Books

Happy Birthday Charles Dickens

2012-02-07T06:57:00.000-08:00

There is no dearth of material about the life and times of Charles Dickens, one of the most popular novelists of all times, one of my top favorites for a long long time. He was a master storyteller and so dearly beloved that when my MA Lit. lecturer announced in a class that he had many flaws as a novelist, the whole class let out several exclamation of dissent. Dickens wrote many iconic novels and has enjoyed a readership that even J.K. Rowling can envy.

To honor this unparallelled master Google depicted this picture on its site:

I have commenced reading The Pickwick Papers today after many years. Here is a paragraph out of this highly amusing book.

“On his right hand, sat Mr. Tracy Tupman; the too susceptible Tupman, who to the wisdom and experience of maturer years superadded the enthusiasm and ardor of a boy, in the most interesting and pardonable of human weaknesses – love. Time and feeding had expanded that once romantic form; the black silk waistcoat had become more and more developed; inch by inch had the gold watch chain beneath it disappeared from within the range of Tupman's vision; and gradually had the capacious chin encroached upon the borders of the white cravat, but the soul of Tupman had known no change – admiration of the fair sex was still its ruling passion.”

In a few skillful lines, he sketches the form and character of Mr. Tracy Tupman. This was his most endearing quality. It made his novels feel like a visual feast, it made imagining the characters easy, it made them vivid and it made them live in our memory forever. Happy Birthday Charles Dickens, I am sure your novels will live forever.

Sunset Club - Khushwant Singh

2012-01-26T06:19:00.000-08:00

About a week ago, I was loitering in Sector 17, whiling my time away, window shopping, waiting for a friend to arrive. I usually stop by at the bookseller that spreads his 'wares' on the pavement just outside the Mochi showroom. One time I was lucky to get a one volume, second hand prime condition set of Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien for just Rs.125/-. This time round my eye fell on Sunset Club, a book by Khushwant Singh. I leafed through the book and liked what I saw, so I picked it up.

Khushwant Singh wrote this book about the events that took place in the year 2009, seen through the eyes of three old friends who make it a point to meet every evening in Lodhi Garden. There is Pandit Preetam Sharma, an Oxford Graduate, retired from Civil Services, a bachelor who lives in Khan Market with his sister. There is Nawab Barkatullah Baig Dehlavi an affluent businessman who lives in Nizamuddin with his devoted wife. Last but not the least there is Sardar Boota Singh, a widower and a retired newspaperman (ahem!) who lives close to Sharma. These three men like taking a walk in Lodhi Garden every evening and have taken to congregating on a bench right opposite the Bara Gumbad. In their honor the bench has been renamed as 'Boodha Binch'.

There is one chapter for each month which recounts the political happenings, weather, and whatever going on in the lives of the three men. The men talk, argue and reminiscence about their lives. They talk about politics, love, women, nature and of course, their ailments. The book starts on 26th January 2009 and ends, a bit sadly, on 26th January 2010. (For this reason, it is fortuitous that I am writing this on 26th January as well.) There is not really much happening here, but the events are an interesting mishmash of the political scene and weather during the year 2009. Khushwant Singh throws in a bit of religion, some lovely poetry and nice descriptions of trees and flowers. In fact, the book is quite like his column.

I enjoyed his book Delhi very much which I reviewed on mouthshut.com. I have pasted the writing onto my blog here. This book is not a patch on Delhi, but yet, if you compare it with the kind of stuff being printed these days, it is miles ahead. KS's language is pretty non-decorative, but has the advantage of being direct and functional. The poetry he has picked to describe seasons is lovely.

The autumn comes, a maiden fair

In slenderness and grace,

With nodding rice stems in her hair,

And lilies in her face...

-Kalidas

More Reviews More Books

2012-01-07T09:04:00.000-08:00

I have been lax in reading, lax-er in reviewing books. I had picked up Dan Brown's Deception Point on my last foray into Browser, Sector 8. Chandigarh, a private library I am a member of. Along with it, I took 'Yes Prime Minister' of the famous TV series and Sikhs a book by Khushwant Singh. I had enjoyed his book Delhi very much. It was nice mish-mash of history with fiction thrown in about the unparalleled and grand city (previously, now it is a state) of Delhi.

