Title: Roar: Thirty Women. Thirty Stories.
Author: Cecelia Ahern
Publisher: HarperCollinsPublishers
Pages: 337
Price: 399
Cecelia Ahern is the queen of bizarre, who likes to spin unusual tales. She has come up with another mesmerising collection of stories that happen in the world of literal imagination. A collection of short stories is generally considered to be a fast read. This one is not. It is easy to finish one story in few minutes as it’s hardly ten to fifteen pages each, but to understand the character, be content with it and move on to fathom another character’s depth is not easy. You need to take some time to let the overwhelming depiction of the stories settle down.
The protagonists in every story are women and none of them have got a name. It indicates that you can substitute yourself with every protagonist. The stories make a beautiful use of exaggeration. They are about everyday lives of all of us. We all go through guilt, nostalgia, doubt, humiliation, etc. Cecelia Ahern gives ways to overcome these vices, rather powerful emotions that keep eating us up. Spending time with oneself is her best cure for all situations. The stories feel predictable in the beginning but the tailspin makes you read on and read more.
Cecelia Ahern is an observer and she brings out her observations on paper very delicately, but boldly. Her writing is intense, deep, sensible, intelligent, funny, rather hilarious, hands-fling-to-mouth amazing. The woman who ate photographs, The woman who was kept on a shelf, The woman who sowed seeds of doubts — are women who resemble each one of us. It’s easy to project yourself as those women and find yourself smiling when they are swallowed by the earth or when they sprinkle photographs on their cup of coffee.
Each story is about a woman but it is not a feminist outlook per se. Cecelia Ahern allows her women to acquire an attitude and make themselves aware of a lighter, easier way to deal with the baggage they carry all their lives.
Writing style of Cecelia Ahern is the same like in all her other books where she takes time to develop her characters, delve deep into the psyche of them, observe what’s happening inside their minds and hearts, and then move ahead with their instincts. Her sentences vary in length. They involve mobile imagery in and around the protagonist. For an instance, a story ends with these words: “As quickly as a cloud passes overhead and the sky brightens, the anxiety lessens in her, and they both breathe a long and slow sigh of relief. Finally.”
Every story is a metaphor for life. The book is filled of crazy surprises. The stories lead to several happy realisations. They roar, literally. If you want to fly high in your imagination, I mean literally high, this book is for you.