Leila Mottley’s Nightcrawling

‘Mama used to tell me that blood is everything, but I think we're all out here unlearning that sentiment, scraping our knees, and asking strangers to patch us back up.’

Leila Mottley’s Nightcrawling is a brutal, yet compelling read. It’s an honest documentation of survival and law system in human-society, more than that It provides you a lens to introspect. 

The story based on a true event, Oakland scandal of 2015. Mottley has a fearless voice, compassionate heart and a clear vision. Although, it is a horrifying account of one’s life, still I am amazed by its breathing prose.

Nightcrawling is a dark novel, which casts light on the hidden life of our seventeen years old protagonist. Her name is Kia. She lives with her brother, Marcus, in a slum apartment. Brother makes her believe that he loves her. He has delusional dreams. He doesn’t make any efforts to provide basic facilities to Kia. When the apartment owner threatens to rent hike, she is left with no-choice but ‘Nightcrawling’. She is just a teen - deprived of parents - who is eager to make a living, to survive, to endure. Then, there is another character, named Trevor, who is only sunshine in her life, though they are not connected by blood, but the way she cares for a nine-years old motherless kid, I could explore empathetic side of her. The chaos is temporary, that’s what she thinks. The entry of local police coloured this survival story into the most devastated account of injustice.

Leila Mottley approached essential themes in her debut, for instance: gender injustice, police misconduct, prostitution, human rights abuses, race discrimination and dearth.

Mottley’s writing enthrals you with the opening line itself, ‘The swimming pool is filled with dog shit and Dee’s laughter mocks us at dawn.”

Are there any cons? It’s just the length, I wish it were crisp, and well edited at places, so that I could visualize this powerful story in an intimate manner.

Apart from the captivating story and rich prose style, I have been pondering over the age of writer. she was not even 18 when she actually started working on this project. It’s a powerful story, undoubtedly a well-deserved entry into Oprah book club. 

 ‘...and I don’t really got nothing to fear about dying in the first place. I just think that the stars might line up and trail into an otherworld. Doesn’t have to be a better world because that probably doesn’t exist, but I think it is something else. Somewhere where the people walk a little different. Maybe they speak in hums. Maybe they all got the same face or maybe they don’t have faces at all. When I have enough time to stare at the sky, I imagine I might be lucky enough to catch glimpses of the something.’ 

 

Book Review: The Shrine of Death by Divya Kumar

Title: The Shrine of Death

Author: Divya Kumar

Publisher: Bloomsbury India 

ISBN:  978-9387457546

Genre: Thriller & Mystery

Pages: 296

Source: Flipkart Review Program

Rating:  4/5

Recently, Divya Kumar stepped into literary world with her gripping thriller, The Shrine of Death. 

“The story is purely an out and out entertainer with some romance, some paranormal elements”, said the author while explaining the subject matter of the book on the occasion of its launch.

Basically the story revolves around an idol theft, And our main protagonist Prabha Sinha is trying to solve that mystery. Her colleague and old friend starts to help her out and this puzzled case widens across police and CBI. The way Divya Kumar has woven the plot and even secondary characters, it seemed relatable. She didn’t put detailed information on every page like other thrillers, though plot moves with certain pace, she included life in her each character. You can catch them while pursuing daily activities and instantly feel a connection. I liked the structure how author created a world of art-mongers, besides IT professionals.  

In an Interview, She says “The process of writing The Shrine of Death, began in 2012. I woke up one morning, and the character of Jai, the empath, was just fully formed in my head,” she says, “I didn’t even connect it to the term ‘empath’ back them: I just knew that this was a character who could feel what other people felt.”

“I started reading up online, and found that there are other such cases, and such stories, and it’s clearly something difficult and traumatizing. Of course, it’s a bit in the realm of clairvoyance and telepathy – more pseudo-science, really — but it gave the character an interesting psychological profile.” It intrigued her, she says, how such a person would respond in everyday life and how they would be misunderstood by others”

Smuggling, theft, betrayal and hunt for a missing researcher, turned this debut into a riveting read.  With well written dialogues and crisp narration makes book a real page turner. And I loved that Divya Kumar didn’t try to make the investigation process over dramatic, you can easily breathe between events happening there and sway along with the emotional descriptions. Grab the book if you are into thrillers, a captivating read.

Excerpt 

“So, you’re telling me,” he said with exaggerated patience, “that a man strangled a woman in broad daylight, in his balcony, right here in this building, but you don’t know which floor or flat.” He dropped the spoon on his plate. “And now you want me to… what? Go knocking on our neighbours’ doors, asking, ‘excuse me, did you kill your wife?’

Her face reddened in mute misery. She had watched from the balcony all afternoon, half-expecting a police car or an ambulance to arrive. But neither had. The balconies of 404 and 504 had remained resolutely empty. The maid came out in 806 and took in the clothes, still on her phone. The woman in 604 watered the plants. The man in 706 came out for his evening smoke. Then the sky darkened to ink blue, the mirrors turned mossy and opaque, and she saw no more.

“It has to be either 404 or 504, I’m quite sure,” she said, voice small.

