Cambridge, England |
Romantic comedies are often
labelled as chick flicks while romantic novels are classified as chick lit. Whatever they are labelled as , these reads
and movies with happy endings are funny and entertaining. I also enjoy reading
contemporary fictions where the writers are sensitive and perceptive in telling
the stories of their protagonists without offering any resolutions nor happy
endings. A week ago, in my course of work, a woman wanted to seek some legal advice about getting a
divorce from her husband. After she had cancelled and rescheduled her
appointments several times, she showed up at my office without a scheduled
appointment. For some reasons, she had somehow told the husband that she was
coming to see me and where she would be. The husband arrived in my chamber
shortly after her as he clearly did not want their marriage to end up in court.
The woman was obviously troubled so was the man. He looked bewildered when his
wife left my office in a huff.
In The
Interestings, a novel written by Meg
Wolitzer , seventeen year old Goodman, one of the teenagers was
upset at the sight of his ex girlfriend getting close to a new boy at the camp,
he knocked back a few drinks. Here is an extract from the book by one of my favourite writers. It is a story about coming of age and friendship that was forged by shared memories and artistic interests.
“Gudrun,
tell me something,” the very drunk
Goodman asked the counselor . “ Why do you think women act the way they
do. Being all needy and then getting you completely drawn in, then screwing
things up. Doing this little back and forth with you. Why are relationships so
fucked up? Does it ever change? Is it different in Denmark?”
“
What are you asking me exactly?” Gudrun said. “ Why do I think the problems
between the men and women of the world are the way they are today? You want to
know whether the problems that you teenagers feel- will they follow you over
the rest of your lives? Will your hearts always be aching? Is that what you are
asking me?”
“
Yes,” said the counselor in a suddenly plangent voice.” “ Always they will be
aching. I wish I could tell you something else, but I wouldn’t be telling the
truth. My wise and gentle friends, this is the way it will be from now on.”
As one goes through life, one
becomes sinister and realistic as we know that when a deal is too good to be
true, there is a reason behind and you may be a means to an end. In the “ The Truth” by Michael Palin, Keith
Mabbut is an environmentalist journalist and a straight and honest guy. He had been commissioned to write a
book about the elusive humanitarian hero Hamish Melville. His agent, Silla
contacted him at the time when he
had wanted to start writing his novel, a fiction entitled “Albana”. He told his agent, Silla that she had
torpedoed his first day on Albana and Silla responded, “ Albania or Nirvana.
You can’t have both.”
Mabbut’s marriage had
disintegrated and his estranged wife had moved on. Palin wrote : “When he pleaded creativity, she demanded
practicality . It was an argument they had from the moment they met. After they
were married, she had settled into life and he had not.”
When Mabbut was asked to write
the book, the offer was attractive so he questioned, “ Why would a sleek, smooth plausible man like Ron
Latham have any interest in an iconoclast such as Melville?” The Truth
is about the decisions
that Mabbut had to make in his life, the price of compromise and how the truth can be whatever you want it to
be.
Crazy
Rich Asians is a funny story about three superrich, pedigreed Chinese families and their snobberies.When Nicholas Young heir of
one of the wealthiest families in Asia brought home Rachel, his Chinese girlfriend
from New York to attend his best friend’s wedding , Rachel became the target of
gossips that spun through the grapevines. When Eleanor, Nick’s mother found out
about her son’s plan to bring home an unknown girl, she flipped and set out to
find out the girl’s roots. Eleanor asked her friend Lorena to do some
investigative work and found out that there was a fellow who claimed to have
information on Rachel. So she gathered her group of rich “tai tai” friends and headed to Shenzhen to meet the man
who would trade his information for a price.
“Thirty
thousand yuan? That is ridiculous!” Eleanor seethed at the man in the
poly-blend gray jacket seated across from her in the lounge off the lobby of
the Ritz- Calton. The man looked around to make sure that Eleanor’s outburst
wasn’t attracting too much attention.
Kevin
Kwan has told the story with a keen observation about snootiness and
wealth while some of the characterizations could be stereotyping and the story
per se may belong to the chic lit genre nonetheless his story telling was
peppered with humour and it has been a fun ride reading it .