Book Review: Falling Leaves by Adeline Yen Mah

Falling leaves always come up to the roots. It is a story of a growing Chinese girl through much emotional hardship. Adeline Yen Mah is the youngest child in a well off Chinese family. Subsequent to her birth in 1937, her mother passes away. For this reason, she is taken as an object of a little importance and her siblings treat her with a difference. Though she is from a wealthy family, but barely entitled to any of the privileges like other children.

Her real nightmare begins when his father remarries Niang, a woman of half-Chinese and half-French descent. It is truth that she abhors all children from the previous woman but holds an incorrigible grudge against Adeline. Adeline’s only lifeline is her spinster Aunt Baba, who too often tussles between various crises, thus finds it tough to openly express her grievances against Niang because she has already taken the husband under her command. Due to the rise of communism in China, her family is forced to move to Hong Kong, where her father not only saves and resurrects his business but also takes it to new heights.

It is her academic brilliance that keeps her alive and later she gets an opportunity to study medicals in England and thereafter she moves to America with a husband of her choice. Her life, in a basic sense, settles down. But strangely, she has an irrepressible urge to win the faith of her family. So, she keeps coming to her family on various occasions, be it sad or happy. But nothing fruitful comes out for her. After her father’s death, she finds her name on the will and realizes that her father loved and cared for her though he could not show it fairly and openly. All her life, she struggles to get the acceptance and love of her family but finally she finds its reflections in the will.

It is a memoir of an unwanted Chinese daughter who recalls all the bad episodes she went through in her life. The tone of the book is flat as the narrator has disparaged almost all characters except herself.

Comments

Poem Summary: Where The Mind Is Without Fear by Rabindranath Tagore

Poem by Rabindranath Tagore: Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high Where knowledge is free Where the world has not been broken up into fragments By narrow domestic walls Where words come out from the depth of truth Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way Into the dreary desert sand of dead habit Where the mind is led forward by thee Into ever-widening thought and action Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake. Short Summary: This poem is written by Rabindranath Tagore during pre-independence days, when India was a colony of the British. The underlying theme of the poem is absolute freedom; the poet wants the citizens of his country to be living in a free state. According to the poem, we see that the poet is expressing his views there should be a country, like where people live without any sort of fear and with pure dignity…they should

Book Review: The Blue Umbrella by Ruskin Bond

Among all Ruskin Bond books, The Blue Umbrella has, so far, gathered immense applaud from readers and critics alike. This is a short novel, but the kind of moral lessons it teaches to us are simply overwhelming. This is a story of Binya, a poor little girl living with her mother and an elder brother, Bijju, in a small hilly village of Garhwal. One day while herding her two cows back home, she stumbles upon some city people enjoying the picnic in the valley. She is enthralled to see them well-groomed and rich. She craves to be one like them and among many other things of their, a blue frilly umbrella catches her attention. She begins craving for it. On the other hand, the city people get attracted by her innocent beauty and the pendant in her neck. The pendant consists of leopard’s claw – which is considered a mascot widely in the hills. Binya trades her pendant off with the blue umbrella. The blue umbrella is so much beautiful that soon it becomes a topic of conversation fo

Poem Summary: Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley

Ozymandias is a short poem of fourteen lines written by Percy Bysshe Shelley. The concurrent theme of the poem is that nothing remains intact and same forever in this world. Even the brightest of metal, one day decays with passage of time. The throne name of Egyptian King Ramesses is Ozymandias. It was his dearest desire to preserve himself forever by building a huge statue that he thought would never tumble down. Stanza 1: I met a traveller from an antique land Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand, Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown, And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command, Tell that its sculptor well those passions read Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed; Summary: The poet narrates the poem through the eyes of a traveler who seems to have come back from a remote and far-away land, referring to Egypt. The traveler r

Kevein Books and Reviews

Search This Blog