Chinese Cinderella by Adelaine Yen Mah

Who does not know the story of Cinderella! A young motherless child who was driven to drudgery and despair by her evil stepmother and stepsisters. Till one day when a Fairly Godmother comes to her rescue and well...we know the rest.

The Chinese Cinderella by Adelaine Yen Mah too follows the same path with the only and biggest difference being that our Cinderella saves herself. Our Cinderella here is Adelaine Yen Mah, the author herself and that is why this book is such an inspiration and should be included in school libraries as a ‘must read’.

Through this book Adelaine describes her experiences while growing up in a conventional Chinese Family in China during the Second World War. Her mother dies soon after her birth and her siblings blame her for her mother’s death. Always the unwanted and unloved child, Adelaine seeks love and acceptance from her father, stepmother and siblings. When that is not forthcoming she searches for that in her academics. 

Adelaine Yen Mah as a baby

Excelling in studies and at making friends Adelaine shines albeit dimly under the watchful and loving care of her Aunt and her grandfather. Unfortunately that glow is shortlived and she is shunted off to a war struck Tianjin. Her feeling of hopelessness, loneliness, sorrow and her will to survive it all is what makes this book so wonderful.

It takes immense courage to revisit a sad childhood and write about it for the world to read. It’s like baring your soul to strangers. If in her book Falling Leaves, Adelaine wrote about a girl’s journey into adulthood; then in Chinese Cinderella she has focussed only on her childhood.

Adelaine Yen Mah

This is a beautifully written book that awakens deep emotions in the reader. A must read.

Books and more: The Storyteller by Jodi Picoult

Books and more: The Storyteller by Jodi Picoult: “a story will tell itself, when it’s ready ” - Jodi Picoult There are books on the Hitler, Concentration camps, Jews and Holoca...

The Storyteller by Jodi Picoult

“a story will tell itself, when it’s ready” - Jodi Picoult

There are books on the Hitler, Concentration camps, Jews and Holocaust and I unfortunately have barely read a few (I must admit I am ashamed). Of them the popular ones; Mein Kampf and Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl, are two books that I’ve read, reread and recommended to many friends.

Recently however I came across another book The Storyteller by Jodi Picoult and I honestly swear that this one takes the cake, the cream and the cherry (for lack of a better analogy). While Anne Frank described her life in terrifying and tiring times; we somewhere saw a glimmer of hope, a smile and sometimes joy in small things as she grew up. This one however makes your skin crawl.

The book has three separate stories running parallel or well intertwining all through the book. First the story of Ania and Aleks which is the story that is being written by a young girl; the second is the story of Sage Singer and her life, her friendship with a 90 year old Josef Weber and the last is that of Minka, the actual storyteller, the main protagonist, the victim, the survivor and the loving grandmother.

Jodi beautifully feeds us spoonfuls of captivating chapters as we follow the lives of Minka, Sage and Josef. There are chapters where tears ran down my cheeks, chapters where I shuddered and hated to be disturbed, chapters where I smiled and chapters where I shut my eyes imagined myself in that place and time.

The ending is shocking if not completely unexpected. I had a deep inkling about the identity of Josef somewhere towards the beginning of last chapter and yet I was shocked.

Jodi has outdone herself once again. She brilliantly keeps you glued to the book and long after you have kept it down you are still left wondering, thinking and introspecting.

I love books that make me want to go back to them long after I’ve closed them. This one sure is like a mother’s warm lap that cradles you and lulls you to sleep even through the worst of your nightmares. I know there are a few quotes that I am going to save for myself because they make complete sense to me and are so loaded with meaning.  

I would recommend this book to everyone who loves to read. It should be included in school syllabus too. This is not just a story book but a brilliant example of creative writing.

Jodi Picoult 

Once again thank you Bookelphia for sharing this book with me.

If I Stay by Gayle Forman

A few years before my mom passed away she had a near death experience. I remember the day clearly like it was just yesterday. My mom was in hospital after a massive 4 hour long surgery with my brother and sister-in-law keeping vigil while dad and I were at home to catch some sleep. Somewhere around 3 in the morning my dad woke me up and said he wanted to go to the hospital. Groggy and tired, I persuaded him to go back to bed and promised that I’d go to the hospital as soon as the sun rose. As promised I went to the hospital at 6 am only to see an anxious brother and wife and frantic nurses running in and out of my mom’s room.

