Wednesday, April 24, 2019

BookMarks #53: A Gathering of Friends

Title: A Gathering of Friends – My Favourite Stories 
Author: Ruskin Bond 
Genre: Fiction, Anthology 
Setting: India specifically in and around Uttarakhand 
Published: 2015 

BookMarks 
It’s a collection of Ruskin Bond’s best 21 short stories. And why do I say best? Because the selection has been made by Mr. Bond himself! And what a variety he presents. We see many autobiographical tales from his days as a young boy to a grown up writer trying to fend for himself and some stories from around his home. Some stories present a picture of an Anglo-Indian community left behind in India trying to assimilate itself into the newly independent country. And there are others which narrate the passages of life. 

My favourite part of the collection is that the stories do not necessarily have a beginning or an end. Many are just passages from journeys. Which is just an allegory of our lives as well. Nothing really happens in the story itself but the writing is compelling! And every paasage has enough potential to develop into full feature films (and a few of the stories have been put onto celluloid). 

A really good collection of tales. 

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