Thursday, 13 September 2018

Book Review - 11: Love A Little Stronger by Preeti Shenoy


I liked the author’s book A Hundred Little Flames and decided on this book hoping that it would be good. So how does it turn out to be?

Love a Little Stronger is a set of jottings about the author’s family across generations knit together by love. The author narrates small instances from her own life and how she learnt wonderful snippets in each of them.

Written in the style of daily journal entries, the book is divided into five parts. There are no clear demarcations about the content of these parts. The first part is about parenting, the second, about personal experiences, the third about the relationship between her children, the fourth about how each member of her family support each other in the wake of adversities and the fifth summaries for life.

The stories are written in no chronological order and revolve around her father’s death. The initial stories are funny and would be appreciated better if you are a parent. The stories give a good insight into the author’s personal life and would be interesting for a reader who has read her other books and is interested in her writings. The chapters of the last part are mostly summaries, listing out different lessons and qualities. As in her earlier book, she emphasizes on the necessity of maintaining a daily journal.

I particularly liked the author’s take on children,

“The toys they play with might have changed but the qualities inherent in children – a curious nature, a playful attitude and most importantly being unafraid to try out new things, unafraid to fail and the ability to quickly forgive and not carry grudges – still remain the same.”

And her musing

“It made me wonder why we adults do not have the enthusiasm that children do, to try out new things.”

I will recommend that the introduction and the epilogue of the book should be read along with the main part of the book, because they themselves are a delight to read and will highly recommend the book to aspiring writers for its style.

Overall, the book is worth chewing and digesting.

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