anjali

Oh, God. Where should I even start? Let me tell you how I came across this book.

Some of my classmates were reading a couple of Chetan's books and told me that they were great. Now, I'm not sure which ones they referred to, but I hope it isn't this. Anyway, I had this ebook for a couple of years and I always read around twenty pages before completely forgetting about it. In retrospect, I guess my body was trying to protect me like how sometimes trauma victims don't remember anything about the accident. Anyway, I finally decided to read it till the end.

Now, to tell you what is wrong with the book is very difficult because there are so many things that I would probably exceed the word limit of my review. I'll start with the basics. When I usually read books with bad grammar that would mostly likely be the low point of the book. But this book is an exception since the story totally took the prize. It took predictability to this whole new level that I didn't know existed. But the book's summary is totally spot on. In fact, the summary is as good as the story since they are pretty much the same thing. Boy and girl meet each other, fall in love, convince girl's parents, almost convince boy's mother when lots of drama ensues resulting in a break-up, drama increases due to boy's abusive father, depressed boy, blah blah, miracle occurs, aforementioned abusive father turns into world's best dad by getting boy and girl back together, some more drama on who is and isn't coming to the wedding, wedding, end. Think Romeo and Juliet with bad prose and trying-too-hard-to-be-funny jokes, set in modern day India, with protagonists from different states instead of clans and a happy ending.

The next has to be the writing style. I get that this book is written from a guy's POV and doesn't dwell much on feelings and stuff. But, please! If the author didn't describe anything at all, it wouldn't matter much but, no, he constantly described a) the girl's clothes b) food But, not a single line about feelings or facial expressions or surroundings whatsoever. However, the worst part of the book was this: I have no idea how they fell in love with each other. I don't know when they fell in love with each other. I don't know why they fell in love with each other. And that sucks.

I'm going to give you some advice regarding this book:

a)Don't read this book
b)If you decide to read this book, please don't judge India by it. Also, consider it as one of the three mistakes of your life. (Pun intended.)

Why I picked it up: I have been trying to read books people consider as “classics” and seeing that the new Jungle Book movie came out recently, this book was an obvious choice.

Even though I was slightly hesistant about the book because it is meant for kids, my doubts soon disappeared. The book contains a bunch of stories :

1. Mowgli's Brothers
2. Hunting-Song of the Seeonee Pack.
3. Kaa's Hunting
4. Road-Song of the Bandar-Log
5. “Tiger! Tiger!”
6. Mowgli's Song

The first six are a collection of short stories revolving around Mowgli and his friends (or foes, for that matter). These were undoubtedly the best out of the bunch for me. They reminded me of waking up early on Sundays to watch your favourite cartoon on TV while eating your cereal. There's something nostalagic about it all. Only downside would be the poems which ruined the flow, but that maybe me because I'm not a poem person.

7. The White Seal
It is about a white seal who goes on a search for a safe place for his fellow seals and succeeds. It was okay. Sort of.

8. Lukannon
Another poem. Meh.

9. “Rikki-Tikki-Tavi”
This was a part of my syllabus in school so I chose to skip over it. But I distinctly rememmber all of us hating it. We had a collection of short stories such as The Gift of Magi by O.Henry and Dusk by Saki among others and this was undoubtedly the least favourite of our class as evident by the groans that broke out when we had anything to do with it. Anyway, it is about a pet mongoose, the titular character, and his fight with a snake. The story is unnecessarily dragged out and gets on my nerves.

10. Darzee's Chant
Another poem. Mehh.

11. Toomai of the Elephants
About an Indian boy and an elephant called Toomai. Okay-ish.

12. Shiv and the Grasshopper
A song by Toomai's mother.

13. Her Majesty's Servants
About a bunch of animals each boasting about their part in fighting for the British Army. Kinda left a bitter taste in my mouth seeing that I'm an Indian and not so hot about the British Army.

14. Parade Song of the Camp Animals
Poem about the previous story.

Frankly, in my opinion, you could skip all of the non-Mogwli related stories and you would not be missing much. But I'm sure a lot of people would disagree with me. And it is probably blasphemous to say this but : I liked the 2003 movie better. I know, I know the book is always better than the movie but sue me.

I previously rated this book three stars. Later when I decided to read it again I could not help but wonder what “possessed” (you will realize after reading the book that this is in fact, a pun. ) me to give it three stars.