The latter two books are still being read by me. I raced through Deception Point. It had a good start. It is election time in US of A. The contending candidate for presidency, Senator Sedgewick Sexton is a jerk, we realise as we get to know how his daughter views him. Rachel Sexton is an intelligence analyst for NRO, who soon finds herself embroiled in a series of events that find her nearly freezing to death in the Arctic, and back to Washington DC, to find out who did it.

Nothing wrong with the pace of the thriller. Its Dan Brown, he knows how to pump the adrenaline into inert bodies lying on the couch and flipping pages of his book. Its just the premise, finding alien rock with evidence of life stamped all over it is surely a biggie. But then, the claim fizzles out faster than fizz fizzles out of a coke bottle left open. The mystery is, who is behind the killings and why. The suspense ends in a supposed twist, but the twist is not too well qualified with good reasons. That was the deception point for me. I must say Dan Brown does better with his ecclesiastical mysteries and his symbologist Dr. Robert Langdon, even if he seems to skedaddle around the world a little to much.

My old old friend, (she is not old, its just that we go way back) Smita of Bookslifeandmore has picked up several formidable challenges for the year 2012. I wish her all the best, and choose for myself, admittedly the wimpiest of the challenges that seems do-able to me. Here goes - Amen.

The Immortals of Meluha and The Secret of the Nagas

2011-11-12T08:16:00.001-08:00

Amish has come out with a trilogy (the third one, The Oath of the Vayuputras is still pending publication) that retells the story of Shiva.

All Gods were men once, we assume. They did extraordinary things which caused them to be worshiped like Gods. In India these myths are still alive. These stories are integrated into religious tracts and listened to with devotion and complete faith. In such a scenario, it is difficult to fictionalize mythology further. The initial mythology is so oft repeated and believed that it is taken as a fact. If you mess with that, it can be viewed as blasphemy. A while ago I had read The Pregnant King by Devdutt Pattnaik which was peripheral mythological story expanded into a beautiful novel. Would the retelling of Shiva's story succeed? Can Shiva be depicted as an extraordinary man who was later idolized as a God?

The Immortals of Meluha:

The story begins with Shiva fending off yet another attack on his tribe high on the mountains of Kailasa. He is visited by Nandi with an offer to join his brethren in Meluha where they can live a civilized life. He is reminded of his uncle who had prophesied that his destiny lay far beyond the mountains of Kailasa. He decides to accompany Nandi. On his arrival at one of the border towns of Meluha in Kashmir, his tribe is quarantined and given medicine to cleanse them. The medicine has a strange effect on Shiva, it gives him a blue throat, a Neelkanth. He is thence catapulated into centre-stage of Meluhan aristocracy where things are expected of him, where he finds love, but also many barriers. He has to fight wars for a cause that is rapidly becoming his own.

The Secret of the Nagas:

Shiva finds himself undertaking a journey across India to uncover truths. Nothing seems to be as he had first perceived it. The Chandravanshi's are not the murderous terrorists they had been portrayed as. The Brangas have a genuine reason for being hand in glove with the Nagas, now seen as the enemy No.1 of India. But are they? They have a secret too. Shiva finds he cannot rest until he knows the absolute truth. His quest is for the evil that he is supposed to destroy. But where is this evil? Who are the Vasudevs? Are they misleading him?

The pace of the books is breathtaking, they are quite a page-turners. The conceptualization of the story is simply fabulous. As Shiva is himself learning about the Meluhan and later, many other Indian civilization, we get to learn many 'facts'. The world of the time, 4000 years BC is well mapped. The fictional world is drawn with accuracy and confidence. The author is extremely surefooted about his subject.

The only point where the book falters is the conversation. It can get a wee bit irritating to read 'You are extremely intelligent My Lord' for the umpteenth time. At times the intelligence of the reader is insulted when the proceedings are explained painstakingly. A little more skill in writing could have come in very very handy. Especially as the subject is so overpoweringly strong. Despite this, the books are a must read.
They are as heady as Shiva's chillum.

Three Loves - AJ Cronin

2011-09-14T20:46:00.000-07:00

The Citadel and The Judas Tree are the magnificent novels that introduced me to AJ Cronin. A J Cronin was a doctor till an illness required him to be idle for six months at a farm, taking complete rest. During this time, he wrote a novel which as an immediate success. This set him on to writing as a career, abandoning his medical practice.

