ŷ������

This is a BR. Nooooo. Not a Buddy Read. Did you notice the “i����? It’s a Buddy Review!! With the most awesome Sillyhead and it was her idea too! She’s pretty great dumb like that!! We read the book like a month apart but we are posting our reviews together today. In a way I am glad we’re starting both our booky years in this fashion. May there be several more such reviews and reads together!

Here goes the review:

You know what’s so wonderful about being here on GR? I mean, I know there are like a million reasons but for me the most important one is to be able to discover books. Not just through GR but through people on GR. People who you’ve never spoken to before. I could read in solitude for a 100 years but still not pick books like this one. It came as a recommendation from Nishith and I picked it up on faith.
Little did I know I would spend days trying not to finish the 160 paged book I had in my hands. I read it slow on purpose! This book was a damn treat! A huge shoutout to the man who suggested this. Thank you Nishith/Horus. Forever grateful. Although stop changing your name! :P

I don’t really know how to review this book bcz this is so different from anything I have ever read. This is a whole new style. Here is my feeble attempt at reviewing it.

“I’m buying them for my son. Today is his birthday.��
“Really? Well, I hope it’s a happy one. How old is he?��
“Six. He’ll always be six. He’s dead.��

This book is a first of its kind for me. It has no character names, no locations, no dates, no times, and no specifics of any kind. It’s one of THE MOST pure forms of storytelling I have ever read. I can sum up my review in just one quote from this very book itself.

“The prose was unremarkable, as were the plot and characters, but there was an icy current running under her words, and I found myself wanting to plunge into it again and again.��

There is a coldness in this book. A feeling of detachment towards life that comes with life being a bitch to you, taking away something from you that you couldn’t ever bear to lose. A loss that makes you indifferent to many things that should matter and curious about things that should be morbid.
This book is an embodiment of all that it is to be human. Being a human is not about being happy and mentally healthy. It’s not the only way. It’s the way we approve of. To be all smiles and to care about things and people. To act a certain way. To conform. Those who do not fit the box are branded as misfits, weird, crazy, mentally unfit and discarded. The outcasts. We are accepting of only the ones who can keep their darkness in check and hidden. What about the ones who are beaten by their demons? The ones who lost to the darkness and would rather stay there now. The ones who are lost? The ones who are okay being lost. Food for thought!

This book is a collection of short stories, or so it seems at the start. It’s amazing how one by one the author connects all the short stories, weaving them into one beautiful piece that comes together to form a hauntingly perfect picture. Perfect bcz it is not untrue. It’s possible. Very possible. It could all be happening somewhere out there, maybe even in your country, or your own town. Maybe it’s happening next door. Or maybe it is your story. It could be. After all, you are just as human. And what’s more scary than humans? More pitiful even? More needy? More scared?

““Lean on me,�� he would whisper in my ear, and those few words had the power to make me utterly content.��

What’s comforting? The known. Wouldn’t you say? For me, atleast, it is true. When I picked this book, on a random recommendation, no less, I was afraid of what I might be getting into. If I would end up hating the book or writing a ranty review. As I read, I was comforted by a very particular feeling that I have come to love. It is something that I have only ever read in SK’s works before. That feeling of coldness. The knowledge of the fact that we carry light and dark both within ourselves. And we are just as capable of being monsters as we are of being angels. Someone’s savior is another’s tormentor.

“Monsters are real, and ghosts are real too. They live inside us. And sometimes, they win. - SK��

This book is written in first person POV and it has a sad and dark undertone. The feeling of loss and gloom is rich and it is wonderfully done. The first person POV works like a cherry on top bcz it makes the stories that much more personal. And I personally feel that the anonymity this book has, it only adds to the magnificence of it all. You don’t get to connect to the characters which is why you can focus completely on the story and the feeling of it. The feeling of helplessness and despair. You can feel the bond that darkness can forge. The understanding that it can bring.

“The reason she was crying didn’t matter to me. Perhaps there was no reason at all. Her tears had that sort of purity. I realized she was finally letting flow the tears she could not cry at the post office, and that this sadness was coming to her peacefully from the distant past.��

The best part about this book for me, personally, is the thing that I practice in order to forgive someone who’s wronged me. It’s a practice that I couldn’t put in words or was not even conscious of until I read it in this book.

“I would unearth memories, beginning in childhood, of places and occasions when someone had hurt me. I found it somehow comforting to think that his coldness was in no way special or unique.��

This is right up in the top five reads of this year. I feel so glad to have taken this book on faith and given it a fair chance. I did myself a service. Completely amazing and enjoyable for such a short read and I would suggest this book to probably everyone who might like a dark read. Pick it up and dive right in! Who knows, you may find something of yourself in these lovely words and stories.

“The door that would not open no matter how hard you pushed, no matter how long you pounded on it. The screams no one heard. Darkness, hunger, pain. Slow suffocation.��