The Book Quill

How would you feel if one of your loved ones disappear without a trace and you still receive some unique gift that they give you every year even after their disappearance? Scary isn’t it? The assumptions of what really happened to the person can drive one mad to insanity, and the souvenir reaching you once a year can give anyone sleepless nights. That’s what happens to the poor Henrik Vanger who has been trying to find what happened to his brother’s daughter for 36 years without any success. Harriet Vanger, at the age of 17 disappears from the face of the earth and no matter what resources his uncle uses, he is unable to find her. He feels that the killer, if she has been murdered is sending him the gifts to mock him. After 36 years of agony, he hires an infamous journalist who has been sentenced for libel to try to solve the mystery of his niece’s disappearance. Thus starts a thriller journey when new evidences turn up, and the story altogether takes a new turn. The journalist, Mikae...

This book completely welled up my eyes, and in the last ten years of my reading almost like two or three books have done that. This book explores the life of women in Afghanistan during the 20th century, and deeply roots out the extremity of torture and suffering women have to go through each day of their lives. This very powerful book showcases the endearing survival of women in the extreme of situations and still stand strong and powerful. The story revolves around two main characters Mariam and Laila. There is a generation gap between the two, but somehow their futures are intertwined as they get married to a single man, named Rasheed. He is cruel, torturous and everything one can think of a man in the most horrible ways. Mariam is an illegitimate child of a very rich man, who is excluded and lives outside the city with his mother. After her mother commits suicide, her father marries her off to a shoemaker who is 30 years older to her and her never ending agony starts. Rasheed i...

Imagine if you could time travel, be in the past, the future , see things that no one has , experience things again and again but not at your will. Sounds scary? The Time Traveller’s Wife explores this extraordinary condition of a man named Henry, who could time travel due to a genetic disorder and his wife who always lives in unpredictability and fear. This science fiction romance provides a very different perspective to the concept of love, the concepts of normal life like marriage, child birth and death. The story will leave one at awe , thinking what all the girl would be coping with when she never knows if his lover, husband is ever going to return or not. Henry, who involuntary time travels, has no clue where he is going to land and that too naked. Whenever he time travels, he loses all his clothes hence he has to always break in and get clothes and then process the whole scenario to know if he is in the future or the past. ? When he leaves, where he goes, or how long his tr...

This book is a must for all the people who love figures of speech. Anthony Doerr has beautifully used all sorts of literary devices to create such a soul rippling effect that I just could not help but highlight numerous of them in my kindle. It’s a beautiful amalgamation of emotions of people during World War II. Their fears, their hopes, their beliefs, their happiness, their grief. It so powerfully leaves a footprint of what people had to suffer through during the war. And, most importantly it puts a very strong message underneath the whole story – ‘No one is victorious in a war’. The book completely takes you through a stroll of World War II. The language Anthony uses will compel you to feel the horror, the misery , the suffering , the waiting , the stillness and the aftermath. The story revolves around a blind little girl, Marie Laure who lives with her father in a small apartment in Paris ,who works as a locksmith in a museum nearby to their house. They are a happy couple who ...

This story is a part of every woman in India. It very subtly but strongly brings out the deep rooted psyche of every typical Indian, it’s not always their fault, but that’s what they have grown seeing around, and our ideology is intertwined with our society and culture. The book very beautifully and satirically brings out the stereotypes and hypocrisy of our society and how our society judges women at every stage of their lives and most of the time, not intentionally. Radhika Mehta, the protagonist is an intelligent, sharp and hardworking woman with a “no nonsense to be taken” attitude but there have been situations in the book where she had to stoop down either because of emotional bonds and out of love, or because that is the culture of the society you have been brought up in (which can be really senseless sometimes). She earns a lot of money, has an opinion on everything and had a couple of relationships; all these three are like a wicked witch’s potions formula for us Indians, ...

This story is about a family which is troubled from its very beginning, with a severely leukemic child, who they cannot give any part of their body to rescue her from death hence they get another genetically modified child through invitro fertilization to save their diseased child. From the very beginning as soon as Anna was born, she has given some part of her body to her elder sister so that she could live a few more days. From a young age, Anna has been aware of why she has existed ever, that is to save her elder sister Kate. She has been having no issues in saving her elder sister, till the time her sister is in need of a kidney which tags a series of events putting the whole family in turmoil. Anna not wanting to give a kidney sues her parents for medical emancipation. She does not want to be a donor anymore for Kate and a mother is torn between her two kids, a father is in despair to decide which child to take side for and an elder brother is helpless for not able to be of a...

This book has engraved itself in my mind for a lifetime. I could not stop reading it for hours and when I finished it I could not properly sleep for at least two days. Don’t be scared, it’s not a horror book but kind of equivalent to one.It will give you goose bumps all over your skin and also underneath it. It is a story of a woman named Ashley Patterson, who is an introverted workaholic and her co-workers Toni Prescott, an outgoing singer and dancer, and shy artist Alette Peters and Ashley's father, Dr. Steven Patterson. The co-workers know virtually nothing about each other--until the three women are linked by a murder investigation that will lead to one of the most bizarre trials of the century. Ashley suddenly starts feeling that somebody is following her. She finds her house lights turned on when she returns from work, her personal effects in disarray, and someone has written "You will die" on her mirror with a lipstick. As fear grips her she decides to report ...