Three Loves, his novel about Lucy Moore, charts the life of the lady from her happy married life to her sad end. At the begining of the novel, Lucy Moore is a young married woman, devoted to her husband, home and child. She is imperious, and often tries to influence her husband Frank, unduly. However Frank is happy to be tethered to Lucy until his cousin arrives on the scene and suggests that Lucy is bossy. Anna has been invited by Lucy to spend a few days with them. But she turns out to be a colourful woman, Lucy on learning this, begins to beset by doubts of relations between Anna and Frank. It upsets her happy existence and culminates in her husband's death. From here on, her life goes into a downward spiral and her only hope and happiness lies in the hands of her son, Peter. After Peter she latches on to her love of God for succour.

The novel charts all that is pitiful in the life of a woman who is dependent on others for happiness. All is good for the woman who is safe within her chosen sphere, as long as she chooses to be subordinate to the man, even if she rules from beneath. Eva is happy as long as her husband Richard - Lucy's brother - is around to provide for her. Polly has accepted her brother's charity and is happily overfed. It is when Lucy is forced by circumstances to be independent, that she faces hardships. Her brother and brothers-in-law abandon her to her own devices, being too selfish to help her. She is forced to take up a menial job and pinch pennies mercilessly in order to put her son through a good school and a college. At the end of her labour, she finds no solace.

Though the men in her life often try to put her down and make her feel that it was her own poor judgement that caused her downfall, it is evident to the reader that all these people who never lifted a finger to help poor Lucy had no right to judge her. The world is quite like this, there are very few people out there who will help you, there are many who are ready to stand by and judge.

There are many shades of his own life in the novel. His father, a travelling salesman, had died early from tuberculosis. His mother also worked, like Lucy Moore, unlike the other women of her times. Lucy Moore put her son through medical college, Cronin also was a doctor. How autobiographical this novel is, however, it is hard to tell. But it is clear that AJ Cronin had an intimate knowledge of the mind of men and was privy to how it is that our failings and strengths make us what we are - human.

The book is hardly a barrel of laughs, the subject makes it a grim study, as poor Lucy finds hardly any reprieve in life. It is magnificently written and very incisive, sharp as a surgeon's knife. I have resolved to find as many of Mr. Cronin's books as I can find, and read them all.

The Gin Drinkers and my Library Loot

2011-08-14T21:00:00.000-07:00

I went to the Library on 14.08.2011 and picked up these books after much delibration.

1. Blind Willow Sleeping Woman - Haruki Murakami
2. Night Train to Lisbon - Pascal Mercier
3. Blandings Castle - P G Wodehouse.

I looked high and low for Silmarillion by JRR Tolkein, but could not find it. I also looked for Tristam Shandy, again, nah.

I am reading The Gin Drinkers by Sagarika Ghose at the moment. It was pretty engrossing at the begining.in the middle it has palled a bit. It is a story of a bunch of privileged class youngsters. Sons and Daughters of IAS bigwigs, who are educated in Oxford and are expected to settle abroad and do something wonderful and lucrative. Like any youngsters at their age, they are a confused lot. To spice things up, there is a mysterious gang of kitab chors running around, picking up priceless books from private libraries at homes. There have been a couple of tantalizing clues about the thieves, so far.

Sagarika Ghose writes fiction with a practised hand, to the manner born. You can't say the same about many other journos who venture into book writing. There will be more on the book once I finish it. But at the moment, despite the sagging middle, it looks like a very good read. I love it when books are based in Delhi. I love the city, its my second most favorite city in the world. That is from my slim repertoire of course, once I have globe trotted my preferences may change.

Adrift A Junket Junkie in Europe - Puneetinder Kaur Sidhu

2011-07-30T23:53:00.000-07:00

It was a discarded ticket by a 'gainfully employed' sibling that set Puneet off on a trip to Europe. It helped that she had a string of relatives and friends scattered across Europe, willing to put up with her. At times even inviting her. That's an offer not many of us would refuse.

She starts at London, moving on to Germany, Sweden, Denmark, Netherlands, Hungary, Austria and France. She discovers mitfahr, a sort of a carpooling between countries, very soothing to the pocket of a person who is a junket junkie, not a millionaire tossing away some black money casually while 'doing' the world.

Here is a first person account of an unusual trip. We get to know these countries as a person sees them, not as some travel brochure describes them. Hence it is easy to feel her passion when she talks about the most romantic city in the world - Vienna.

What I liked best about the book was the insouciance of the author. It is so typically Punjabi. I am a fan of the author's blog as well.Cutting Loose Her writing is simple, yet pithy and fetching. I have met her briefly once, and she is as large hearted and friendly as any Punjabi can be.