He finished eating, and sat back. “It’s all these teleserials you watch. They fill your head with all sorts of nonsense. You need to go out, make friends. Did you even speak to the lady I introduced you to?”

“I didn’t imagine it,” she wanted to scream. But the protest died on her lips.

His voice softened. “You have to stop upsetting yourself like this. It’s not good for you or the baby.” He patted her arm. “We’ll go to the park tomorrow evening, what do you say?”

On Jacket

A chilling crime thriller in which a beautiful young historian who discovered two priceless bronzes from the 10th century disappears without a trace. Her friend sets out to find her and is drawn into a world of fraud, murder and betrayal where no rules apply.

Prabha Sinha, an IT professional in Chennai, is plunged into a murky world of idol theft, murder, and betrayal after she gets a mysterious phone call one night from her old friend Sneha Pillai. As she races to find answers before the people she loves get hurt, she seeks the help of Jai Vadehra, a troubled young man with a tragic past, and the gorgeous DSP Gerard Ratnaraj of the Idol Wing, CID, whom she can't help but be drawn to. Their search takes them from Chennai's newsrooms and universities to the abandoned sepulchral shrine of a Chola queen in the heartland of Tamil Nadu, and nothing, and no one, is as they seem

ABOUT AUTHOR

Divya Kumar is a journalist, writer and blogger, currently based in Dubai. She spent her early 20s studying and working in the U.S., dabbling in web-design and media studies, before settling down to a career in journalism. She returned to India in 2006, and joined The Hindu in Chennai, working as a senior reporter and feature writer with The Hindu Metroplus for five years, covering mainly the book and art beat, before taking a break for the birth of her first child in 2011.

Book Review: You Can Achieve More: Live By Design, Not By Default by Shiv Khera

Title: You Can Achieve More

Author: Shiv Khera

Publisher: Bloomsbury India

ISBN: 978-9386349064

Pages: 296

Genre: Self Help

Source: Flipkart Review Program

Rating: 4/5

If you want to stand out, then you need to do something outstanding, stated by Shiv Khera, an author and motivational speaker.  He recently launched his new book you can achieve more under Bloomsbury publication.

With a strong message this book put readers onto the journey of inner self. Although, Shiv Khera has already marked a tremendous reach in this genre before, yet this book give you an insight to work on your life in an interesting way.

According to publisher, they have sold around four million copies of Khera’s You Can Win into sixteen different languages. Now Author comes with another work of wisdom—You Can Achieve More: Live By Design, Not By Default.

Basically this book talks about three pillars of life which need to be strengthen—Health, wealth and good relationships. If any one of the three goes missing, it would be hard to imagine a happy world around us. In this book Khera studies lives of many successful people and tried to decode the way leads to achievements.

With 23 chapters, this book covers topics that resonate with every person’s life. You can find many books about self help but this book you can achieve more effectively helps in learning not only the principals of success, but also in avoiding mistakes, it works like a mentor in life and helps in developing confidence with a rewarding path.

Sometimes, we feel left out in the race called life, I think this book can be your support system on that we can rely. Book is written in such talkative language it seems you are meeting with your trustworthy friend. And you really want to hear his life experiences, and share your own meanwhile. It feels really relatable to know about some famous personalities and the way they cope up things and emerged as a winner.

You can’t read this book in one sitting, this is not a capsule of success but it requires a practice, a slow reading on a daily basis. Best thing about this book is, it might work as a magic but it won’t ask you to take an appointment first.

Khera Says:

Most people see opportunities, but very few seize them—Often one of the most painful moments of our life is when an opportunity knocks on our door and we find ourselves unprepared.

If you are not willing to pay the price for success, then whether we like it or not, we will have to pay the price for failure, a price has to be paid, no matter what.

We need to cleary understand that success does not only depend upon special skills, formal education or superior intelligence.

Achievement do not come by default, they are first learnt and then practiced.

Life is funny, for as long as we are alive, we keep learning how to live life.  

When something bad happens, it can break you, define you or strengthen you.

Don’t make your mind a dumping ground for someone else’s trash.

Achievers realize pride in performance is not an act = it is a way of life.

Achievement lies in practicing excellence in the smallest details.

The different between doing right and doing almost right is same as the difference between being dead and almost dead, almost is not good enough. Nobody at the Olympics gets a gold medal for 99 percent achievement. Almost done is not done.

It’s a moral obligation for every honorable person to be prosperous because money in good hands does good and money in evil hands does evil.

All in all, this book doesn’t preach you like other books of this genre, but it gives you a different perspective to live a life. With logical explanations it encourages you like a mentor, and inspires you to do work towards excellence, nothing less.

If I have to select my favourite chapters from this book then I would suggest— Invest in Yourself, Choose Character, Finding Balance, Pride in Performance, The Wisdom Truth.

About Author

SHIV KHERA is the founder of Qualified Learning Systems USA. An Author, Educator, Business Consultant and a successful Entrepreneur, he is a much sought-after speaker.

He inspires and encourages individuals to realize their true potential. He has taken his dynamic personal messages to opposite sides of the globe, from the U.S. to Singapore. His 30 years of research & understanding has put organizations on a path of growth and fulfillment.

