Skip to main content

Under the Mistletoe - Review

Book Review


Title: Under the Mistletoe & Other Stories

Author: Manali Desai

Manali Desai’s stories have a unique quality. They carry the salt tangs and sweet flavours of life effortlessly. The sweet smiles of love mingle with the sobs of loss and grief just like in life. There is longing and there is fulfilment too. Santa Claus is always there somewhere in the background with his graciousness and twinkling stars. Yes, these are Christmas stories. All twelve of them in this anthology. There are six poems too, again with the Christmas carols echoing in the background.

Writing ultra-realistic stories which charm the reader delightfully requires a touch of genius. That’s all the more true when the stories revolve round a particular theme or season like Christmas. The author of this anthology possesses that genius. She can bring a few very ordinary staff of an institution together in a Christmas celebration and weave a fantastic romantic tale with an inimitable twist at the end. A few passengers of a delayed flight can meet at an airport and not only overcome their frustrations of not being able to celebrate the New Year with family but also forge new friendly relationships that will last long.

Relationships matter much to Manali Desai. There is plenty of them in her stories . There is a lot of tenderness and Christmas is a fitting background to them. The title story, ‘Under the Mistletoe,’ is a striking example of such tenderness. The one which follows it, ‘Elfish Grinch,’ too carries such tenderness straight to the reader’s heart.

Memories too come and go with their versions of tenderness. ‘A Foggy Memory’ and ‘Alma Matters’ come to mind instantly. Both of these take the protagonists back to some fond childhood memories. But something more than remembering happens in both.

The six poems at the end of the collection too carry the Christmas flavour. I particularly loved the boy who asks Santa for a gift with a difference: “Make me old enough / Or maybe / Convince my parents, / That I’m old enough, / To go out alone with my friends, / To ask a girl out on a date…” And the PS to this poem made me burst out laughing: “Not to be confused with Ithan, who is my friend.” The supplicant’s name is Ethan.

The title ‘Under the Mistletoe’ has a romantic touch. There is romance in most of the stories. But more than that, there is the real human life in them. Life as it is lived by ordinary people each day. Manali Desai has succeeded in adding poetry to that life.

PS. The book is available at Amazon.

Comments

  1. Anupama JoshyMay 3, 2022 at 10:31 AM

    Got to read this

    ReplyDelete
  2. Pandian RamaiahMay 3, 2022 at 8:24 PM

    Seems like this would be bunch of enjoyable writing. I should read it as well.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Deepa from FictionPiesMay 11, 2022 at 6:07 PM

    Sounds interesting, will give it a read. The way I see it, the word romance in the true sense is more about finding the beauty in everyday little things, experiences and relationships! Bollywood and Hollywood kind of messed it up!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Deepa from FictionPiesMay 11, 2022 at 6:08 PM

    Interesting review, will give it a read! The way I see it, the true essence of romance is the feeling of beauty and warmth in the everyday little experiences and relationships! Hollywood and Bollywood messed it up!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Yesterday

With students of Carmel Margaret, are you grieving / Over Goldengrove unleaving…? It was one of my first days in the eleventh class of Carmel Public School in Kerala, the last school of my teaching career. One girl, whose name was not Margaret, was in the class looking extremely melancholy. I had noticed her for a few days. I didn’t know how to put the matter over to her. I had already told the students that a smiling face was a rule in the English class. Since Margaret didn’t comply, I chose to drag Hopkins in. I replaced the name of Margaret with the girl’s actual name, however, when I quoted the lines. Margaret is a little girl in the Hopkins poem. Looking at autumn’s falling leaves, Margaret is saddened by the fact of life’s inevitable degeneration. The leaves have to turn yellow and eventually fall. And decay. The poet tells her that she has no choice but accept certain inevitabilities of life. Sorrow is our legacy, Margaret , I said to Margaret’s alter ego in my class. Let
34 comments
Read more

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl
37 comments
Read more

X the variable

X is the most versatile and hence a very precious entity in mathematics. Whenever there is an unknown quantity whose value has to be discovered, the mathematician begins with: Let the unknown quantity be x . This A2Z series presented a few personalities who played certain prominent roles in my life. They are not the only ones who touched my life, however. There are so many others, especially relatives, who left indelible marks on my psyche in many ways. I chose not to bring relatives into this series. Dealing with relatives is one of the most difficult jobs for me. I have failed in that task time and again. Miserably sometimes. When I think of relatives, O V Vijayan’s parable leaps to my mind. Father and little son are on a walk. “Be careful lest you fall,” father warns the boy. “What will happen if I fall?” The boy asks. The father’s answer is: “Relatives will laugh.” One of the harsh truths I have noticed as a teacher is that it is nearly impossible to teach your relatives – nephews
16 comments
Read more

Zorba’s Wisdom

Zorba is the protagonist of Nikos Kazantzakis’s novel Zorba the Greek . I fell in love with Zorba the very first time I read the novel. That must have been in my late 20s. I read the novel again after many years. And again a few years ago. I loved listening to Zorba play his santuri . I danced with him on the Cretan beaches. I loved the devil inside Zorba. I called that devil Tomichan. Zorba tells us the story of a monk who lived on Mount Athos. Father Lavrentio. This monk believed that a devil named Hodja resided in him making him do all wrong things. Hodja wants to eat meet on Good Friday, Hodja wants to sleep with a woman, Hodja wants to kill the Abbot… The monk put the blame for all his evil thoughts and deeds on Hodja. “I’ve a kind of devil inside me, too, boss, and I call him Zorba!” Zorba says. I met my devil in Zorba. And I learnt to call it Tomichan. I was as passionate as Zorba was. I enjoyed life exuberantly. As much as I was allowed to, at least. The plain truth is
19 comments
Read more

Everything is Politics

Politics begins to contaminate everything like an epidemic when ideology dies. Death of ideology is the most glaring fault line on the rock of present Indian democracy. Before the present regime took charge of the country, political parties were driven by certain underlying ideologies though corruption was on the rise from Indira Gandhi’s time onwards. Mahatma Gandhi’s ideology was rooted in nonviolence. Nothing could shake the Mahatma’s faith in that ideal. Nehru was a staunch secularist who longed to make India a nation of rational people who will reap the abundant benefits proffered by science and technology. Even the violent left parties had the ideal of socialism to guide them. The most heartless political theory of globalisation was driven by the ideology of wealth-creation for all. When there is no ideology whatever, politics of the foulest kind begins to corrode the very soul of the nation. And that is precisely what is happening to present India. Everything is politics
8 comments
Read more