Susannah's Seven Husbands - Ruskin Bond

2011-02-25T21:53:00.000-08:00

I am a fan of Ruskin Bond, have been so ever since I read his little articles in The Tribune. I discovered his short stories and anthologies later, when I read some of them in my daughter's prescribed English textbooks. Till date I love Rusty best, and his wastral of an uncle who tried his hand at many things.

His books have been made into movies before, Junoon was based on A Flight of Pigeons, both great in their own way. The Blue Umbrella was made into a fabulous movie by Vishal Bhardwaj. Needless to say the promos of 7 Khoon Maaf had me hooked and I was double hooked when I learnt that it was based on a short story by Ruskin Bond, Susannah's Seven Husbands.

I hied off to see 7 Khoon Maaf last Sunday and came back a wee bit disappointed. Not that it wasn't good, it just wasn't brilliant. I expected more out of the Bond-Bhardwaj combo. The first couple of husbands were good, but after that the story seemed to falter, bolstered a bit by the Keemat Lal episode and then, alas faltering again.

But yet, such is my mania for Bond, that I ordered the book containing - hold your breath - the original short story, the novella that Bond expanded it into and the screenplay of the movie. Just this morning I finished reading the story and the novella, in that order.

Bond's original short story is exactly what you expect of him. It is short, intriguing, contains all his masterstrokes, it leaves you feeling mystified and satiated. This Susannah was born long back, was tremendously rich, and was supposed to have a cellar full of treasures with snakes guarding it. She was seen riding around the town in a buggy, rich and beautiful, admired and feared by all. She had several husbands that she was rumored to have sent to their early graves. Her ghost was said to have haunted the house and the surrounding areas, waylaying good looking men as she was said to be looking for a ideal mate.

The novella lists her husbands, expanding the story. It introduces the character of Arun, Susannah's neighbour who was too young to be a lover, but was old enough to be her friend. He is in love with her and talks to her and her gardner often, and is privy to the goings-on in the house. In his characteristic style, Bond leaves an element of mystery about the husbands' death. So we are not sure if these deaths were brought on or an accident. An excellent ruse, I think.

It makes for a fairly good read. Bond has this admirable quality of saying just enough, not more nor less. It stands him in good stead and as long as the husband is interesting, it carries you along. It is not his best offering though. It lacks the brilliance of many of his stories and novellas. The packaging does not help either, with the poster of 7 Khoon Maaf on the cover. Ruskin Bond does not need cheap tricks to sell his books. In my opinion he is a living legend. His books and stories are going to live forever and we are watching history in making, he is going to be a classic.

The Alchemy of Desire - Tarun Tejpal

2011-02-05T05:46:00.000-08:00

I have a bit of a connect with Tarun Tejpal. He worked once at the same newspaper as I do now, both he and his wife. I have just one memory of him talking to our garrulous telephone operator and laughing. Much later, after he left Chandigarh, I read some of his articles here and there and liked them. It was even later, after Tehelka, that he became a household name. Gosh, I thought, its that same thin fellow who used to work in my office. I knew he had written a book called The Alchemy of Desire. I read the blurbs, but not the book. A couple of weeks back, I picked up the book in the library, egged on by a positive recco from a friend.

His book seemed to be autobiographical and began with his Chandigarh phase. So far so good. I love Chandigarh and love reading about it. The mid eighties were a wonderful time, journalistically speaking. A lot was happening, militancy was on the rise, assassinations and emergencies, and journalism had not yet plumbed the depths it has. It was fun (ooops, I hope there is no 'g**d phat ke haath me aajati' type around to chastise me). I mean 'fun' in the adrenaline pumping way, there was so much happening, there was excitement in the air. However, though Tejpal does include the political happenings of those times, his concern lies elsewhere: his relationship with his wife. He tells us how crazy he was about her, but alas, he takes a long time telling us this, again and again. His interest in his wife is deeply carnal, so we are given descriptions of his sex life. He avoids (prudishly?) the use of names for sexual body parts. "Engorged, Tumescence, Wetness, Inside" are used liberally in his frequent listings of his legal sexcapades. It makes for a tedious reading at times, not titillation. I skipped and jumped through these bits and wondered if anything was going to happen at all, or was he going to harp on and on about how he loved sex with his woman.

I nearly gave up reading further. But then, I stuck with it. Suddenly things took a turn. Tejpal finally came to the crux of the matter. Somewhere along in the story, the young couple came into some money that Tejpal's grandmother left for him. With this money the happy young couple buys a house high in the hills. The cottage had been built by an American woman who had married a Nawab during the British Raj. During renovations to this cottage, they chance upon a locked chest which is filled with diaries written by the woman. It is while pursuing these detailed diaries that Tejpal finds himself hallucinating about the descriptions of the sex life of the lady, and finds himself unable to 'come up' for his wife.

The story of Catherine is told with the pithiness that all journalists are required to have. From then on, it turns almost into a thriller, as Tejpal is obssessed with finding out more and more about Catherine and what happened to her. It makes for a compelling read. After he attains closure with the Catherine story, he is able to return to his feelings for his wife. In the last chapter, he goes back to the story of how he met this girl that he loved to distraction all his life, his first and his only love. Now, without the cumbersome need to list his sexual encounters with his wife, he is much much much better. The final two chapters of the book are the best that I have read in recent times. It was worth wading through the first few tedious chapters.

Of course, I loved the references to two of my favorite places in the world, Kasauli and Chandigarh. Like many Chandigarhians, Tejpal too goes often to Kasauli. He does make them come alive with his accurate descriptions of the place and people. Curiously, despite his attempt to write up his wife, she seems like a very flat character, he is to be unable to bring her alive. It is only in the final chapter that he succeeds in fleshing her out.

Better scores have to be given to his attempts to write a book. One of the themes of the book is also how Tejpal tries to write a novel often and fails. His wrestling with his creative side is also very real. Also, of course, the political scenario that he has to grapple with. No marks for this one, because it is something all journalists do.

It could have been a great book, had he edited it a bit better. The first few chapters could have done with some chopping. Who should have known this better than a guy who is an editor?

The Sunday Philosophy Club - Alexander McCall Smith

2010-08-25T20:16:00.000-07:00

I had long wanted to read something by Alexander McCall Smith having had positive recommendations for the writer famous for his No 1 Ladies Detective Agency series.

Isabel, the protagonist of the series would probably note, isn't a recommendation positive to begin with? Isabel Dalhousie lives in Edinburgh, is in her early forties, is reasonably wealthy and edits The Review of Applied Ethics. Edinburgh is a quaint town to the south-east of Scotland. It is famous for its old buildings. Parts of it has been declared a World Heritage Site. It has a temperate climate which makes it a very good place to live in. McCall Smith's descriptions of the place are so affectionate and warm that it makes you wish you lived there. Isabel's age is perfect too. She is not a giddy youngster skidding through life, she is more settled and more apt to observe and mull upon what she sees. She does this also because she is a philosopher. Her job brings her in contact with philosophical tracts that she has to edit for the journal - Review of Applied Ethics. Her comfortable circumstances and single status also give her a freedom to follow her heart.

She is old enough to be an old fashioned girl. She likes the telephone to be answered in a certain way, she adheres to certain routines and likes good manners in people. She likes to be very moral and is constantly mulling over whether a certain act is morally right or not. She is also young enough to sometimes forget her own philosophy of life and be rash, outspoken and imprudent. In fact she usually does something 'wrong' right after she has debated the issue in her mind, which makes it all the more funny. At one time, she does not shy away from following an unpleasent man who is dating her neice, just on a curious impulse.

And, oh, of course, each book solves a mystery.

I read Friends, Lovers and Chocolate first, which is second in the series. I was a bit undecided about the book, but picked it up anyway. This is the beauty of a borrowing books from a library. If you don't like the book much or find it tedious, you can just return it half read. This makes you pick up a book more indiscriminately than you would if you were to buy it. I read the book as fast as I could, it was that good. It also made me buy the first in the series - The Sunday Philosophy Club.

Isabel and a group of fellow philosophers used to run the Sunday Philosophy Club. The name of this series is ironical, as the Sunday Philosophy Club is now defunct. Isabel would like to revive it, relishing the idea of discussing philosophical issues with her friends, but as her two close associates - her neice Cat, and friend Jaime - note, Sunday is not an easy day on which to meet.

The story moves at a gentle pace and is full of delightful descriptions that is reminiscent of Jane Austen. A lady mystery solver is reminiscent of Agatha Christie. Like Agatha Christie, the mystery is not always earth shaking. The first novel deals with a possible murder, but the second one deals with visions that a person has. However, unlike Agatha Christie mystries, the mystery itself does not seem central to the plot, nor is Isabel always commissioned to solve the mystery. The mystery seems almost like a sideplot. It is Isabel's philosophical musings that take the centre stage.

It is the general drift of Isabel Dalhousie's life that is so charming. Her laidback lifestyle, her appreciation of the arts, her tendency to philosophise over even mundane events, her sharp observations, her close friends, all these lay a grip on you and you want to read more and more about her. Isabel is close to her neice Cat, who runs a delicatessan. Jaime is a musician and a close friend um, pretty pretty close. Her housekeeper Grace is full of surprises and Isabel finds it edifying to consult her on several matters at hand. Lovely Edinburgh is always in the background. It is all these that make the series so captivating. I am listing the books in the series here to prevent you from hitting the wikipedia page, which is shamefully full of spoilers.

1.The Sunday Philosophy Club (2004)
2.Friends, Lovers, Chocolate (2005)
3.The Right Attitude to Rain (2006)
4.The Careful Use of Compliments (2007)
5.The Comforts of a Muddy Saturday (2008)
6.The Lost Art of Gratitude (2009)

The last book came out in 2009 as we can see. I hope the author continues with the series which would surely delight me.

The Bartimaeus Trilogy - Jonathan Stroud

2010-08-10T19:47:00.000-07:00

Jonathan Stroud

These books are strictly for fantasy fiction fans. Bartimaeus is a djinni with a formidable lineage. He is ancient, 5000 years old. Here is what wikipedia has to say about him:

The title character, Bartimaeus, is a five-thousand year old djinni, a spirit of approximately mid-level power. There are five basic levels of spirits; in order of increasing strength they are: imps, foliots, djinni, afrits and marids. Above these levels exist even more powerful entities, who are rarely summoned. Human magicians use spells to compel these spirits to perform feats of power.

Bart loves to hang out in the Other Place, where can while his time away in nothingness. The earth is NOT his favorite place, he seems to dislike humans who can summon him through spells and incantations. If he were to have his way, he would like to spot a mistake in the spells and gobble up the upstart who dared to disturb his peace. It is merely because the spells are so binding that he is forced to do the bidding of his master.

At the start of the story, Bartimaeus finds himself pulled back to earth (London, to be specific) by a very correct pentagram and proper incantations by Nathaniel, a very young magicians apprentice. He is give the difficult job of stealing the Amulet of Samarkand. Soon we learn all about the precocious Nathaniel. His parents gave him away to be trained as a magician ever since he was a little child. He was taken in by Arthur Underwood as an apprentice. Nathaniel is gifted, but his overbearing master is not in a hurry to teach him, hence he takes to educating himself, by reading books.

The place he lives in is London, but apart from the some shared geography and history, Stroud's London is a different place, peopled by magicians and commeners, djinns and spirits. It is a tumultuous place, ready to burst into a revolution, as the commoners are weary of the ruthless and ambitious magicians (politicians?).

Nathaniel is an unlikely hero, bumbling at times and a bit of a prig. He is overambitious too, and Bartimaeus is an unlikely sidekick. There is barely any love lost between them, or so it seems. Bartimaeus is anything but a fawning or a supportive helper. He is acerbic and loves bringing Nathaniel down a peg or two. Not exactly a Batman-Robin kind of a situation, we see.

Jonathan Stroud takes this unlikely team and gives us a trilogy that is funny, imaginative and full of all the things that we love in a fantasy, an alternate world, lots of magic and magical creatures. The dangers that the major characters face are huge and seem real. I don't know if the word 'funny' is enough to explain the humour in these books. If you like British humour, Jane Austen, PG Wodehouse and all that, you will just love Stroud. In fact, if this magical world had been real, Stroud's books would have been described as a satire. As the magicians play the role of a politician, I am not sure if it really IS a satire.

The Trilogy comes in three parts:

1. The Amulet of Samarkand :

Here the story starts with a very young and scared Nathaniel summoning the ancient djinni Bartimaeus and sets him a task to steal the Amulet of Samarkand. What starts as a prank to teach a fellow magician a lesson, turns into an adventure that seems clearly beyond the scope of Nathaniel. In this book we get introduced to several characters that we will meet again during the rest of the trilogy.

2. The Golem's Eye:

A couple of years have passed, Nathaniel is more ambitious than before. He is no longer the child he was. But yet he finds himself facing troubles for which he can think of no other ally than his old acerbic friend, Bartimaeus. Kitty, a character we meet in the passing in the first book has a larger role here. She is the part of Resistance, the commoners' answer to the atrocities committed by the ruthless magicians.

3. Ptolemy's Gate:

The grand and the satisfying finale to the trilogy. Kitty, Nathaniel and Bartimaeus find themselves facing a kind of danger they could not even imagine. The solution has to come from ancient history, which is very painful for Bartimaeus. Nathaniel must quit his supercilious ways if he is to spot the truth.

Comparisons are inevitable with Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter series, but really, how can you compare? Lord of Rings is in a class by itself. It is an epic. Harry Potter is, well, very popular, very different, it is more like a whole franchise. Perhaps in scope, Jonathan Stroud's series is not as vast, but it is very sure. There is no misstep anywhere, the humour in his books and the world weary Bartimaeus are the USP of the series.

The Independence of Miss Mary Bennet - Colleen McCullough

2010-07-23T20:22:00.000-07:00

This is not the first time we have encountered an Austen derivative. I loved the movie Clueless which is a modern re-telling of Emma. Gurinder Chadha's movie Bride and Prejudice was colourful and interesting, if not a favorite. A couple of book sites on my bloglist regularly come up with reviews of books on some aspect of life of Mr. Darcy or some other Austen character. At one time I looked high and low for a book called 'The Jane Austen Book Club', to be sorely disappointed by it.

This book came highly recommended by a book site I subscribe to, and it is written by Colleen McCullough, the author of Thorn Birds which is supposed to be the Australian Gone with the Wind. I have read the Thorn Birds and loved it, not as much as GWTW, but well enough.

The book begins with the death of Mrs. Bennet. Mr. Bennet died a couple of years after Pride and Prejudice ended. Elizabeth and Jane are safely ensconced in their homes as Mrs Darcy and Mrs Bingley. Kitty is a rich and merry widow thanks to an advantageous marriage. Lydia is in shambles, Wickham is at war and she is an alcoholic and sex crazed. Mary has spent the past 17 years (since the big wedding between Darcy and Lizzie) caring for her mother and keeping her away from causing any further embarrassment to her daughters. Many is no longer the ugly duckling, but rivals Elizabeth in handsomeness. She has spent her exile reading books and developing a mind, and now, with her mother gone, she is looking forward to doing something with her life. All this information is stuffed into the first chapter, just like Jane used to do.

The first time I picked up the novel, I dropped it in disgust because Mr Darcy was addressed as Fitz. I am not sure if even Elizabeth would have deemed it proper to address her husband as anything but Mr. Darcy, let alone his sister-in-law. If I remember correctly, even Elizabeth's father referred to his sons-in-law by their surname, Wickham, Bingley, Darcy.

Anyhow, the novel gathered dust for nearly a year. A week back I picked it up again and this time, expecting the worst, read it through. Jane is still her sweet (cloyingly?) self and popping babies. Elizabeth and Darcy (no Fitz for me) have troubles. He is back to being the stiff and starchy one, she is disappointed in him because among other things, ahem .. he is a beast in bed. Wooo, I say, bring him on. On top of this, their firstborn, a son, is allegedly effeminate. Kitty and Lydia are marginalized in this novel too. Mary gets the center stage here, sort of. (Even now, Elizabeth and Darcy cannot be shoved into a corner. At times it seems as if the novel is more about them). Mary is on a mission to write a book about the British poor. Cough. She has some hair raising adventures, the rest of the family also gets pulled into it.

The story is interesting enough on its own but there is nothing Austenian about it except the characters, that's for sure. People use four letter words and foul language as if they lived in nastier times. There is even ess ee ex .. phew ! It messes with the kind of an image you have of the characters and the times. What I like best about Austen's books is its faithful rendition of life in her times. The leisurely walks, the formal way of addressing each other, the dresses, the balls, the MEN. The way the ladies and the gentlemen spent their times. Even though the books are really romances, they are also a mirror of their times. I hate this book for shattering that beautiful image.

Even Jane's worst critics admit that she had a faultless style. I am amazed to say this of the author of Thorn Birds, but I found that lacking woefully. There were many repetitions of phrases and words, which rankled. Did Ms. McCullough have a bad editor this time round? No, as an Austen sequel the novel failed badly. Not surprising really, which sequel has worked? The sequel to Gone With The Wind, Scarlett by Alexandra Ripley was awful. Mrs De Winter by Susan Hall was a terrible sequel to Rebecca. While one can understand the itch writers get to try to imagine 'what happened afterwards?', one wishes they desist, if this is all they have to offer.

