Chup: Breaking the Silence About India's Women - Deepa Narayan - ★★

-
AUTHOR: Deepa Narayan
GENRE: Nonfiction, Feminism
PUBLICATION DATE: March 8, 2018
RATING: 2 stars.


I wanted to like this book so much. I tried my best to. But sadly, I just couldn't. It just drags and drags after the first couple of chapters. I would have DNFed it were it not for the guilt factor to read it out of loyalty to my gender. 

The writing style is more like a feminist rant. I am agree with many of the points given in the book but not all. A more grounded approach and a different writing style (less of the bluster and more of pragmatic action points) would have made this book so much better and impactful. 

This is a case of good intention with bad execution.

Comments

Post a Comment

Explore more posts from this blog:

The Unspeakable Acts of Zina Pavlou - Eleni Kyriacou - ★★★★.½

-
Image
AUTHOR: Eleni Kyriacou GENRE: Historical Mystery-Drama RATING: 4.5 stars. In a Nutshell: A historical crime-drama with some amazingly complicated characters. Covers quite a few intense themes. Has minor flaws, but the overall impact is so good that I am willing to overlook the shortcomings. Strongly recommended! Story Synopsis: 1954. London. Zina Pavlou, a Cypriot woman in her mid-fifties, has been accused of murdering her daughter-in-law brutally. Zina can’t understand much English, so while she is in the custody of the police, she can only take wild guesses at what’s unfolding around her. Eva Georgiou works as a freelance Greek interpreter for the Metropolitan police. As an immigrant herself, she understands how lost Zina might be feeling. The common language makes their bond grow, and Eva is determined to save Zina, even though she has her suspicions about the truth. The story comes to us in the limited third-person perspectives of Zina and Eva, in multiple timelines that include f...
Read More»

A Price to Love - Smita Das Jain - ★★.½

-
Image
AUTHOR: Smita Das Jain GENRE: Contemporary Romantic Drama. RATING: 2.5 stars. In a Nutshell: A brave choice of protagonist for this genre, as the leading lady pretty much drives the show in a ruthless and selfish way. The writing style, however, wasn’t a match to my reading preferences, and the somewhat clichéd approach in certain plot elements also reduced my enjoyment. A decent book, but I wanted more. Story Synopsis: 2018. Gurugram, India. Sonia seems to have everything going right for her. A management grad from India’s best institution, twenty-seven year old Sonia works in a job she is passionate about, and married to her classmate from IIM-A. Her reporting heads idolise her, and her assistants are also in awe of her. The glitch in this perfect world is that her husband Sameep isn’t happy with the way Sonia seems to be working 24x7, even at the cost of their personal time together. Sonia’s decisions are dominated not just by her ambitions but also by her past. How long can Sonia...
Read More»

After Life - Gayle Forman - ★

-
Image
AUTHOR: Gayle Forman GENRE: YA Contemporary Fantasy PUBLICATION DATE: January 7, 2025 RATING: 1 star. In a Nutshell: A YA contemporary fiction with mild fantasy elements. Could have been awesome but the FMC is too YA, if you know what I mean. 😬 Basic writing, annoying characters, convenient developments. Minimal and ad hoc fantasy content. The only thing I liked was the plot structuring. Can’t recommend this, sorry. Plot Preview: When Amber cycles home one spring afternoon, the last thing she expects is her mother to scream on seeing her walk in. The reason is horrifying even to Amber. It seems she has been dead for seven years, having lost her life in a hit-and-run accident while riding the very same bicycle she just rode home. But Amber doesn’t feel dead! The return affects not just Amber but her family and other acquaintances who were active in her life when she was alive. A lot has changed in the last seven years and Amber needs to be prepared to face those developments bas well....
Read More»

Photographs of Emily and other stories - Annalisa Crawford - ★★★★.¼

-
Image
AUTHOR: Annalisa Crawford GENRE: Story Collection, Dark Literary Fiction PUBLICATION DATE: July 24, 2026 RATING: 4.25 stars In a Nutshell: An indie collection comprising one novella and three short stories. Excellent atmosphere and lyrical writing. Dark and haunting. Much recommended. I've been a fan of this author ever since I read her story collection titled "The Clock in My Mother's House and Other Stories."  Since then, I've read three more of her works and enjoyed all of them. Safe to say that I now pick up an Annalisa Crawford work without even reading the blurb. A risky strategy, but with the right author, the reward is almost always assured. This latest book justifies my faith in her writing. The collection comprises one novella and three short stories. The novella takes up about 65% of the book. The mood in all four entries is somewhat similar: melancholic and haunting. The stories circulate around the same core topics of personal loss, grief, mental hea...
Read More»

The Book Witch - Meg Shaffer - ★

-
Image
AUTHOR: Meg Shaffer GENRE: Fantasy-Romance PUBLICATION DATE: April 7, 2026 RATING: 1 star. In a Nutshell: A book-about-books fantasy featuring the titular book witch. After the super-interesting start, this absolutely didn’t go the way I expected it to. Too much of insta-love. OTT dialogues, absurd plot twists, and immature characters. I enjoyed this author’s first two novels but simply couldn’t connect with this one. This is an outlier review. Plot Preview: Despite her youth, twenty-five-year-old Rainy March has been a book witch for more than a decade. She follows all the rules of the profession seriously, including the one about ensuring that fictional characters and the real world do not intersect. But when she is sent on assignment into the book series starring the Duke of Chicago, her favourite book character, she forgets all the rules and ends up in a relationship with him. When this is discovered by the head witch, Rainy is forbidden from interacting with the fictional characte...
Read More»