Finished reading Anne Lamott's book

I'd been browsing, then reading off and on this novel by Anne Lamott, titled "Rosie", for quite a long time now. Finally i was able to finish it. And it felt good.

The book, about Rosie, whose mother Elizabeth, drinks and drinks, and does not take care of her own life and her kid properly. The story began slowly, the tempo of the text was slow.

I was almost on the verge of putting it down after too much repetition of drinking episodes. But then, the story picked up.

Her language kept me reading. more than the story, her style, and the use of words is fascinating.

This isn't a newly published book. But reading a long published book doesn't take the joy out of it.

Rapture

The short novel Rapture by Susan Minot didn't take me too long to finish. And since it was a mood novel, it caught hold of my attention, and made me turn the pages fast.

A novel about only a few minutes during one day, when two lovers meet and get sexual, and to weave an entire novel around those few minutes, is a literary feat. The past of the two lovers, and theire other lovers are flash forwarded, and the movement is back and forth constantly, from the present into the past and back.

There is alternation of point of view, with the two lovers getting equal time and page space. And the variety of characters and details in that space is amazing. The whole picture emerges as one reads the book. One gets to know about the man's fiancee Vanessa and her father, about the woman's past, the man's past, their characters, especially the selfishness of the man, and the large heartedness of the woman.

Kind of monologue goes on as they are engaged in sex, and that reveals the entire story.

Paulo Coelho is Enlightening!!

So many times earlier have I picked up The Alchemist, and, fearing that my taste would not match its contents, turned away from it. People talked about the book, and I wondered how it would be. What wisdoms it contained. Still, years after it had been published, I've not read the book.

But could one run away from Paulo Coelho? When his books are everywhere, some time, some day, I had to pick up one. And I did. At the Central library in downtown Santa Barbara. I found Brida in the New Fiction section. It was a hardbound, 212 page book, with a woman's enigmatic back on the cover. The weight of the book was a deterrent, as I would have to carry it on the bus from the library along with some other books, to our house on Upper State Street.

I'm glad I decided to bear its weight anyway. Now that I have read its last page, and closed the cover, my mind is illuminated on many things. These were things normally people did not talk about. The mystical experiences of wizards and witches, the whole process of initiation of pupils into witchcraft, and the relationships that people in that world had to reckon with.

It is a straightforward story, about Brida who wants to know about magic. She meets the Magus in the forest, but he does not teach her straightaway what magic is. Brida meets her teacher Wicca, who is a good teacher, comfortable in her wordly physical beauty.

The spiritual aspects of the physical body is highlighted, that love is love, whether one is with the loved one or not. The quest of the Magus is his Soul Mate. The Soul Mate is differentiated from a worldly, physical lover. These differentiation in the end makes him distance himself physically from his oul Mate, whom he meets at the end of his journey and gains wisdom.

I would credit Coelho with the lucidity of his vision, and the love with which he wrote his novel.

Laws of Inheritance

Finished reading the novel Esther's Inheritance by Hungarian author Sandor Marai a few minutes ago, and I'm still in a daze. It was a page turner. I couldn't stop reading. Of course I shouldn't have taken two days, considering it is slim. But I've been doing my own stuff, so finishing it means a lot.

There are very few books that say so much in so few pages. And all great writings are about love. And also about life, death, intrigue. It was so deep, had to stop and re-read occasionally, either to grasp the meaning, or to let the idea sink in.

As if I had a long talk with the writer. As if he was telling his story only to me. It was absorbing. Please don't be surprised by my gushing his praise. I'd love to read all the other novels that he has written. Including Embers, Casanova in Bolzano, and The Rebels.