Mumblings from
the Depth by Jithu Biji Thomas is as riveting collection of twenty one short
stories. The collection has indeed short stories, running hardly up to 4 pages.
A lot has been uncovered in this book about various shades of life via a gamut
of characters and their grim and tender circumstances. The author made a
desperate attempt to bring alive the voices that often lump up till throat but
always scared to go out ringing.
The collection
is prominent in voicing the concerns of people who are often lost in memory
lanes – there is something that we all long to correct and hope to get back by
hook or crook. For instances, in stories like ‘Will That Same Rain Fall Again’
– the narrator seeks to have his legs back lost in a long forgotten war but
more than that he longs for a girl that used to sell flowers beneath his window
during rain. The ending is heartbreaking; the tragedy of incidents is somehow
uncomfortable. Other prominent themes in the book are loss, love, redemption,
fear, nature, reminisces and a few more.
You may sigh
in appreciation for the author at some of the stories while reading, such as
Beck…Beck…Seven Minutes, and The prisoner Without a Jail. In these stories, it seems
like a canvass of emotions have been painted with judicious use of vocabulary
and language usage. The collection spans across various timelines, like a free
fly bird, it visits Iraq, Syria, Japan, and Germany and there are stories
related to Nazis trampling innocent Jews, a family fleeing the war-torn
homeland in search of life in the darkness of an ocean, a Japanese person
surviving the Titanic sink.
Jithu Thomas may
revoke the memories of great writers like O. Henry and Oscar Wilde among the
voracious and old readers. Nearly all stories are good at capturing the sense
of moment and stirring a feeling of awe. His style to put a short prose before
every story is terrific and helps a lot in understanding the overall tone and
feel of the stories. It’s a heartfelt collection that can be read over and
again. The USP is that it’s too short to finish in one sitting without
bothering about breaks.
Thomas’ style
is elegant with carefully crafted sentences and precision in vocabulary. All
the stories are bliss to read if one is a lover of short story genre. The
themes are sometimes morbid and full of evident pain, but the authorial voice
always comes with empathy and compassion. To write about the awkward and the
bizarre and the sad without slipping into easy criticism or mockery is what
makes ‘Mumblings from the Depth’ a unique short story collection in its genre.
There are no redundant cheap shots disguised as twists and turns in the end.
These stories observe the trials of life with a great deal of softness and it
speaks to the humanity in all of us.
Best Buy from Amazon
Best Buy from Amazon
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