THE PERCEPTIONIST

Name: THE PERCEPTIONIST
Author: Manish Vohra
ISBN: 978-93-815889-5-6

by Manish Vohra ‧ RELEASE DATE: N/A

A breezy book with a positive message for those who tend to think of themselves as helplessly ordinary.

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Awards & Accolades

Our Verdict

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Vohra’s (Explore Your Potential, 2011) novel follows one young man’s journey from average to extraordinary.

Sudesh Kapoor is awaiting the results of his XII grade exam—results he’s not too excited about receiving: “It was not that he had fared badly in any subject but he knew he was average and his score would also be average.” Finding that his results are a measly 69 percent, Sudesh expects a major argument with his parents. He’s surprised when they instead offer to send him to a monastery for a year, an experience both his father and grandfather had gone through. “I felt completely smashed, my own grandpa and dad were monks for one year and I didn’t know,” he says. Though the monastery offers “no cable TV, no friends and worst of all no girls to speak to,” Sudesh agrees to go, opening himself to a novel experience. Charged with repeating a mantra a million times over the course of his stay, Sudesh sets about his task even though he’s unsure about the potential benefits. Will his time in the monastery be for naught when he returns to the real world? How will he succeed in his professional life, particularly when prospective employers eye his less-than-spectacular exam scores? The answers come quickly in this short read. Pursuing a career in the stock market and eventually an MBA, Sudesh finds himself uniquely prepared to deal with the ups and downs of such endeavors. Sudesh tells readers that keeping an open mind is key, as when handling the turbulent stock market: “I knew if I kept an open mind and didn’t get carried away I would recognize the reversal of the trend.” Though the details of Sudesh’s work life aren’t terribly gripping, the narrative moves at a rapid clip, providing an experience as unique as Sudesh’s time with monks.

A breezy book with a positive message for those who tend to think of themselves as helplessly ordinary.

Pub Date: N/A

ISBN: 978-93-815889-5-6

Page Count: 104

Publisher: V&S Publishers

Review Posted Online: March 18, 2015

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2015

Review Program: Kirkus Indie

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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THE QUILTMAKER'S GIFT

by Jeff Brumbeau ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 1, 1999

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A sentimental tale overwhelmed by busy illustrations and rampant pedantry. A gifted quiltmaker who makes outstanding quilts never sells her wares, but gives them away to the poor. A greedy king so loves presents that he has two birthdays a year, and commands everyone in the kingdom to give him gifts. Everyone brings presents till the castle overflows; the king, still unhappy, locates the quiltmaker and directs her to make him a quilt. When she refuses he tries to feed her to a hungry bear, then to leave her on a tiny island, but each time the quiltmaker’s kindness results in her rescue. At last, the king agrees to a bargain; he will give away his many things, and the quiltmaker will sew him a quilt. He is soon poor, but happier than he’s ever been, and she fulfills her end of the bargain; they remain partners forever after, with her sewing the quilts and him giving them away. The illustrations are elaborate, filled with clues to quilt names. A note points to the 250 different quilt names hidden in the picture on the inside of the book jacket. (Picture book. 6-10)

Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1999

ISBN: 1-57025-199-1

Page Count: 32

Publisher: N/A

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1999

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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THE LAST DAYS OF PTOLEMY GREY

by Walter Mosley ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 11, 2010

Borrowing from Faust, the Iliad and Gran Torino, Mosley (Known to Evil, 2010, etc.) unforgettably transforms Ptolemy’s...

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An ancient man living in solitary squalor in Los Angeles is offered an experimental medicine that just might beat back his creeping dementia—and will almost certainly kill him in the process.

At 91, Ptolemy Grey has outlived everyone he ever cared for. His uncle and mentor, Coydog McCann, was lynched back in Mississippi when Li’l Pea was only a child; his much younger wife, Sensia Howard, had a fatal stroke 22 years ago; and as his story opens, he’s summoned to the side of his much-loved son Reggie, his last link with the outside world, killed in a drive-by shooting. Unable to get services from the landlord who’s frustrated that he can’t raise the rent and afraid to go out alone lest he run into Melinda Hogarth, the crazy addict who keeps mugging him, Ptolemy lives amid an unending flood of uncontrolled memories and associations that render his mind as unusable as his clogged toilet. But his life turns around when he meets Robyn Small at Reggie’s wake. An orphan taken in by Ptolemy’s niece Niecie, Robyn has already, at 17, lived through as tempestuous a life as Ptolemy. But she’s emerged from its vicissitudes clear-eyed, tough-minded and eager to help the old man who claims her as a daughter. She cleans and fumigates his reeking apartment, sets up a bank account for the cash he’s socked away and takes him to see Dr. Bryant Ruben, the satanic physician who offers Ptolemy a medical therapy unapproved by the FDA that may improve his memory and his cognition, but at a high price. Robyn is shocked and repelled, but Ptolemy, who’s named after Cleopatra’s father, is eager to get something like his old life back.

Borrowing from Faust, the Iliad and Gran Torino, Mosley (Known to Evil, 2010, etc.) unforgettably transforms Ptolemy’s cacophony of memories into a powerful symphony that makes him “into many men from out of all the lives he had lived through the decades.”