The Blue Room

Book Name : The Blue Room
Author : Georges Simenon


What is it about : Set in rural France, on a chanced encounter, Tony met up with his school mate of distant past, Andree when her car broke down and a torrid affair followed when they would make a secret rendezvous in the "blue room" of Tony's brother's hotel. Mayhem followed when Andree's husband showed up one day in the hotel cafe which sent Tony racing through the door half-naked. Most of the story then focused on Tony's arrest and his subsequent interrogations by the local courts; the plot slowly emerged in shape as more details of their dalliance surfaced and Tony found himself an unwitting victim of his own indiscretions.

Some thoughts after having read the book : You could think of the story as "Fatal Attraction" in a small French town with a serious dose of court drama thrown in. The amorous man involved (think Michael Douglas) was made a sorrowful figure, regretting his indiscretion and off-the-cuffs remarks that led Glenn Close to commit her wild fantasy. The narrative method was non-linear with no clear demarcation between present, past, thoughts and dialogue. Through these interrogations, the story slowly unfolded as the pieces fell into place and the description of small rural town sentiments, hunger of the flesh, warped emotions, psychological upheaval, guilt and pleasure, was superb; all helped the strands of the story wove tightly as the plot thickened.

Would I recommend this book to you : Immensely satisfying and for me the first real page-turner as I normally would take my time going over, re-reading and contemplate paragraphs and would take ages to finish just one page; but I could not put this book down and finished it in three sittings ! One word of advice to potential readers, it would help a great deal if readers were not made aware of the ending, even as you might have guessed the inevitable. Highly recommended.

Secret Rendezvous

Book Name : Secret Rendezvous
Author : Kobo Abe


What is it about : The story started with an ambulance arriving at mid-night and took away a man' wife, leaving only faint clues regarding her illness and where-about. The man set off on a journey of "search and rescue" mission and found himself entangled in a world of bizarre sexual experiments in a hospital full of weird happenings.

Some thoughts after having read the book : One of the most un-comprehensible stories I had ever come across. At times fantastical, at times mind-boggling but never straight-forward. The story was peopled by a strange cast : the man-in-charge of the hospital was a half man-horse hybrid; an adolescent girl with a "bone-melting" illness and finally ended up a pulp of flabby human skin at her last gasp of life, a doctor in permanent arousal even in a state of comatose and the mysterious wife-in-question was never fully located. Ha hum.

Would I recommend this book to you : The Readers should not expect to make sense of the story or attempt to find logical coherence; instead if you could not find a better book, then perhaps read this fantasy for its exasperating difference.