Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni`s - Arranged Marriage

Genre : Short stories.
Rating : 3/5

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni's Arranged Marriage is a collection of 11 short stories all about women, bred on Indian traditions and settled on American soil.

I am finding it difficult to categorize this book into "liked" / "not liked". I was not very much fascinated by the collection coz each and every tale was full of pathos and dolefullness. There was no happy start or happy ending or happy intermediary :) Yet there was something that kept me tied to it... was it the Indian background or was I pulled in the world of misery... is still not clear to me.

The story I liked amongst all was - Perfect life in which the gal is in good love relationship and even has a outstanding career. Her happy life is then splintered by a forsaken 7-8 yrs boy who shows up near her apartment, and to have him in her life she is willing to do everything under the sun. Even this story was depressing at times. I could not understand why protatonist was trying to take illegal steps in the process of adoption? Even when the kid was near her why was she so melancholic?

All other stories had one thing in common - they ruminated over the notion of marriage, an arranged marriage. Had I read these stories individually, not in the form of collection I might have liked them more .... but as an assemblage they were cheerless. Somehow I constantly felt author wants to say that sadness is gift-wrapped in the nuptial relation. Neither arranged marriages nor love affairs had '.... and EVERYBODY lived happily everafter' ending. And moreover this book portrays awfully wrong side of the Indian males. They are certainly not as orthodox as they are shown here.

The stories were short and quick read but some pieces had gone amiss. The flow of the stories was not very smooth. Style of writing was chopped / broken kind (or whatever the word they use in literature for not a continuos flow) . Few of the stories left me wondering - what happened to that person? What was the authors intention in detailing this situation? The thing that bothered me most was the names of the stories. In many of the them I felt the name had very least to do with the essence or pith of the story or may be I misinterpreted the gist.

I would say, if you wanna read something in short time (an hr or so), like a single short story then it is a good pick.

Robert J Waller's - Bridges of Madison County

Genre: Love Story
Rating: 5/5

Thanks to Priya for introducing me to this book. After a long time I laid my hands on a love story and absolutely loved it. I daresay, it beats Erich Segal's Love Story!

This story is of unique romance that blossoms between a combat photographer Robert Kincaid and a farm-wife Francesca Johnson. Robert Kincaid resigns from the war photography and accepts assignments from National Geographic magazine. He is a divorcee and leads a nomadic, out-of-suitcase life taking photographs for the magazine. On his way to shoot pictures of covered bridges in Madison county of Iowa he gets lost. Francesca, who is married to Richard Johnson and is mother of two kids, is left alone at home as rest of her family is at fair. Robert and Francesca's affair start very innocently when she offers to show him the way.

Since her marriage Francesca had become alien to passion and intimacy and lives within the restrictions that come along with the labels of a mother and a wife. When Kincaid arrives she gets swayed by his looks and deeds. Robert feels the same spark of love when he is with her. On his four-day stay in her town, Robert and Francesca come close enuff to each other and Robert asks Francesca to elope with him. Francesca finds herself in a catch-22 situation. Finding true love wants her to be with Robert for rest of her life, but her family beckons her with the greater force and she decides to stay back.

After the death of her husband she tries to contact Robert but eventually finds him dead. A letter approaches her doorstep with Roberts's minimal belongings and with the note that his ashes were scattered near the same bridge where their love unfolded. Francesca writes a 3-volume diary of this 4-day love affair and wishes her ashes to be scattered at the same place. The dairy is found by her children who are moved by their mother's love-story.

Epilogue says Francesca's children apporached author Robert Waller to write the story based on the dairy maintained by Francesca. Thats when I came to know that the whole story was based on a real-life!

This book deals with infidelity but you dont find urself reacting with rage. At some places you will find intricate details of flipperies, like - how she looked at him, how he moved, which hand he raised, how they touched etc, but at times these details were indispensable to know the characters. Their clandestine dates intertwined with the orthodox looks of rest are so genuine!

Believe me, this not-far-from-reality book is must read if u have little liking for romantic novels!