Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie

I haven't yet disappeared from the blog world yet :) It's this book that's taking me a long time to read. The writing style is very unusual compared to normal books and hence takes me a while to read. The closest I could compare to was Arvind Adiga's style in White Tiger.

The story is about kids born at midnight during Independence for India. Saleem is one and he is the narrator of the story. He realises at age 10 or so that all these kids have some gifts and that they can communicate to each other within their minds. I'm still reading the novel so not much details now. Will update this post when I finish reading the book.

Update

I really liked the book. It is basically a story about the kids born at midnight all tied in with the political events of Indira Gandhi, Sanjay Gandhi and the assassination, the destruction of slums. I did like the novel but it was a really slow one for me since it was narrated in a different way.

In the Convent of Little Flowers - Indu Sundaresan

Indu cleverly potrays various insights into Indian society through this compilation of stories. In one, it is the story of an Indian girl who is adopted by an American couple and her real birth mother's sister writes to her later on after twenty years or so. Another is about a couple and their weird son Bikaner and how he cheats on them. Another is about a old couple who have nowhere to live after their 12 kids do not care for them. Hence they are sent to a retirement home. Different stories like this make this book. I was hoping for more actually that maybe the stories will come together in the end. I liked it, but not too much!

Mistress - Anita Nair

I really liked this book. It is about four people, Shyam, his wife Radha, an American Chris and Radha's uncle. Chris comes to India to meet Radha's uncle and to write about his life. The story unfolds that uncle is a Kathakali dancer and the way the book is written in stages of different poses in Kathakali. I really liked the way the book was written. Amazing! The emotions of Shyam when he knows Radha is seeing Chris was really good!

The splendour of silence - Indu Sundaresan

A young American woman,Olivia, receives a trunk from India that contains secrets of her mother’s past. The letters in the trunk tell her the story of her parents Sam and Mila and their brief affair in 1942 India.The heart of the story takes place in pre-Independence India and war-torn Burma. Splendor of Silence is about love, secrets, and the tension between Indians and the British raj. I had read this novel quite sometime back and thought about including this here.

A good Indian wife - Anne Cherian

I really liked this novel a lot. It was so touching for me. It's about a young Indian doctor Suneel Sarath who was studying and now staying in the US. He has a sort-of girlfriend Catherine. He goes to visit India to visit his "ailing" Thatapa but on landing in India, realises that his mother tricked him into coming to India to see girls for marriage. Through an unfortunate mistunderstanding, he somehow gets married to Leila. Leila is a sweetheart in this novel. She is a typical Indian girl and comes to US with dreams. She is independent and soon realises what her husband was upto with Catherine. So the story goes on about how she and Suneel in the end ultimately reconcile. A really nice novel :)