krishnendu's reviews
41 reviews

Pulled my almond out, pierced it with a sewing needle, and stomped it to death. Iykyk.

3.2/5

I started "The Color Purple" expecting to fall in love with it, and found myself reaching the final page without having experienced the connection.

The novel is an epistolary from the perspective of an uneducated African-American woman named Celie, written in Black English sociolect with intentional spelling and grammar errors. This makes reading difficult initially, especially for non-native readers.

At the intersection of racism, feminism, economic inequality, and spirituality, I realise this work is undeniably important considering it was published in the 1980s. It addresses many critical angles like male dominance, homosexuality, sisterhood, adultery, female genital mutilation, black slave trade, etc. But I struggled to resonate with the story and its characters.

Characters like Shug Avery felt impractical and the graphic depictions of child sexual abuse and incest were insanely disturbing. However, I enjoyed Nettie's detailed accounts of her missionary work in Africa a lot. I was rooting for Celie to denounce her biblical white-skinned blue-eyed old-man God so bad!

I wish i enjoyed this book as much as the other reviewers did. It is an extremely powerful piece in modern feminist literature exploring self discovery and escaping systemic oppression not just for homosexual black women, but women everywhere.

I now get why my Mother loves this book so much!! Probably the cutest memoir ever written. Highly recommend that educators and parents give this a read and find inspiration in Master Kobayashi. I adore how love, loss, and grief are explored through the eyes of little Totto-chan; it was a deeply refreshing detour from the usual adult, mature approaches to them.

Ratings;
5/5 for the Malayalam translation
4/5 for the English version.

A one-of-a-kind detached spectator account of Palestinian suffering in the early 1990s. Contains deeply personal and disturbing panels on Israeli methods of "moderate torture" and the dehumanising conditions in palestinian prisons. Greatest positive I'd its neutral stance, for example, questioning the Koran and its treatment of women while also voicing the plights of people who choose to believe in it. Definitely recommend for an informed perspective on Israel's occupation in palestine, beyond western media's indoctrination

To me, the book felt lacking in both plot and prose. Despite the potential to address urgent topics like the mental health effects of war, racial discrimination, drug abuse, homophobia and childhood trauma, the story danced around them without arriving at anything meaningful. It seemed as if the author compromised on clarity for poetic elegance and tried too hard to seem deep.

I'm usually one to enjoy stream-of-consciousness narratives, but this one felt disjointed, with incongruous words strung together in an attempt to pull off a convincing pretension of a good book. The dense metaphors fell flat. It didn't live up to the hype for me :/

4.8/5

This is one of those books that profoundly impacts you and changes your perception of society.

Essentially a social and political commentary on India, it addresses a wide array of issues such as caste discrimination, transphobia, corruption, the Kashmir Valley conflict, Maoist insurgency, environmental degradation, and, pervasively, the rise of 'Gujarat ka Lalla' and the rise of the saffron fundamentalist army. It also touches upon significant historical events like the Emergency and subsequent Sikh lynching, the Gujarat riots of 2001, the 1993 Bombay bombings, and the US invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq and its aftermath in India.

The story intertwines the initially independent lives of two complex and bewitching characters: Anjum, a Muslim hijra who lives in a graveyard in Delhi, and Tilottama, a fiercely independent Malayali woman (possibly Roy's alter-ego) deeply entangled in Kashmir's bloody tangle and with Musa, a Separatist militant.

Although it received mixed reviews, especially after a long wait of 20 years after [b:The God of Small Things|9777|The God of Small Things|Arundhati Roy|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1590282886l/9777._SY75_.jpg|810135], I ended up liking [b:The Ministry of Utmost Happiness|32388712|The Ministry of Utmost Happiness|Arundhati Roy|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1520327592l/32388712._SY75_.jpg|53001637] even more. I'm in love with Roy's lush, lyrical prose and her mastery of language, with a stream-of-consciousness-like narration and rich elements of magical realism.

I'm glad to have read this work; it will be one of my favourites!

P.S. Eternally grateful to Roy for introducing me to Rasoolan Bai and Leonard Cohen's music.

A 270 page-long reminder that correlation != causality