City of the Beasts
I like most books. You have to write a book real bad to make me dislike it. Isabel Allende did that.
City of the Beasts is a story of a fifteen-year-old boy who is sent to his adventurous, gruff, and harsh grandmother for a while. The book begins with the boy’s reaction to the decision of moving to his grandmother’s house and the illness of his mother, which is interesting at that point. However, halfway through the book you realize that the earlier part was disconnected and not required at all. Anyhow, the adventurous grandmother takes the unwilling boy on a writing assignment to Amazon. That’s where the fun begins, supposedly.
The book is full of tired thrills, mystical shamanic totems, fantastic beings, and eccentric characters. The story is simple and is backed by fairly intriguing happenings. Nevertheless, at places it is plain juvenile. The author fails to make her characters real. The lack of practicality in normal characters and presence of tons of mystical fantastic characters acts as a negative for the book. There is also the standard mystery of ‘guess who is the bad guy’, but one does not even feel like guessing thanks to the disconnected events.
The author has also tried to combine the mystical fantasy world with the shrewd real world and failed horribly at it. We hop from the numinous world of people of mist to the cunning beings killing each other for money and transition did not work for me.
All the same, it is a book. You can always go ahead and read it. Right? Let me know if you like the book.
9/5/2005
The Bridges of Madison County
Is this just another romance novel? Yes and no.
Yes: Set in 1960s, it is a tale of a 52-year old photographer and a lonely farm wife. They meet, they are attracted to each other, they spend some time together, and then they decide to not elope for the sake of the woman’s family. It is beautifully told by Robert James Waller. The author has either lived every moment of Kincaid and Francesca’s life or he really is a brilliant story teller.
No: It is not just another romance novel. In fact, it is not a romance novel at all, it is a test of whether you are a romantic or a cynic. What starts as a thrilling fling between a bored wife and an adventurer reaches a completely different level when emotions are realized. This is a haunting tale about magic called love. And no, the word does not stand for the need-based, insecurity-ridden, selfish emotion we experience today!
Unlike other good romances that I’ve read, innocence is not the selling point here. Maturity and complete knowledge of one’s feelings is. The book has no mystery, no twists and turns, no deep secrets, no great revelations, it just is a smooth flowing tale of poignant emotions.
Weller’s writing is witty and affecting, full of magical moments that reach out and grab the hopeless romantic in readers. The book both glorifies and justifies adultery, which has led to serious criticism from most reviewers. However, to me this is all about believing. If one wants to believe in love that strong, one would enjoy the experience called The Bridges of Madison County.
