Nagasravika's Book Reviews Blog

Room  By Emma Donoghue  Rating 5/5 🥰🥰 Genres : Fiction, Heart touching, Novel, 2022-read  Wow, just wow. I have no words to describe this book..so I am going to do some psychological analysis of the boy who is the narrator of this story. Jack. On the outset, this book doesn't feel like much. But deeper and deeper it takes us to the core of the soul of five year old kid Jack who born and brought up in captivity with no other company than his mother and really, truly wants nothing more! The mother too, though for a while yearns for free form of living craves to get back into the all encompassing and all merging relationship with her son. Is this sounding even remotely holy or  acceptable? It is bordering on incest but Jack is such a naive kid and knows nothing..feels no shame/barrier with his mother about anything..just that his soul wants to be one with her all the time. He is a vulnerable and helpless kid without his mother to protect him and give him w...

The Thorn Birds  By Colleen McCullough  Rating 3.75/5 Genres : Australia, Vatican city, Cardinal, Romance, Generational fiction, Historical fiction  Bah. I dont know. I felt this is just an ok sort of book. The only aspect that stirred me and struck a chord with me is the all encompassing, soul level love between Maggie and Father Ralph de Bricassart. Everything else - no matter how juicy,emotional or dramatic just failed to make an impact. The story covers the lives of three generations of women of the Cleary/Armstrong family line - their cherished dreams and dashed hopes, their hurts and heartbreaks over unrequited, failed loves..their finally getting what they wanted but it not being fully enough.. well, it sounds and feels like a roller coaster.  And whats more..there is plenty of repeat in the events of their lives..what has happened to the mother, happens to the daughter and so on..  Coming to the story. Maggie Cleary is brought up with a ...

A Thousand Splendid Suns  By Khaled Hosseini  Rating 5/5  Genres : War, Fiction, Hope and loss  Wow. This book is just splendid. It had my gut twisted in knots, heart racing with fear and anticipation,hoping after hope that it all ends well for Mariam and Laila who had to go through enormous amounts of domestic abuse and suffer unspeakable losses. While there is always a fierce war going on on the outside, there is an internal war raging within the homes of Afghanistan where women are reduced to slaves and dependants on their tyrannical and sadistic husbands. The author looks at one such family living through the war times in Kabul and how their fates change and alter with the changing times..rules..dictats of the ruling authorities.  The story plot goes thus. Mariam is a girl born in Herat of Afghanistan to an unwed mother. She adores her father but he succumbs to his family pressure and marries her off to a old widower after her mother's death. Aft...

The Thirteenth Tale  By Diane Setterfield  Rating 4/5  Genre : Mystery, Gothic, Historical fiction, classics, Biographical fiction.  This is really good. A very successful and aging author Vida Winter calls for a practically unknown biographer to record her life history..which she hasn't shared with anyone..which if sees the light of the day could startle the world. Sounds familiar? Doesn't it sound very much like the backdrop to The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo? Yes, but that's where the similarity ends. The past of Vida Winter is far less complex/twisting, has an appealing Gothic feel to it and the mystery gets quite unpredictable..it almost goes out of hand. One the downside, I felt the mystery is rather too simplified..although the reader couldn't have been able to predict/figure it, the biographer sure didn't have much of a problem unraveling it.. Vida Winter's past is a mystery. She concocted a different tale to all the interviewers that came ...

The Butterfly Garden  By Don Hutchinson  Rating 3.5/5 Genres : Thriller, Mystery, Fiction, Horror, 2022-read. This book didn't meet the hype surrounding it for me. I expected something more darker and nauseating but only got a vanilla version of something truly sinister. Some of the reasons  made towards explaining away the events didn't sound convincing enough. For example, the man - the Gardener - has been committing his atrocities for 30 years without getting caught. And there is a fire breakout and police arrival at the same time when the girls escape. Maya/Inara who is sort of the leader behind the managing of the girls and running things with the Gardener has known of the place before being kidnapped because her friend was an escaped victim from the very same place in the past? Far too many coincidences to overlook.  So the story is this. A psychopathic man calling himself the Gardener kidnaps young girls between ages 16 to 21 and locks them up in h...