Things settled by around 9 and then the doctor told us that we were lucky to have my mom back because she had almost packed her bags and left. When we got to see her an hour later, she seemed drained and we decided not to talk about the scare she gave us. It took her almost a month to come home and after that too she was not her usual self. One day while drinking tea with her, she suddenly said “its exactly like they tell you..you know!”

I looked at her wondering what she was talking about. Seeing my puzzled look, she carried on..”Its like you read in the books. There is a dark tunnel, at the end of which is a bright blinding light. I felt weightless; I was drawn to that light. I walked and walked and had almost reached the end....”! With that she stopped and I realised much to my horror that she was talking about death! She was talking about walking the tunnel - the so called bridge between life and death!!

Chocking I tried to make light of the conversation and said; ‘yeh ..maybe the power failed and you could not see the end! Good thing it did, cause you are here and we have an inverter at home.”

She then looked up at me with a sad smile and said; “the power didn’t fail. I just didn’t want to go because I didn’t want to leave without finishing my duties. I have to see you married and only then can I rest.”

That was about 15 years ago. We did speak about the incident and over time we learnt to joke about it, laugh about it and even add bits to it. However deep down I shuddered at the thought of her going. But with all things inevitable, my mom finally did walk through the tunnel never to come back five years ago and I still struggle to come to terms with it.

Reading the book ‘If I Stay’ by Gayle Forman I went back to that day and time. This is a book about a young girl Mia Hall, whose hangs between life and death after a terrible car crash which kills her parents and younger brother. Suspended in this between life, she has to make a choice...to stay or to leave!

She follows her body from the accident site to the hospital and watches doctors, nurses, her family, friends and the love of her life hustle around her doing what they have to do to bring her back. But will she??

The book has also been adapted into a movie by the same name. Its been directed by R. J. Cutler and stars Chloë Grace Moretz, Mireille Enos, Jamie Blackley, Joshua Leonard, Stacy Keach and Aisha Hinds...but I believe movies don’t do justice to the range of emotions, thoughts, imagination that a book can give. 

I’d recommend reading this book... if only to give a thought to appreciate what you have in life and what you would do if you lost it in an instant.

Thank you Bookelphia for sourcing and lending this book to me.

Wonder by R J Palacio

I’ve read books that made me think about them long after I closed the cover and moved onto another. This happens to me often so it’s not news; but then once in a while I read a book that makes me pause for days before I pick up the next. Why, you may ask!  Well because this book makes me wonder, makes me think, makes me imagine myself in such a situation, and makes me live the life of the protagonist or a character in the book. Last week I completed such a book and I’ve not been able to think of anything but that little boy ‘August’ – the hero of the book.

The book I’m talking about is ‘Wonder’ a children's novel by R. J. Palacio. It’s about the life of a kid August Pullman who has a medical condition wherein his face is deformed. He has gone through multiple corrective surgeries and despite that he does not have a perfect face (so to say).

As I read the book on Auggie’s life and those of his family and close friends, I felt I lived in the same house as Auggie. I saw his room, felt his sister’s feelings, chocked when his mom was upset and well basically lived every feeling and emotion they did in the book.

I won’t give away the plot of the book, because you have to read it, live it and feel it to enjoy it. So go ahead and pick up your copy today. Before I sign off, I want to leave you with two beautiful thoughts....  

“Everyone born of God overcometh the world.”

 “When given the choice between being Right or being Kind, choose KIND.”  

The long goodbye a memoir by Meghan O'Rourke

“The bereaved cannot communicate with the unbereaved!"Iris Murdoch

I’ve been on a trip - a trip to see how people mourned their loss! Did they feel the same as I did? Did they react the same way as I did? Am I normal? Is this the normal behavior? And because of this trip I have read (consecutively) five books on the dying, death and the loss. I guess now is the time to wind up my journey and rest in the assurance that each one mourns the loss his own way. There is no rule book and there are no rights and wrongs. What made the realization dawn on me? The book ‘The Long Goodbye a memoir’ by Meghan O’Rourke !

I started this book in search of answers. I thought I would connect because this is a book by a woman who is probably as old as me and who lost her mother when she was least prepared (are we ever really prepared to see our parent die?). However, halfway through the book I shut it in frustration, because she was going back and forth and back and forth. She spoke of her mom’s death and then went back to when she was better and then came back to the time when she was seriously ill. I shut the book and left it in the corner and then after a few days picked it up again. Maybe I hoped for a change in track or maybe more tears; I really don’t know! I stared reading and once again shut it in exasperation!

