by Ramya Sethuraman
[box]What’s literature without love? Ramya Sethuraman explores the various shades of romance in novels spanning decades. She also reviews three books whose romantic storylines have touched her heart! [/box] [author] [author_info]Ramya Sethuraman is a software engineer with a penchant for telling tales. Her first novel, The Last Laugh, a collection of romantic short stories was recently published by Createspace and is available on amazon.com. Her stories have also appeared in DNA, Me magazine in Mumbai, India, India Abroad newspaper in the U.S and has received special mention in the 76th annual writer’s digest competition in the U.S.[/author_info] [/author]Romance. The word conjures images of handsome princes and dainty damsels in distress, of brave heroes and lovely maidens who would lay their lives down for each other, of Shakespearean characters, words of undying love and gory family feuds meeting in a nail-biting climax. But, romance can also be subtle, can’t it? And contemporary? There is glory in history but we live in magical times too and the written word is proof that romance lives on.
For every nineteenth century Emma Woodhouse (Emma by Jane Austen), there is an equally delicate and delightful Isabella Swan in the modern times. And don’t we recall a certain bespectacled Jenny Cavilleri and a smitten Oliver Barrett in those wistful, rose-tinted moments, and every turning point in their perfect yet painful love story that is etched in our hearts (Love Story by Erich Segal)? A tiny book bursting with powerful scenes and palpable feelings; we read for glimpses of magic like these; to be carried away by emotions as powerful. We yearn to go back again and again to touch those lives that so touched our hearts. Such is the effect of romance.
I think at some point in our lives, love has, however fleetingly, touched us in one of its many shades. In the mid-twentieth century novel, Yargo by Jacqueline Susann, love transcends geography – Janet falls in love with Yargo, the leader of a race of people on another planet! And later on, in the same century, we meet Francesca Johnson, a married woman with children, and Robert Kincaid, a wild-life photographer. Together, they paint indelible images of their love in The Bridges of Madison County by Robert James Waller.
But, times change and so does the nature of love. Yet the stories retain a single chord – of being equally compelling and riveting. Such is the story of Sayuri San, a geisha who does the unthinkable – she falls in love with her master, her chairman, in the eye opening novel, Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden. Move on and in the twenty first century, we encounter a unique romance, that of a human and a vampire. Stephenie Meyer introduces us to Edward and Bella, an eternal and shocking tale of love, in her first novel, Twilight.
We reach for books again and again because I suppose, we are in love with love itself. As a writer, I unabashedly gravitate towards romance. I tend to read love stories of all kinds. By masters of the craft, by bloggers, by anyone who can allow herself to be carried away by powerful emotions and simple but heartfelt words. I prefer ‘chicklits’ as much as I do more serious pieces of literature, although I suspect I read a lot of the former than the latter! I imagine a million ways one can fall in love and I draw inspiration from these writings to create my own love stories.
My characters tend to do the same things that you and I do. They are not Kings or Princesses. Some of them might lead a charmed life and some might even meet their happily-ever-after endings, but they have their moments of confusion and profound sadness, of inexplicable hurts and uncontained fears. I sometimes feel love encompasses all other emotions – little jealousies, quick tempers, inexplicable sadness, humor and even hate. So, when I write a love story, I can weave in whatever other emotions that choose to make their appearances. Well, the possibilities are endless. For, who doesn’t fall in love?
When it comes to novels, one kind of writing may be superior to another, but the love it describes, no matter how ornate the words or how touching the story, is still love or so I like to think. I have picked three such books that have captured my fancy for review. These are not necessarily the masterpieces of romance. There are possibly several other authors who can make their words tug at our heart strings at the stroke of their pens. No, these books may not occupy that lofty pedestal but if you look closely, you will find colorful images in these pages that fail to fade in your heart, simple words that describe love the way you have always felt it ought to be described, tears and laughter that mingle with yours.
Thirtynothing by Lisa Jewell
“Nadine looked up at him then, looked into his kind, brown eyes and decided at that moment that whatever happened in her life, she was going to marry Digby Ryan.”
Nothing special here except that Nadine and Digby are just kids and it’s their first day of school! Her young conviction captures our imagination and we want to know more and that is a sign of a good story-teller.
Thirtynothing is one of those delightful, irresistible happily-ever-after stories. Dig Ryan and Nadine Kite are 30-something best-friends who are still looking for that one perfect soul mate to complete their lives. They have been best friends since school and at different points in their lives have believed that they have been in love with each other but the timing has never been right and so they convince themselves that a platonic friendship is what defines their relationship. There is nothing remarkable about this story – it’s only a simple tale of two best friends who realize they have always been in love but the magic is in the little details. The story even in its serious moments manages to hang on to a light vein. It delivers with a kick no matter what you are looking for – a light summer read on the beach or a warm love story to cuddle with on cold days. By the time you near the end, you are pining for Dig and Nadine to get together as much as they want to come together. And you close the book with a smile on your face – which is what we all are after when we pick a book, right?
A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth
I read this book several years back over a period of six months! This book is not for the faint-hearted – it is the longest written English novel but the reason I recommend this book is not for its size! I struggled to keep the different family trees in this novel straight in my head but I was completely smitten by Lata and Kabir’s love story. I would patiently turn pages and pages of detailed descriptions and landscapes and characters just for those few lines that described the chemistry, the sizzling tension, the strong emotions that filled Lata and Kabir’s rendezvous. And in the end when Lata chooses Hari, I confess I felt Hari to be plain and boring in comparison to the attractive and dashing Kabir. I wanted to shake some sense into Lata, to make her change her decision and for some time, I even held it against the author that he had forced Lata to make the biggest mistake of her life.
And when I could put enough emotional distance between the story and me, I figured it was one of the best love stories I had read in recent times. It completely captivated me with its charm and intensity!
And I guess, that is what I look for in love stories – to be transported into another world, overthrown by uninhibited emotions, to make my heart dance to the rhythm of the words I read and then to return to do it all over again!
The Palace of Illusions by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
Rewriting an epic is a task that only brave authors will attempt but this one goes even farther. Chitra Divakaruni gives a dramatic twist to a predominantly male-oriented epic, The Mahabarat. She retells the tale from Draupadi’s point of view and introduces a delicate and unrequited love story, a bold deviation from the original story. Here is a glimpse of what stayed back with me:
“His eyes were filled with an ancient sadness. They pulled me into them…I wanted to know how those eyes would look if the man smiled. Absurdly, I wanted to be the reason for his smile.”
And that is Draupadi’s introduction to Karna. Later, she utters the words that she will come to regret, the words that will end the love story that could have been. Here, Chitra Divakaruni’s choice of words is faultless. Draupadi says:
“When I’d stepped forward and looked into his face, there had been a light in it – call it admiration, or desire, or the wistful beginnings of love. If I’d been wiser, I might have been able to call forth that love…and my ill-chosen words quenched that light forever.”
And when Karna dies, we mourn not only his loss but also the fact that Draupadi and Karna lived their lives bound by a rope of mutual admiration, love and misunderstandings; that their lives would have been different, perhaps better, if they had heeded their inner voices. The Palace of Illusions is not a love story but what captured my heart is the tiny love story in it.
Pic : http://www.flickr.com/photos/vipulmathur/
[facebook]share[/facebook] [retweet]tweet[/retweet]
