Synopsis

This collection is comprised of three short stories.

The Move : Guillaume, who gives up everything to protect his child
The Listener : Mathew, who risks his life to save his home
The Sacrifice : François, who makes the biggest donation to rescue his grandson

Review

This was an interesting set of short stories.  I’m going to give a mini review of each story.  Each story is set in France and I enjoyed the descriptions of the towns that each story takes place.  The three stories touch on life, death, conservation, and other topics that make you think.

The Move showed me a father’s devotion but the story is also a little dark.  Guillaume has a dairy farm (or what we might consider a dairy farm) and sells his milk to a co-op.  Well things aren’t going well and this leads to the downfall of his farm.  Guillaume’s son is his world and he is trying to provide him with a good life, but things spin out of his control.  There is a part near the end that involves their dog and I think it is the silver lining in this whole story.  This was probably my least favorite of the three.

The Listener is a story about one boy’s quest to save a tree he considers to be his in the forest.  It gives him shelter and calms him down when things aren’t going well.  However, the entity that manages the forest is losing money and is cutting down trees to sell the wood for furniture etc.  The Director that runs this entity is a real jerk but he gets what is coming to him in the end.  I think it is a good story that shows we need to watch out for nature and not cut down every tree or get rid of nature because it really does give back to us in the form of oxygen.  An interesting part of the story is a place called the Children’s Center where apparently parents can leave children while they go on vacation.  I don’t know if it is like an extended day care or what, but thought it was interesting.

The Sacrifice is the story of what a grandfather will do for his grandson despite all odds.  Both Francois and Arthur bring out the best in each other and are probably each other’s biggest cheerleaders.  Both had had some challenges in life regarding Arthur’s mother/Francois’ daughter and her mental health issues.  This was probably my favorite story because it seemed more real to me or maybe I could just relate better to the characters.

Enjoyable and a little bit of a lesson in each story that makes you think and how you would handle things if you were in their situation.  My only negative is that the writing seemed choppy in the first two stories.  I don’t know if the book was translated from one language to another and that is the reason for the stilted writing/flow of the stories.

Overall we give it 3 1/2 paws up.

About the Author

Indrajit Garai, an American citizen now, was born in India in 1965. After his Bachelors degree from Indian Institute of Technology and Masters from Harvard, he worked as a Corporate Strategy Consultant and as an Investment Banker in America, Spain, and England, while studying parallelly Ayurveda (ancient medicine of India) and clinical yoga, for stress management. In 2001, after the birth of his daughter, he moved to Paris and opened his private practice of stress management.

Currently, he has taken sabbatical from his practice of stress management, as a full-time writer, to work on his fiction and nonfiction.

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