Why did Meghan not spell it out? Why did she toggle between stories and emotions? Why did it have to be only about her? Then I realized, it was about her. This is her book about her emotions and her loss! How could I have been so naive to think it would be different?  If I were to write a book on my loss; I too would probably sound just like this (albeit with some more drama..since I am known to be a drama queen)!

So do I recommend the book? Yes I do, for those who are still striving to express pain in their loss. I’d recommend it to those who want to read about loss and about feelings and expressions.

One paragraph that cliched it for me was towards the end of the book; “With my mother’s death the person who brought me into the world left it, a portal closing behind her, a line of knowledge binding her body to mine in the old ways. Who else contained me, felt me kick, nursed me, held the towel out to me when I got out of the bath... Who else do I share this history with? No one. Because she is not here, I must mother myself.”

Meghan O'Rourke

#thelonggoodbye #meghanorourke #mourning #loss #death #cancer #memoir #mother         

When Breath Becomes air by Paul Kalanithi

"Even if I am dying, 

Unit I actually die,

I'm still living"

Paul Kalanithi 

Everyone of us has a plan for life. We pick our (or maybe our parent’s) choice of subject, study hard, find a good job, get married, have children, get a promotion (only if we are really good) and basically live our lives like everyone does. What if suddenly fate deals us a bad hand and we realize that we only have a couple of months to live? Will we give up and feel sorry for ourselves? Well I’m guessing most of us will! Or will we fight it and try to change our situation? Or will we accept it, make the best of it and live whatever is left of our life to its fullest?

Questions like these are hard to answer, but think about it. I did, when I read “When Breath Becomes air” by Paul Kalanithi. To give you a gist of the book; “at the age of thirty-six, on the verge of completing a decade’s worth of training as a neurosurgeon, Paul Kalanithi was diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer. One day he was a doctor treating the dying, and the next he was a patient struggling to live.”    

“When breath becomes air chronicles Kalanithi’s transformation from a naive medical student ‘possessed,’ as he wrote, ‘by the question of what, given that all organisms die, makes a virtuous and meaningful life’ into a neurosurgeon at Stanford working in the brain, and finally into a patient and a new father confronting his own mortality.”

This book is about Kalanithi and about all of us as well. The book touched a raw nerve in a sense. I was rattled, shaken, miserable, crying at times; but also so aware of my own life and surroundings. I have a family that loves me, a husband who supports and encourages me, two children who adore me and friends who add joy to life. All this is mine now; but how long will I have it. Am I truly living my life to the fullest? I kept questioning my contribution to the world, I kept asking myself if I had truly maxed my potential and I kept wondering if I would be but a mere drop in the ocean or the wave that runs up the shore?  

This is one book that I took a long time to finish, because I kept going back and forth; reading and rereading and mulling about my own existence!

I loved the emphasis on reading that Kalanithi makes right at the start where he talks about his mother. ‘Trained in India to be a psychologist, married at twenty-three, and preoccupied with raising three kids in a country that was not her own, she had not read many of the books on the list (college prep reading list). But she would make sure her kids were not deprived.”

Walking into high or multi-specialty hospitals we often wonder why Doctors are such hard nuts to crack! Why they don’t smile often or why they are not friendly enough! Kalanithi sums it up by saying ‘Cadaver dissection epitomizes, for many, the transformation of the somber; respectful student into the callous, arrogant doctor.’

Like I said, this is one book that had me returning to previous pages to reread a paragraph and as I write this review..I actually sat back a reread a few more chapters. That's what unique about this book.

Paul is no more, he died in March 2015. However as mentioned by Abraham Verghese in his foreword, “I got to know Paul only after his death. .. I came to know him most intimately when he’d ceased to be.” Similarly I too feel like I know Paul! Somewhere, somehow he connected with me, spoke to me and left me in tears for a friend I lost!

I’d recommend this book a 100%. Read it for Paul, read it to understand that immortality is only hear-say, read it to connect with your true self, and read it because it is worth reading.

I close with a few quotes from the book.

"... amid that unique suffering involved by severe brain damage, the suffering often felt more by families than by patients, it is not merely the physicians who do not see the full significance. The families who gather around their beloved - their beloved whose sheared head contained battered brains - do not usually recognize the full significance either. They see the past, the accumulation of memories, the freshly felt love, all represented by the body in before them."

"Let no man put asunder what God has joined."

#bookreview #whenbreathbecomesair #paulkalanithi #doctors #neurosurgeon #cancer #mortality #immortality #abrahamverghese