iRead: Lilac House..which really isn't about the house but people who make home

The Lilac House: A Novel by Anita Nair
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

It's one of the really hard book to review about...and though I am one of the worst critic for novel with loose ends...hanging neither here nor there and left to imagination (that too when you are just weaving those characters throughout the novel!!), I still will applaud the author for the way she wrote...a real break from the usual Indian writings...

Coming to the subject, the name is probably misleading...yes it starts with the lilac house; but that's not where it thrives and build on...in fact I don't know which story was the one that was the highlight...Mira's or Jak's...or Smriti's...it's a novel where you can't really hold anyone guilty (other than two characters I would say...Giri, I don't know what the author had so much against the lead woman's husband...portrayed him as a complete hopeless person ;) and then Nina...they lead guy's wife...you don't really have to show one half of a marriage to be wrong to depict that the second half was right...)

It's confusing at times...there are swarms of people...kind of a psychological study of lot of humans...what they think, why they behave the way they do...sometimes you wonder why did she actually include this character, but I appreciate the way she has tried to beautifully analyze and build each character..and then of course, there is a lot of time zone shift...without even telling you...people are suddenly in their past, then they are in future...and then you just don't know where they went...

All said and done, the story pulls you in...and it wasn't just the young girl, people my age would identify with, but it's even the turmoils of a wife, a mother, a woman (and let's not be biased, turmoils of the male species too) that would touch us...we might not comprehend them fully, for thankfully we aren't still that grown up, but we definitely would realize they are true...and even though the story is exaggerated at places, it holds you to it, and that, per me, is a definite win for an author...

A good read for women...not something to be completely avoided by men...and well, all I would say is, I hope there comes a sequel (though I highly doubt it)...for I just don't want to imagine a happy ending, but be convinced that the author actually did give them a happy ending...


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PS: Just checking how the feed directly from GoodReads work...not that I generally write this big reviews there...but once I did, I thought why not bring it here too...and as for ratings..there is no in between 3 and 4 in GoodReads...but here I can...so I say 3.65 (exploiting the freedom by not putting it as 3.75 :D )