The idea behind the book is brilliant. A girl Susie is raped and murdered on her way home from school by her neighbour. She is then stuck somewhere between Earth and Heaven, watching her loved ones cope with the grief of her death while her attacker goes unpunished. The blurb was interesting enough for me to read in spite of not having any romance in it. It sounded like such a promising read.

And it was too, for the first ten pages or so. It starts with Susie being attacked and the scene is powerful and realistic. This scene is probably the highest point of the whole book beacuse it goes entirely downhill from here. There are a bunch of flat cliche characters with equally flat thought sin the head. Susie's father starts to neglect his family and his wife finds comfort in the arms of the detective with a tragic past. And then there are metaphors that make no sense : “The snow was falling lightly, like a flurry of small hands...” Hands. Not cotton or clouds or a million other things that are white or cold or both. I previously rated this book three stars. Later when I decided to read it again I could not help but wonder what “possessed” (you will realize after reading the book that this is in fact, a pun. ) me to give it three stars.

The idea behind the book is brilliant. A girl Susie is raped and murdered on her way home from school by her neighbour. She is then stuck somewhere between Earth and Heaven, watching her loved ones cope with the grief of her death while her attacker goes unpunished. The blurb was interesting enough for me to read in spite of not having any romance in it. It sounded like such a promising read.

And it was too, for the first ten pages or so. It starts with Susie being attacked and the scene is powerful and realistic. This scene is probably the highest point of the whole book beacuse it goes entirely downhill from here. There are a bunch of flat cliche characters with equally flat thought sin the head. Susie's father starts to neglect his family and his wife finds comfort in the arms of the detective with a tragic past. And then there are metaphors that make no sense : “The snow was falling lightly, like a flurry of small hands...” Hands. Not cotton or clouds or a million other things that are white or cold or both. And a lot of people have already pointed out this quote in their reviews but I will do it again because of its sheer ridiculousness: “Her pupils dilated, pulsing in and out like small, ferocious olives.”

But the worst part of it was the ending. I'm ashamed to admit that I did not catch it the first time I read it. What would you do if after you died you were given few more minutes to live by possessing someone? Would you like to say goodbye to your family? Help catch your murderer preventing other from suffering your fate? Or maybe you would take advantage of this wonderful situation by
having sex with your childhood crush. That's right. Susie Salmon, victim of rape and murder, uses her precious last few minutes to have sex, with her childhood crush, Ray by possessing the body of a lesbian friend, Ruth. And this is not the kind of voluntary possession where you need to ask permission or anything. So after an out of body experience, Ruth awakes to finds herself raped in a bike shop (I'm not sure why Susie chooses to go there). You would think that being raped herself, Susie would be a tad more considerate. But, obviously the path the true enlightment and nirvana by forgetting all earthly pleasures is by taking in the most earthliest pleasure of all.

There a lot of reviews about how great this book is, but like every other person pointed out, Fangirl doesn't give the best impression of what it's like to be a fangirl. Being a fangirl doesn't mean just reading a book and writing fanfic about it. It is so much more..

Obsessing. Reading, rereading. Discussion on forums. Online quizzes. Arguing with others. Waiting for the movies. Arguing about the cast. Watching the movies. Obsessing about the movies. Tumblr. GIFs. Hijacking posts. Noticing things you didn't notice the first time. Swooning on a particularly hot guy. Crying about a character's death. Making up your own theories.

Cath doesn't do any of those things. She read the books and writes fanfic and maybe sometimes reads others fanfic. That's not it. That's not what a fangirl does.

Also, the Simon Show is obviously inspired from Harry Potter. And Simon and Baz are obviously Harry and Draco. I get why Rowell had to use different names. Copyright problems. I get it, I do. But I really wish she stocked to it. To a world, without Harry Potter. You either use the real deal, or you fake it. You don't mix both. So when she mentions Harry Potter in the book, it made me so mad.

Also what the hell is wrong with Cath? Being a fangirl and being neurotic isn't the same thing. The girl stashes energy bars because she's scared to go eat in the dining hall. What the hell? I have never in my life done that or anything similar to it. And if someone called me pathetic, I wouldn't be okay with it. But Cath just whines and forgets about it. Which pissed me.

Okay so there's so much more I could say about it, but I won't. Despite all that, the book was a good read. The biggest problem with this book for me was that Rowell is probably not a fangirl. Or atleast didn't do enough research. But if she did this would have been one of the best book and would have easily gotten five freaking starts.