Tag: Modern

Review: Erotic Stories for Punjabi Widows by Balli Kaur Jaswal

Anna and AlexisLeave a comment

Alexis:

Hi, everyone! I know Anna and I have been MIA for a while, but with me being in grad school and Anna freshly married, we’ve been a little busy! Thankfully, it’s my Thanksgiving Break (no pun intended) so I actually have some fun reading time. Now, to jump into the review…

I had the opportunity to go to a reading by Jaswal, and I’m so glad I did! I got to hear her read from this book, and it really helped bring the characters to life.

Nikki is a British woman, the daughter of Indian immigrants. When she drops out of law school and then her father dies, she starts working as a creative writing teacher. However, she quickly realizes that most of the Punjabi widows who signed up for the class can barely read English.

By the book’s title, you can probably tell where this is going. I love Nikki’s character, and I respect her trying to straddle her traditional Indian community with her modern British community. Her sister, Mindi, is a good foil to Nikki, as she searches for an arranged marriage throughout the book.

Overall, there is a lot of humor in the book, and I enjoyed the characters and the widows’ stories, as well as the glimpses we get of their inner lives. This book isn’t fast paced, and because of that, we really get to know Nikki as a character. By the halfway point, more community tensions start appearing that add another layer to the book.

I really liked the first ¾ of the novel, but the last quarter was a little too melodramatic. A lot of the events that happen feel very soap opera to me. And since the rest of the book rings very true, this threw me off a bit. And because of that, I knocked this review down to 4 stars.

VERDICT: 4 stars

 

 

 

SPOILER below:

I also found Nikki’s reaction to the gossip about Jason too overblown. She knew that the gossip the widows spread isn’t always 100% reliable, and yet she takes their gossip and just assumes the worst of Jason. I like the Pride & Prejudice style letter that he writes to her, however!

Review: Conversations with Friends by Sally Rooney

Anna and AlexisLeave a comment

Anna: Read 11/26/18

I couldn’t stop reading this. It’s safe to say that I’m in love with Sally Rooney’s writing style- it’s exactly what I want in literary fiction with a modern setting. I also think it’s an accurate representation of my generation. It’s an accomplishment when a book involves technology without taking away from the quality of writing. Everything about this book feels so real. It captures the ideas and ideals of my generation so well, from fluidity when it comes to sexuality, to how frustrating it can be, as a full-time student, managing finances, friendships, and mental health.

I loved Frances as a character. All of the characterization was rich and complex, but especially the main four- Frances, Bobbi, Nick and Melissa.The relationships were complicated and meticulously fleshed out, and the dialogue felt so realistic. I was impressed by the way Frances and Nick’s arguments were written, even over email. This book is aptly named Conversations with Friends as the complexity, frequency, and realness of these dialogues is something that defines this book. These characters actually have real, interesting conversations, which is something I appreciate. There’s nothing worse than fake, fluffy conversation.

Here are some things I didn’t like.

(Below is where the spoilers live!)

I loved this book all the way through, but it would have had even more of an impact without the last chapter. The fact that it implied that Frances is going to enter into a “relationship” with Nick again takes a way a bit from the chapters before.

Frances’s endometriosis diagnosis was a bit strange. I think reproduction problems are important to talk about in fiction, and too often periods aren’t even mentioned in literature, even in explicitly feminist fiction. Though I really appreciated that aspect, I wasn’t exactly sure of its purpose in the plot. All that comes to mind is that Frances being sick interfered with her fixing things with Bobbi and Nick. It also made her think about youthfulness, womanhood, and pregnancy in a different way, especially since she thought she was having a miscarriage when she first experienced the painful symptoms. I wait to read other people’s full reviews until after I write my own, so I will be looking into other takes on this when I finish writing this.

I thought Bobbi was really annoying. She felt so condescending and controlling over Frances, even at the end when Frances had grown a lot and developed her own “real personality.” I liked how complicated and undefined their relationship was, but I couldn’t get over how preachy and elitist Bobbi is throughout the book.

A huge pet peeve I have is how easy it was for Frances to get published. There is NO WAY that her story would have been published in a prestigious journal AND that she was paid royalties for it. Frances wrote the story in one sitting, sent it in unedited, AND it was the first prose she had ever written in her life. As writers and as someone who has worked in publishing, Alexis and I and are very familiar with the publication process. Maybe it’s easier to get published in a journal in Ireland, but I doubt it.

It was funny reading about Frances interning at a literary agency, because I did that. I can say that part was realistic!

This book does so many great things and I enjoyed reading this so much that I am still considering bumming it up a rating, despite the unsatisfying ending. I can’t wait to read Normal People by Sally Rooney soon!

VERDICT: 4 out of 5 books

Review: Eligible by Curtis Sittenfeld

Anna and AlexisLeave a comment

Alexis: DNFed 11/25/18

Okay, so I rarely DNF a book. But I just couldn’t finish this. I was so disappointed because I love Pride & Prejudice retellings!

I only got about 45 pages in, then I skipped to the ending, and then I skimmed the middle.

To start, the writing style is just weird. It feels too flowery, too forced, like the author was trying too hard to sound like Jane Austen.

This is supposed to be a modern retelling. Instead, it ends up being a modern yet sleazy retelling. The story features a TV show that’s basically The Bachelor. There’s a lot of tasteless sex, and Lizzy and Darcy even have hate sex. Lizzy and her sisters joke about how they think Mary is gay so often that it makes me uncomfortable. A lot of other additions are completely unneccesary. 

Instead of being loveable and annoying, Mrs. Bennet is rude and annoying. She also seems to be prejudiced (ha) and she hates everybody. There’s a line where she says, “Liz…life can be very hard for mulatto children.” Yikes.

Check out this other line: “From his first sighting of Jane, Chip’s face crumpled; and the sequent gush from his eyes would surely have been sufficient to bathe a medium-sized dog: a corgi, perhaps, or a border collie.” What?

The beginning wasn’t good, there were four different—equally bad—endings, and everything I skimmed in the middle wasn’t good, either. This book definitely wasn’t for me.

VERDICT: 1 out of 5 books