Beacon Light

Name of the Book:          A Pale View of Hills Name of the Author:       Kazuo Ishiguro Name of the Publisher: Faber and Faber Number of Pages:            183 A Pale View of Hills was the debut novel of the Nobel Prize Laureate, Kazuo Ishiguro. It is primarily set in Japan post the bombing of Nagasaki and Hiroshima. It does not deal with the historical intricacies but with the personal lives of the characters: the impact of the war on their lives apart from the personal struggles that each one undergoes separately.   The protagonist is a Japanese woman named Etsuko who is living in England but has an over-powering past that keeps seeping through the present. In fact, the reader knows her better only though these flashbacks and can empathize with her consequently especially because she is imporous to even her own family.   This is a tale of nost...

Name of the Book:        Roar Name of the Author:     Cecelia Ahern Name of the Publisher: HarperCollins Number of Pages:          337 Do you need to or have forgotten how to roar? Well, pick up ‘Roar’ by Cecelia Ahern! The book will enkindle you, pacify you, inspire you, teach you and entertain you: all through a set of thirty short-stories. Each of the stories has a female protagonist who has glitch in her life that she is struggling to overcome. From the woman who ate photographs to the women who have been confined into boxes categorically, every woman is surprisingly unique. Have you ever seen a woman roar? A feat of this anthology is to enable women be associated with the metaphorical act of roaring. This is in sharp contrast with the image of cat that women are generally associated with. The act of roaring symbolizes something different for every woman: overcoming a persona...

Name of the Book:   The Namesake Name of the Author: Jhumpa Lahiri Publisher:                  HarperCollins No. of Pages:            291 The Namesake explores the life of a Bengali family settled in the USA whose native-home is in Kolkata, India. The focaliser is a boy named Gogol later renamed as Nikhil; the interaction between a person and his name. The Namesake, is a gradually paced book about the joys and challenges of a family living as expatriates: Are they able to retain their cultural identity? How do they see themselves with respect to foreigners? What creates a gap between the parents and the children? Where do they meet? Therefore, some themes are universal which connect the native-readers to the novel while others disconnect them. The novel is structured in chronological order with an ounce of flashbacks that help in making the present more understandable. It begins wit...