Books of 2024 - Book 10

Most of the books that Satyajeet and I read are completely different. So I was not paying attention to a new book that he was reading and also missed the context in his and Vivaan’s conversation on “Paper Tiger”. One day he mentioned that he is reading this great book and I got to know that it is fiction (which he rarely reads and I mostly read) and a book of short stories. I had just tried reading Unboxing Bengaluru but had not found it as interesting as I thought it would be. So thought I will give this a try. 

To be honest am not a fan of short stories. One of my all time favorite book is Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Namesake. Soon after I had read her short stories book Interpreter of Maladies. Which had left me wanting more of character and story development. Since then all the short stories that I have read are either very well thought that they leave you wanting more or there is very little character development to get you invested at all. But The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories by Ken Liu answers all the hopes one might have from fiction.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading these short stories which are completely different from each other and have a world of their own. Most of the stories are happening at the intersection of South Asian and Western society. Lot of the stories are science fiction or have a touch of science fiction. Reading the science fiction stories took me back to my childhood memories of reading Dr Jayant Narlikar’s science fiction books. Some of the stories that I loved the most are The Paper Menagerie, State Change, Simulacrum, The waves, Good Hunting and Mono No Aware. 

Here is a short non-spoiler of “The Paper Menagerie”. This story is about a boy and his mom. As a kid, his mom is his world. She has made these paper animals for him to play with. Most of the time these lifelike paper animals are his only playmates. They also signify the connection this American boy has with his Korean mom. As he grows older the paper animals specially the paper tiger that he was very fond of as kid break and so does their connection. The story doesn’t have a usual feel good ending but has a beautiful closure. I loved this story on so many levels. For the beautiful portrayal of parents bond with their kids in their early years, for its amazing imagination of paper animals and what they signify here.

I would definitely recommend this book for lovers of fiction and science fiction.