He is the author of 15 books including the international bestseller "You Can Win", which has sold over 3.7 million copies in 21 languages. His other books are creating new records. 

Book Review: Forest Dark by Nicole Krauss

Title: Forest Dark

Author: Nicole Krauss

Publisher: Bloomsbury

ISBN:  9781408871799

Genre: Literary Fiction

Pages: 290

Source: Flipkart Review Program

Rating:  4.5/5

Some books demand your proper attention. They want to hold your hand and transport you into another world, where respective characters breath and you feel their every move, every emotion.

Nichole Krauss’s Forest Dark comes into that category only. If you think you could finish it in few sittings, you are not doing justice with these certain reads. I have read Krauss before, loved the prose then, and I am glad she didn’t lose her charm into her recent launch FOREST DARK. Her narrative is so absorbing, and magnetic that you want to savour it sentence by sentence. It makes you think and suffer and then leaves you with questions that don’t need to get answered.    

Forest Dark begins with disappearance of Jules Epstein, 70 years old, rich lawyer, who recently got retired, divorced and father of three. He has spent his whole life running into a race where he gets everything he aspires but after retirement he inclines towards spiritual thoughts, for instance what’s the meaning of money? What is real definition of success? And he decides to donate his wealth, whereas his lawyer friend takes this donation thing as some disease and calls it radical charity.

Besides that there is other protagonist, Nichole (When I read the name I thought it is some kind of memoir and then I read her interview at various platforms, Nichole is nothing to do with author Krauss except she created this profound character) So, Nicole is 40 years old novelist, living in Brooklyn with her two sons, her marriage is drifting apart. At one place Nicole express herself that she wanted to be writer who is free, without responsibilities who can write create her heroes, live their insecurities, happiness their life but she was not brave enough. I found that part was so beautifully written; I underlined it and mentioned it too, here in the Reader’s Moment.

Krauss’ Forest Dark is interlaced with two protagonists, their lives run into parallel world and that makes the story interesting. Yes I found it bit of confusing at some places but that’s totally acceptable when you get to read such sensitive work. With many Twists and turns, quirky characters with flaws, a new perception about Isolation, and the journey of self discovery, Forest Dark surely holds a soft place into reader’s heart. 

READER’s MOMENT 

Beyond this, Epstein made no effort to explain himself to anyone, except once to Maya. Having arrived thirteen years after Jonah, and ten after Lucie, at a less turbulent and agitated epoch in Epstein’s life, Maya saw her father in a different light. There was a natural ease between them. On a walk through the northern reaches of Central Park, where icicles hung from the great outcrops of schist, he told his youngest daughter that he had begun to feel choked by all the things around him. That he felt an irresistible longing for lightness—it was a quality, he realized only now, that had been alien to him all his life. They stopped at Theupper Lake, thinly sheeted with greenish ice. When a snowflake landed on Maya’s black eyelashes, Epstein gently brushed it away with his thumb, and Maya saw her father in fingerless gloves pushing an empty shopping cart down Upper Broadway [...]

How else to explain myself, then? Explain why I went along with Friedman, refusing to heed all the obvious warnings. One often hears people say that it’s easy to misunderstand. But I disagree. People don’t like to admit it, but it’s what passes as understanding that seems to come too easily to our kind. All day long people busy themselves with understanding every manner of thing under the sun—themselves, other people, the causes of cancer, the symphonies of Mahler, ancient catastrophes. But I was going in another direction now. Swimming against the forceful current of understanding, the other way. Later there would be other, larger failures to understand—so many that one can only see a deliberateness in it: a stubbornness that lay at the bottom like the granite floor of a lake, so that the more clear and transparent things became, the more my refusal showed through. I didn’t want to see things as they were. I had grown tired of that. [...]

When I was young, I thought that I would live my life as freely as the writers and artists I took as my heroes. But in the end I wasn’t brave enough to resist the current pulling me toward convention. I hadn’t gotten far enough along in the deep, bitter, bright education of the self to know what I could and couldn’t withstand—to know my capacities for constriction, for disorder, for passion, for instability, for pleasure and pain—before I settled on a narrative for my own life and committed myself to living it. Writing about other lives can, for a while, obscure the fact that the plans one has made for one’s own have insulated one from the unknown rather than drawn one closer to it.

ABOUT AUTHOR

Nicole Krauss is the author of the international bestseller The History of Love, which was published by W.W. Norton in 2005. It won the William Saroyan International Prize for Writing, France’s Prix du Meilleur Livre Ėtranger, was named #1 book of the year by Amazon.com, and was short-listed for the Orange, Médicis, and Femina prizes. Her first novel, Man Walks Into a Room, was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Award for First Fiction. In 2007, she was selected as one of Granta’s Best Young American Novelists, and in 2010 The New Yorker named her one of the 20 best writers under 40.
Her fiction has been published in The New Yorker, Harper’s, Esquire, and Best American Short Stories, and her books have been translated into more than thirty-five languages. She recently completed a Cullman Fellowship at the New York Public Library. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.

CONNECT:  Website

BUY ONLINE: Forest Dark by Nicole Krauss (Flipkart)