pen.books.and.scalpel

Her eyes welled up like the tides that rose a few feet away. What did they mean by “You can’t come here anymore”? Who were they to stop her from visiting her leisure spot, Kolanji wondered.  It was the same sea she watched with her eyes wide open the first time her parents took her there as a child. The same beach that made her dizzy with happiness when she submerged her feet in the waves for the first time when she was three. The same sea where she dipped in now and then when she was drowsy with happiness. She would be left drenched from head to toe, drawing her mother’s wrath towards the end of the day. Her father would giggle and drag her back to the same spot where they would spend hours bathing their dog, Subbu.  “Where the hell have you three been? Do you even know what time it is? No dinner for any of you today” Kolanji’s mother would vent her spleen out but would not affect the daughter-father duo whatsoever. Subbu would shudder to dry himself up and wind around Kolanj...

BOOK NAME: THE TREES AUTHOR NAME: PERCIVAL EVERETT GENRE: SATIRE PUBLISHER: PICADOR BOOKS BOOK BUY LINK:   https://amzn.in/d/gflc12x BOOK RATING: 5✨ BOOK IMAGE BOOK REVIEW I didn’t know there existed a genre that could seamlessly mix horror, humour, social commentary, fantasy, and satire and still be profound and relevant. I am surprised but elated that this did not find itself on the banned books list because it could have easily landed there for pushing all the right buttons!!  In The Trees, the author has chosen to weave a tale around the real-life lynching incident of a 14-year-old African-American, Emmett Till, in 1955, who was wrongly accused of trying to get friendly with a white woman. What starts as a discovery of a gruesome murder of two people, one of them white and the other one black, who disappears after each crime only to commit another, becomes an uprising of the oppressed against the oppressors - a recurring theme that’s enjoyable nevertheless.  I wi...