The Confessions of Young Nero  By Margaret George  Rating 2.5/5  Genres Historical Fiction, Rome, Nero Boring. Very disappointed. I skimmed through many pages towards the end as the narrative drove me nuts with little to no story in it. I guess the major source of my disinterest in this book is that the hero Nero didn't appeal to me as a notable historical figure. The author has shown him in a positive light as opposed to the common dialogue/opinion that surrounds him. I imagine from these private notes of Nero that being an emperor of Rome is all about spending time with poetry,music, chariot racing and enjoying lavish life at villas with mistresses.. its all so boring..most of the places mentioned are also unfamiliar and never heard of..  I really did enjoy the book Memoirs of Cleopatra by Margaret but this one seems to be a failure. :( I am definitely going to do some initial research on books from now on..not to have to go through such ordeals again. ...

Flowers for Algergon  By Daniel Keyes  Rating 4/5 Genres : Psychological fiction, Mental illness, 2022-read My God! This is some pretty deep stuff. Makes me look at mental retardation from a totally new perspective. The fear and anathema the main character - who is retarded - feels towards being laughed at and ridiculed is very tangible and visceral through the text that inspired me into absolute  pity for him and hatred towards his perpetrators. Its a consolation that he is not used as a guinea pig by those ruthless and self centered scientists..atleast there was some humane element to the whole plot. Most of the abusive past the main character Charlie recalls is while he is becoming smarter as a result of a brain surgery and it is handled with some detachment and in a non emotional way which I felt took the sting out of the whole past for Charlie but failed to cause a stir in me as a result..I would have liked to read the same material handled by someone els...

The Stepford Wives  By Ira Levin  Rating 3.5/5  Genre Horror, Fiction, Mystery. Very fast read.  Obviously,  this book is not as scary as Ira's most successful book Rosemary's Baby but for someone having to go through this, it is quite nerve wracking and nightmarish. I felt Ira Levin has left a lot to the imagination and not explained how exactly and what exactly happened to all those wives of Stepford..that turned their minds and souls into mush. I think it also makes one wonder with all the focus on the wives, what is also happening to the husbands..are they just becoming complicit in the wicked scheme for the benefits or are they getting brain washed ? I would have loved to have more clarity on these fronts..but for now I m assuming whatever makes most sense to me.  The plot is Joanna and her husband Walter buy a new house in Stepford town and move in with their kids. Right off the bat, she notices something off with the neighborhood wives. T...

Matrix  By Lauren Groff  Rating 4.5/5  Genre : Monastery, Fiction, Visions, Mysticism Holy-moly! This book is totally unexpected. I and unaquainted with previous work of the author and  thought it's some science fiction novel because of the title but dealt in topics that are polar opposites to science and technology. It has nuns, monasteries, good and evil, virtue and sin, visions and prophecies..lot of stuff.. This book is probably one of my most swiftest reads..I finished it in under 24 hours. The author definitely has a skill with words and sentences..and some of her insights into spirituality and God are very astute and evolved..left me amazed. I am saving some notes from this book for later reading and they are bang on with my own beliefs. :)  Coming to the story,  its about a woman Marie who has not been gifted with looks and demeanor of a female but God has different plans for her. She is born out of rape by a royal king and after her mot...

Krishna Gopeswara book 1  By Sanjay Dixit  Rating 2.5/5  Genres Fiction, Mythology, Lord Krishna. Even though the story is based on the events from the life of Lord Sri Krishna, reading them from the thesis of Sanjay Dixit felt totally silly and preposterous. Most of the events and situations were devious from what the scriptures and sacred texts like Srimad Baghavatam say. I am not writing this from the place of bias for Krishna - his being my most cherished and favorite God. It felt acceptable to make Shiva the God into Shiva a human warrior in the Immortals of Meluha series but to remove magic and mysticism from Krishna is like removing fangs from the most powerful snake in the universe. It is utter hogwash and ridiculous.   Sanjay Dixit tries to explain and attribute most of the miraculous and mystical events in the childhood and puberty of Krishna to luck and careful military planning. I was fuming while he happily explained away Govardhana inci...