The Reading List

by Sara Nisha Adams (read by Tara Divina, Sagar Arya, Paul Panting)
Library Loan
Debut novel

 

 

Publisher's Summary
 
An unforgettable and heartwarming debut about how a chance encounter with a list of library books helps forge an unlikely friendship between two very different people in a London suburb.

 

Widower Mukesh lives a quiet life in Wembley, in West London after losing his beloved wife. He shops every Wednesday, goes to Temple, and worries about his granddaughter, Priya, who hides in her room reading while he spends his evenings watching nature documentaries.

 

Aleisha is a bright but anxious teenager working at the local library for the summer when she discovers a crumpled-up piece of paper in the back of To Kill a Mockingbird. It’s a list of novels that she’s never heard of before. Intrigued, and a little bored with her slow job at the checkout desk, she impulsively decides to read every book on the list, one after the other. As each story gives up its magic, the books transport Aleisha from the painful realities she’s facing at home.

 

When Mukesh arrives at the library, desperate to forge a connection with his bookworm granddaughter, Aleisha passes along the reading list...hoping that it will be a lifeline for him too. Slowly, the shared books create a connection between two lonely souls, as fiction helps them escape their grief and everyday troubles and find joy again.

 

©2021 Sara Nisha Adams (P)2021 HarperCollins Publishers

 

Something for everybody: Old fart fiction meets dysfunctional family

 
"Books heal everything."

Surprisingly, I enjoyed the book. Me, who does not enjoy borrowing other people's troubles. Me, who proclaims "no dys-anything." Hmm, maybe a good sign that I am not as intractable as I would like to believe. It also makes me wonder about the current binge of old fart fiction that I seem to be engaged in. Am I trying to tell myself something? "Be prepared, honey. This could be you any day now." Or, maybe I'm just tired of reading books whose main characters are half my age.

The book was not perfect; it has its flaws but nothing that brought me to a halt yelling, "Life's too short!"  It was enjoyable, thought-provoking, entertaining and, as the blurb says, heartwarming. The plot was plausible enough and it drew me along; I wanted to know where the reading list came from. The characters were interesting enough to want to get to know further and the writing was satisfying. Given that this was a debut novel by a young author, I look forward to more books with the hope that as she matures, so does her writing and her understanding of the world around her.

The book list gimmick was nicely handled and served as an interesting way to bring a diverse cast of characters together. I  liked that while the list provided structure, the story was not weighed down by endless analysis of the novels. Short descriptions of the plots were neatly woven into the fabric of the novel for those who were unfamiliar with the books on the list; analysis was the natural extension of conversation among the characters and limited to a sentence or two at a time.

The list of books:
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Rebecca by Daphne DuMaurier
The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
Life of Pi by Yann Martel
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
Beloved by Toni Morrison
Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth