Life’s Peculiarities by Sarah Khan

Goodreads synopsis

Jump into the worlds of Beenish and Hisham, Qaisar and Rakshi, Sabiha and Ghazi and Haris as they make their way through the jagged rocks and thorns that mar their path to a life they consider satisfactory and worth living in the short story collection, Life’s Peculiarities.

Find out…

What dire complications can there be in marital life when one of the spouses is a victim of a malicious mental disease in the story Out of the Ordinary.

How the horrors of abuse to which a child is subjected can replicate and intensify as she grows into an adult in the story of Sabiha in Behind Closed Doors.

When life is not rainbows and unicorns, but rather a circus to an educated adult that Qaisar is as he teeters upon the brink of losing everything that he has in the story At His Mercy.

Where should an inexperienced adolescent Haris in the story The Vigilante proceed to establish a stark identity for himself when already loaded with that of his father?
Find out all this and much more in the short stories based on intricate desi plots presenting desi characters with relatable contradictions within them.

Rating: 3.5/5

Review:

Short stories always chirp me up as I know how everything pans out sooner than almost all other formats of prose. Sarah’s stories, even when they are small, have a lesson to them.

The emotions glare at you and you can’t help but feel them yourself. Many a moments made me smile, a few made me glare at my phone’s screen (read it on my Kindle app), and some made me sad.

She, I believe needs a little more polish in her art and I look for more from her.

The ones I liked best in the collection are:

At His Mercy
This is a story that talks about how siblings can be the rocks for each other in the vastness of this world and how their presence and their well-being could be an anchor to the other.

Out of the Ordinary
It starts after the happily ever after where in start the real hurdles of life and it warmed my heart that both, husband and wife, are so invested in each other that they put the other before themselves. Can’t help it, I am a romantic.

Behind Closed Doors
This story talks about the horrors children go through (especially female children). No spoilers here but it talks about the effects of sexual abuse and how a person’s life completely changes because of it. My heart went out to her.