is probably the best of his trilogy. Better plot and some ponderous real world themes like religion in politics, cricket mixed in with themes that perhaps grab the eyeballs of people one-third my age. It starts with a lot of promise, but, it fizzles out by the end perhaps due to sheer fatigue or due to a publisher breathing down his neck.

Language has gotten slightly better along with some traces of humour and some interesting turns of phrase.

I would rate it "A Good Attempt"
- Krishnaprasad