Udhaya's Reviews

This novel, inspired by an iconic photograph of a lesbian couple in 1920s Paris, uses multiple narrative styles and perspectives to overlap, contradict, insinuate, guess, and sum up history in many versions. The strain of Nazi occupied Paris is told from every social strata. Some characters resemble real life figures, some are entirely fictional, and yet others like Picasso and Hitler appear as themselves with talking parts. The scope is ambitious while the narrative is self-aware and academic in parts. Ultimately, I enjoyed it like a substantial hike after gliding through a string of malnourished e-books by self-published authors. Any form of art that inspires me to practice my own has achieved something. That said, it's a bit like after eating Kale; you know it's good for you but damn, some garlic fries sound good right about now.

I just finished this dystopian novel that comes on like a torrent of hip tweets--only it's more elegantly written without a preoccupation on brevity. At 334 pages, it's shorter than most contemporary novels but like espresso to regular coffee, less packs more here. At turns satirical, unabashedly romantic, and scathingly political, this futuristic vision of New York (where live-streamed apparats rate everyone's acceptability and social value) lays bare the aching souls yearning to live, love, and thrive in a police state that favors the one percent. This novel isn't for everyone, but if you want an original book with a passionate heart beneath it, check it out.

Donald James certainly can’t be blamed for lacking ambition. His Monstrum is set in a future Russia where a new party is in power with the promise of change, but people’s loyalties rest uneasy. While this grants enough drama as it is, stirring up this potent setup is a plot about a heinous serial killer who cuts up victims in puzzling ways, a subplot about an underground (literally) sex-cult, and the subversive rebels threatening the new government. Populating this universe is a gallery of colorful characters--an American profiler, an opportunistic police chief, a smitten doctor, a reluctant police force, the elusive monstrum itself, and of course the bumbling cop protagonist. Because of his political connections or despite them, a drunken cop is assigned to catch the serial killer. The doctor and profiler both pine for the cop, insisting on his affections, while the cop yearns for his ex-wife who abandoned him to lead a rebel group in guerilla warfare. More interested in a failed...

This book is a special find for many reasons. The book is at once an in-depth account of a war from within its battlefields, an exquisitely drawn graphic report that betters graphic novels (to use the term "comic" or "illustrated book" betrays the gravity of this effort), or even the best war fiction for that matter. War photographs depict the physical destruction; magazines and TV news editorialize; novels make war poignant; but Sacco has surpassed all other available venues in capturing war with its historical, political, social, background statistically and spiritually intact that the effect on the reader is devastatingly personal. Sacco clarifies what mainstream media stylizes. He puts the Bosnian war in objective context as a culmination of religious animosity that had been brewing for generations with each side taking its turn as victim and oppressor. In a very telling segment he mentions: Croats are predominantly Roman Catholic, Serbs are Orthodox Christi...

This is a high-tech thriller set in the U.S. government's shadow agency, NSA. Deep in the secure nest of the cryptographers' infallible decoding machine there's trouble in the form of an undetectable code. A rebel ex-agent has brought the proud big brother's, snoopy watchdog to a screaming halt. The premise pits us in an increasingly relevant dilemma: government's privacy-invading protection of its citizens versus the individual's unbridled freedom. Interestingly, the book's protagonist depends on which side you lean. Until midway, the author does a nice job of not picking a side. And until the last third, the search for the missing key is strictly trial and elimination of leads. The swift pacing assures us that characters will barely register their agendas, let alone their characteristics or distinctions. Whenever characters ruminate or converse they betray every aspect the author lauded on them. Clearly, Brown would rather feed us tidbits on Japanese hi...

Yet another novel that claims to understand middle-class America. Some novels are written with movies in mind. Reading Empire Falls, I couldn't help but wonder if an eventual TV series was the goal. HBO could do a more literary job than Russo has for sure. Left up to actors, the dialogues will instantly soar at least above Russo's tin ear. Talented actors, with competent direction would also know the value of subtlety when irony or symbolism abound. Not so with Russo who would subtitle mimes to ensure nothing was left to interpretation. This novel (as in, fall of the American Empire; very clever this Russo is, don't you think?) is rife with canny observations, dull melodrama, and bitter condescension--towards its characters as well as its readers. The narrative can be classified as a third-person-intentional where the author confesses character intentions in a commentary. Empire Falls is a New England mill town. Much of the property and people in the area are owned or co...

This little novel won France's prestigious Grand Prix de l'Academie Francaise and the Prix Internet du Livre awards. Nothomb, a Belgian writer, achieves on many levels with this fictional work. The novel reads like an incisive look at corporate culture in Japan with a crash course on the inscrutable Japanese mindset. With the protagonist sharing the author's first name and other similarities, the book immediately imparts a closed-door intimacy akin to an autobiography. As a little helper in the Import-Export division of the Yumimoto Corporation, Amelie wreaks accidental havoc from scene to scene like a silent movie comedian; only her turmoil is all emotional. In the peculiar way Amelie laughs at her misfortune her blunders that lead to harsh retributions somehow come off as tragicomic. Complicating further her situation is Amelie's unrequited crush on her unflappable boss, Fubuki. The more Amelie tries to impress Fubuki, the worse things get for both. The ambivalent ...