Book review: Ladies Coupe

Title: Ladies Coupe
Author: Anita Nair
Genre: Fictional life
Year published: 2003
Pages: 320
A place to buy it: If you are in Sweden you can buy the book from Adlibris and if that's not the case you can buy it of Amazon.
Previous book review: Wilful Disregard - A Novel About Love

Six women - six lives

The book starts of with the main charachter, Akhila, buying a train ticket. She ends up in a ladies coupe with five other women. During the trip they tell each other about their lives, from childhood to how they got on the train. You get to follow all these different womens' lives, each life is a new chapter. Between the other five womens' chapters you also get chapters with Akhila's life.

Since Akhila is the main character she has more chapters, probably so that you can get to know her better, but it took me to about half of the book until I could feel that Akhila was the main character at all. I got the feeling her life could've been just as short as the other womens'. To me, Akhila didn't feel very special or more "right" as a main character since all the women are so unique.

Unique but still the same

Anita Nair have in this book created six completely unique, different women. You don't get tired of the book or the chapters since every life is so different from the other. But they all have one thing in common: all of them somehow disagree with the tradition that all women need a man. Even if some of them are married, happily or unhappily, or not, they all stand by the fact that a woman don't need a man.

In their lives you can see how all of them, at one point or another, in their own, special way, come to realize this. That is also, at least to me, the red thread of this book.

Final thoughts

It's a lovely book. I find it very interesting and exciting that Anita Nair never made me feel tired of reading about another life. Every life is a short novel in itself almost. The only thing I do think is unnecessary is Akhila. As I said before, all lives are unique so I don't understand why Akhila is the main character. Her life just feels drawn out to make the book longer almost. In the last chapter, I just feel like what had been done over several chapters might just as well have been said in a couple.

It almost feels confusing and a bit wrong to even have a main character in this kind of book. The red thread - a woman don't need a man to be complete - is enough for me.

Still, I really recommend this book. You get a good reading experiense out of it even if Akhila at times can feel a bit long winded. 4/5 stars!