B.A. in English Literature from Boston College and a graduate student at Columbia University, Asha Lemmie is a New York Times bestselling author. In my long reading journey, if someone asked me which was my favourite book, I would promptly answer “Fifty Words for Rain”.
Asha Lemmie intrigued me, made me cry, and wiped away my tears with her “Fifty Words for Rain”, with Nori, with her brother, and with Noah. I read the book again and again, particularly some parts where Nori persuades Noah to stay back, where Nori meets her brother, and later is reunited with her brother, and where Nori refuses William. It was almost two years ago when I was not afflicted with the fear and uncertainty of suffering from the deadly Ulcerative Colitis. After that, I forgot to fall in love. Again, I found a book by her today, “The Wildest Sun”. ‘Merci beaucoup, Papa’ – a girl’s search for her daddy. The book captures the journey of Delphine Hemingway and her route to becoming a writer.
” I left Paris to find you. I became a writer because of you. Every journey I have started on was to reach you.”
I know I’ll be rereading Asha Lemmie again and again. When I read her, I feel I have come to myself. I cry, laugh, chuckle, bawl, frown, murmur, chant, get tensed, and relaxed at the same time. I can flow and be buoyant or plunge deep within my emotions. I can search myself, dissect myself, find myself again and again within her characters. She carries a sadness inside her plot that perfectly suits my secluded sadness, my psychological cartography. As for her female characters, they are not dull, overly intelligent, or predictable. They are flesh and blood, impulsive and tremendously self-conscious. Sometimes they are surreal yet constructed upon a superstructure of strength and self-searching.
I wish for more and more books from her. I love the way she arranged her words and phrases to draw perfect emotions. Her words and emotions work in perfect cohesion, leaving you baffled. Which comes first: word or emotion?
