Pratik

Nothing ever happens in a Jane Harper book, at least in the present, but she has an uncanny ability to slowly peel away the social dynamics and tenuous relationships of an otherwise small and friendly community. The 'Last One Out' documents the dying embers of a small town besieged by a mine that's slowly crowding out its residents and the environment, while also threatening to bury secrets from its sordid past. Harper reveals how nostalgia for a long-gone place can have real-world effects and steal whatever good remained in its people.

My second Yann Martel book after the seminal Life of Pi, which I adored. It's about loss and grief, and how people across time, tied by a common thread, deal with them in their lifetimes. As is with Martel, the high mountains, which in fact are not even mountains, are an allegory to that thread that binds their grief. Chapters 2 and 3 spoke more to me, and I'm glad I persisted after the relatively lackluster Chapter 1.

This was a disappointing read. I was a big fan of his "The Psychology of Money" which had some genuine insights on how you think about money. This book felt like an addendum to that book or rather a book that should've been a blog post. The advice is sound and sensible but there was much repitition with plenty of quotes by famous men sprinkled in.

Disappointing compared to All the Sinners Bleed. Although the premise held much promise and the characters dropped a lot of truth bombs, this was more of a macho action thriller than a deeper understanding of fathers and their evolution of hate toward their sons' sexual orientation. The women characters were mostly side characters in this testosterone-filled muscle bash. It was a predictable, melodramatic (filmi) ending that left much to be desired.

Haunting, sad, and full of yearning. We live in a world that's beset with woes of climate change and we're not prepared for how it will affect living beings who didn't cause it and suffer the consequences for just existing. In between this worldly issues is a dad who tried getting away from it all by bringing his family to a desolate part of the world in hopes that it would shield them from grief. But grief finds everyone.