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House of Blue Mangoes, The

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Forgiveness is for the birds. Forgive and forget is for the birds. You always need to seek revenge, it keeps you alive." I suspect I might have felt as if I were skimming this book, even if I hadn't been skimming it in fact. The pace seemed rushed at times, and overall the story felt superficial. Maybe because it was. I'm not sure this was actually a story, to tell the truth. Certainly the characters were not characters. I think this was simply an excuse to depict colonial India from the late nineteenth century leading up to independence, and to have the characters serve as mouthpieces for various Indian and British viewpoints on the colonial experience. Despite the flaws in character development, Davidar's prose, for the most part, flows at a rapid, fluid clip. At times, however, his usually lyrical writing plods along at a most cumbersome pace --- a tiresomely detailed description of how to brew tea immediately comes to mind. But the author eloquently conveys the raw beauty and power of the Indian landscape, and the cycle of the seasons and day turning into night provide a sense of the wheel turning and the steady progression of time. I read this because I read comparisons to Vikram Seth's A Suitable Boy, which I loved, but Davidar's book is not in the same league. The House of Blue Mangoes starts out strong and contains some beautiful passages, but overall it is a mess, disjointed, poorly edited, and a little bit pointless. The characters are very one-dimensional and never make any sense. Points of view occasionally change mid-paragraph; new plots come out of nowhere even at the very end.

Kannan felt a sudden desire to know what his life would be devoted to, what his life's work would be. Would he make his mark on the world that he had been plunged into?"

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This multigenerational family epic follows the tradition of Vikram Seth's A SUITBALE BOY and Gabriel Gárcia Márquez's ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE. The novel, however, possesses neither the lucidity of Seth nor the sheer poetry of Márquez. Daniel was interested in education and was despised by his father and brother for not being a warmonger. He and his mother lived with his maternal grandfather after Solomon's death and Daniel came into his own there. He studies medicine and his fame soon spreads far and wide. Then suddenly he decides to return to Chevathar because male name lineage blah blah. The story drifts away at this point as Daniel sets out to bring his entire extended family together. I really failed to see the motivation behind all this effort. Blue mangoes, blue mangoes!", urged Gangoose McGee. "Won't you please try one? They're fresh and they're free!". Many nouns that end with a consonant + “o” will form the plural with a simple “s”: pianos, memos, concertos. At the same time, as it can tend to, English spelling creates its own exceptions by adding an “e” to the plural of some words ending in “o”: heroes, vetoes, tomatoes. This thwarts a go-to guideline.

In a world irrevocably shaken by historical events, most of his characters remain curiously unscathed. Too entangled in their own familial disputes to notice the world around them changing, the characters come across as superfluous, ignorant and entirely self-centered. For example, while Gandhi is busy becoming a household name, Daniel embarks on a ridiculous expedition to taste every mango in India for the sole purpose of confirming his opinion that Chevathar's fabled blue variety are indeed, as he suspects, the best in the land. Only Aaron, Daniel's brother, is swept up in the tide of history. He joins the struggle for freedom with catastrophic results. Lottery Corruption, U.S.A. is very unique as compared to any other book written about the lotteries. There’s more than enough data and information to convince the reader, that our state lotteries are definitely being manipulated and controlled, illegally. This book is informative, enlightening, educational, and entertaining, so enjoy reading it. Visit: https://www.authorhouse.com/en/bookstore/bookdetails/846315-lottery-corruption-usa What I really liked about the writing was that there was little exposition and explanation. For example, Davidar does not explicitly the reader things like the fact that a wedding thaali comes from Hindu practices but is used by Tamil Christians as well. He also does not point out to the way people are named from both the Bible and Hindu scripture: Apart from Solomon, Daniel and Aaron, there is Ramadoss (meaning one who serves Ram) or Kannan (the diminutive associated with Krishna). Davidar doesn't try to explain how India functions and that is the best thing about the book. If the reader is as clueless as the beleaguered British - portrayed with both sympathy and simmering anger in the book - the author doesn't seem to mind. Does Not Like Spam: Zigzagged. It seems that Truman doesn't like ice cream, but then it's revealed that he's never tried it because he's convinced he'd hate it. Eventually, he tries some and is just neutral on it.Agony of the Feet: Discussed when Truman says that forming an impression on something without trying it is okay, since he's never dropped a hammer on his foot but is sure he'd dislike it. Pun: After reading the fake book, Alice says that "something smells fishy, and it's not the blue mangoes".

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