Udhaya's Reviews

The Interestings as a book title is like naming your child Perfect--you're really asking for it. The book starts out promising richness and depth with an artsy summer camp for teenagers where disparate characters from different social strata become initiated to puberty in 70s-style liberalism. The central narrative is appropriately placed on the least talented and welloff Jules. Through her reflections and interactions with the other "interestings" we quickly grasp what drives each character. A third of the way through the story a cathartic event that affects the lives of a few interestings occurs. Immediately after this, the story loses any little pull it had on me. The rest of the story crawls along with trying meditations on friendship, envy, class struggle, entitlements of the upper crust, and the usual cycle of betrayals, secrets, alliances, and faith in relationships. While the scope of the novel spans several decades, the political and cultural milestones

I've been consciously force-feeding on many novels by female authors just to go against my inclination. I don't go gender screening my authors, I usually go with the premise and whether the central character is far from my sphere of experience. Whenever I had to break a tie, I went with the female author just to be in a different landscape. This was one such attempt. With the book cover showing praise from Gloria Steinem for this author's first book, I was ready for a fiesty feminist novel. What I got instead was a three-generational tale of an Irish Catholic family from Boston and the summer cottage in Maine where the Matriarch holds court with timeshare arrangement for her offsprings. Whereas the family tree is diverse and filled with distinct characters, the bulk of the novel is narrated by the matriarch, her oldest daughter, and her grand daughter with a daughter-in-law's voice mixed in for an outsider perspective. Although the first-person narrative lends a r

The Cartel Trilogy by Don Winslow is a blistering tour de force of crime fiction. It is more importantly a Ph.D level thesis on the intricacies of the war on drugs with a scope and scale that highlight all the players on both sides of the U.S.-Mexican border. Power of the Dog This is part one of the trilogy. Winslow spent more than 10 years researching this novel. Borrowing from his previous professions as Private Investigator and Crime TV creator, Winslow breathes life into every character in every faction. This novel courses the early years of the cartels when they morphed into an organized syndicate, a territory-abiding oligarchy. The protagonist, Arturo Keller, is a Mexican-American ex-soldier whose background and training make him the perfect fit for the DEA. He gradually freelances his way into the inner world of the narco figures and sees a panoramic view of the drug war from both sides of the border. While several crime figures vie for the antagonist title, Adan Barrera,

How do you recommend a maddeningly effective, poetically observant, richly lyrical narrative when the subject matter is like a perversely hilarious blow-by-blow account of a marginalized character's daily degradation into a spectacularly depressing tragic end? Read this if you're craving a fresh voice to rescue you from the malaise of most contemporary fiction. However, be warned of the epic calamities doled out to three generations of a Dominican Republican family even while their lives are MCed by the hippest, funniest, irreverently clever, knowledgeable, and wise narrator. Media darlings usually disappoint me, but Junot Diaz is a mesmerizing talent. I only wish Diaz doesn't lavish his gifts on such a downer on his next novel.

This is an NFL book for NFL junkies. This reads like the textual version of the best Football biographies of NFL Films by Steve Sabol. But the book’s heft and observant pace makes for a complete-access behind the scenes look at the machinations of the modern NFL world. Feinstein narrates the goings on off and on-field during 2004-05 as experienced by the Baltimore Ravens. The saga begins with Art Model’s inevitable move from Cleveland to Baltimore, the politics and business deals that brought it there and the narrative unspools from there. While his unfettered access through the new owner and coach Billick seems unrivaled and worthwhile in itself, the narrative certainly gets rolling with ease and dignity. Feinstein, while explicitly discussing coach’ feelings towards their peers, their players, and everyone involved in their world, the narrative never sinks to tabloid gossip or irrelevant sensationalism. Everybody comes off human, flawed yet with a decent core and sympathetic life

I learned about this novel, meant for Young Adults, from a list for best books of the year. Having never read a novel geared towards Young Adults, I whet my curiosity with this one. The premise is irresistible and fresh. The two central characters—Daniel, a Korean American teen and Natasha, an offspring of Jamaican immigrants in America—each set out to accomplish a very specific goal of varying complexities and consequences. Daniel dreams in poetry and teems with individuality and idealism as he sets out on an unpleasant errand to satisfy his conventional, disciplinarian parents. His against-the-grain ideals have taken a harsher turn in probability with his over-achieving brother returning home as a failure in his parents’ eyes. The stakes are higher for Daniel to not conform to filial obligations and wishes. Natasha, a proper teen with a penchant for pragmatism and Science, is bent on saving her family from deportation caused by a drunken episode by her troubled father. Beside her