Showing posts with label Review. Show all posts

The first one is called “The Day of the Jackal”, written by Frederick Forsyth. It is, as usually the books I read, a thriller. And, no mere thriller, mind you. It’s a “keep you on the edge of the seat” kind of a thriller book.

The plot goes something like this… The year of 1963 in France. The Extremists want the President of France dead. With all their ‘other’ means failing to yield results thereby weakening the radicals, they seek the help of a professional killer from Britain. This assassin is the Jackal. The story moves on two separate tracks. One follows the Jackal and the other the detective put in command to trace the Jackal.

The seemingly simple plot of the book is so well sewn together that you will not feel like putting the book down. It is a unique kind of book where you know all characters to their true colours, unlike the other mystery books where you keep guessing. But the twists are in the pursuit of the Jackal. And take my word, they are not few. You will be in a spot as to which character to support as the story develops. It is a lengthy book to finish, but you will surely love the experience of reading it.

Now moving to the second, “Shutter Island”, by Dennis Lehane. This is the spookiest novel I have ever read. I have lost a night’s sleep over this book! This is the strangest one I have ever come across. If “The Day of the Jackal” was an edge of the seat thriller, this is a psychotic thriller that keeps you disturbing all the while you read.

The story begins with two US Federal Marshals assigned on duty to an island which houses a mental asylum for the criminally insane. A “dangerous” patient has managed to escape the mental institution. The Marshals are called for the investigation. But the plot starts to blot as pages fly by. The perplexing narration of the story and the mystery keeps you wanting to keep on reading. Once you start to think ‘oh yeah, now I know’, you will be dead wrong. This has to be one of the books that I longed not to put the book down till I finished. I absolutely loved it and suggest you to read this if you get your hands on this gem of a book.

It had to be a particularly bad day. The events ranged from getting up late and disrupting all my prior plans, a tussle with an autorikshaw driver, petrol drying out with the nearest bunk nowhere visible and an update failure on my computer which consequently, made me lose a couple of files that I needed badly. All in all, it was an awfully bad day. Putting to rest the tough luck, I decided to cool off for the rest of the day – watched TV.

What’s so special you ask? Well, the movie that aired specially for me – or so I felt. It was called “Freedom Writers” – had never heard. Hillary Swank and Patrick Dempsey were the only ones that I recognized. The movie was about a school in California which is integrated – that is, all the races of people ranging from Asians, Latinos, Blacks and many more who lived by the streets amidst all the gang violence, to study in the same school. The newly appointed teacher to those guys is Ms. Erin Gruwell, played by Hillary Swank. The story focuses on how the races fight between themselves for what they think would “free” them. Erin tries hard to unite the class with her off the beaten path methods. What adds to the value of the movie is that the movie is based on a book by an author by the same name as the lead, Erin Gruwell. The movie also features a few holocaust victims who appear at a very apt spot. The movie, although revolves around the theme of racism – which I hate, didn’t annoy me. Surprisingly, it rather kept me glued. There’s nothing dramatic happening in the whole of the movie. But, the flow is never tardy.

What appealed to me the most was how the movie refreshed my mood. With all the silly disasters that I was made to deal with, suddenly vanished from my thoughts. I guess, it would have been an ordinary movie had it not been this day. If I were to recommend this to anyone, I would like to say – watch it when you have a bad day and are feeling like you are going through a lot and want a break.