Alisha Kirpalani’s book, Out With Lanterns, is a book that would thrill avid readers and writers. Peppered with literary references, protagonists who are writers and mentions of various wonderful books and poems, this book is a treat for every bibliophile.
The story is about the difficult choices that you have to make in the journey of life. The author makes us wonder what exactly it means to be ‘happily married’. Does it mean that a person finally feels ‘at home’ in a relationship? Or does it mean that the person has found love, and has no reason for any more love in her life? Tough are the
decisions that face Karen Mehra, a mother of two and a wannabe writer, when she meets Aksh Soni, a successful writer who is already in a relationship with his girlfriend, Sia.
The most beautiful love is one where there is a meeting of minds rather than just hearts. The relationship between Karin and Aksh is one such relationship. While they do want to give it all up and lose themselves within each other in a love that grows deeper with every passing day, they need to decide whether they are ready to shatter the lives of the others surrounding them.
As the blurb says, in this story, there are no heroes and no villains. The shades of life and love are not black and white. Are these boundaries too heavy a price we pay for being but human? My initial years in Mumbai were spent among women like Karen and her ‘Gals Gang’. So, when I picked up the book, the first thing that struck me is how realistically the author has been able to depict the life, the language and the attitude of the South Mumbai crowd. In case, you are wondering whether the author has exaggerated in her portrayal of these folks, I would like to clarify that she has been as truthful as possible.
The book follows an epistolary style of storytelling, i.e. the characters in the book move the story forward through written documents. In this case, it is emails that they exchanged with each other. Apart from Bram Stoker’s Dracula, and Alice Walker’s The Colour Purple, this was the first time that I had read a contemporary book that uses the epistolary style to such a large extent.
The author has taken the effort to keep the tone of the letters as conversational as possible. In fact, since I am a person who loves writing letters (in pen and ink), I found the writing style of the letters pleasant and realistic. However, after reading the book, I realised that epistolary style tends to imbalance the ‘show, not tell’ ratio of storytelling, with the balance tilting towards ‘tell’ more than ‘show’. The author has compensated that with other gripping scenes that are not in epistolary fashion.
To put it in a nutshell, Out With Lanterns is an interesting read that will make you think about human relationships, love and life.