Spoiler Spoiler dirty Spoiler : In case you don't want to read this novel and are wondering what really happens to Mary, she does not write that book, but settles down with a rich Scottish newspaper owner in the vicinity of Pemberley. Spoiler Ends.

As if you expected a Bennet girl to do anything different - now that is so Austenian

Super Spoiler: She has sex with him before marriage - GASP! Super Spoiler ends.

After Dark - Haruki Murakami

2010-07-17T01:06:00.000-07:00

After I read Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami, I picked up Norwegian Wood by the same author. Norwegian Wood was a sad love story about a young frail girl Naoko, whose high school boyfriend commits suicide. She falls into deep depression after that and has problem fitting in with life. Her boyfriend's best friend, Toru, befriends her and falls in love with her. However, her depressed state prevents her from forming any relationship and she leaves for a mental asylum. Toru meets Midori and they are drawn to each other. But with the shadow of Naoko hanging over him, Toru is unable to move on. It is a good book but I was fresh from the magic realism of Kafka on the shore and the book was kind of depressing.

Last Saturday, I picked up After Dark by Murakami from the library along with other books. I saved After Dark for the last, wanting to savour it. A couple of days ago, the other stock exhausted, I opened this book.

Eyes mark the shape of the city.

The first line read. And I knew I was hooked. It is a slim book, mere 200 pages of the small size.

The novel delivers gloriously... Inventive and alluring

says David Mitchell of Guardian, on the blurb. Ditto, say I.

The novel is about what happens to people after dark. In the few hours from midnight to 5 AM when the world sleeps peacefully, there are some who choose to stay awake. Why do they do that? What is behind their wish to spend the night waking?

Mari chooses to spend the night waking as she seems to have missed the last train home. She sits in Denny's with a cup of coffee and is hunched over her book, reading with deep concentration. She is disturbed by Takahashi, a trombone player who knows her and more particularly, her beautiful sister Eri. Takashahi is here because he plays with his band in a nearby basement and is at Denny's for a midnight snack. Later he sends over the manager of a Love Hotel called Alphaville. A Chinese girl has been hurt and they need someone who knows Chinese to talk to her. All this time, Mari's beautiful sister Eri sleeps a sleep that is too perfect to be true.

At the root of everything is the troubled relationship between the beautiful Eri and the homely Mari who chooses to drown herself in studies. Takashahi has a troubled past too. He is an orphan who has been brought up by his criminal father and a stepmother. He is at a crossroad, having to choose between a career in Law and Music. He is very fond of Five Spot After Dark which made him learn how to play a trombone.

It is a night full of happenings and conversations and introspection which will transform the lives of Mari and Takashahi, and Eri's too, perhaps.

Murkami's magic is all over the book. You hear the music the characters talk about, you feel what they feel. He has this ability of making you see right into the soul of people.

Diamonds from Goa

2010-05-01T21:45:00.000-07:00

My blogger friend Ashwin Baindur of The Butterfly diaries has often adorned his blog with nature poems. It was on one such post that I came across a poem by Ashok Mahajan. I was instantly smitten by it, and begged him for details. The poem was taken from Goan Vignettes and Other Poems which was sadly, out of stock on book sites.

A flurry of emails on the issue followed and at the end of it Ashwin kindly scanned the images from his copy of the book, converted it into a PDF, copied it into a cd and mailed it to me.

In doing so, Ashwin has gifted me a handful of diamonds. Thank you, Ashwin.

I don’t think I will be ever able to find appropriate words to describe these poems. (I thought of something very clever to say about them when I was driving yesterday, but have forgotten now.) They are indeed little vignettes of life in Goa and other places. If you are fortunate enough to read a few, you will realize that the Author has the knack of using just the right word for the right thing. So I will beseech you to look up the words you do not understand, I promise that your understanding of the poem will multiply hundredfold when you look up the meaning.

On reading the poems, I get the sense of a ruminative poet who looks at the world and sees things that lesser mortals like us do not. Maybe we do, but we do not remark on it; we have no talent to freeze the moment forever in a perfect little poem.

To see a world in a grain of sand,

And a heaven in a wild flower,

Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,

And eternity in an hour

(William Blake)

These are the lines that best describe the poems of Ashok Mahajan. It is time for me to vanish and present some poems of the author that struck me particularly. Click on the images to enlarge them. If you want more, send me your emails and I will send them to you.

To start with I will quote a small poem here called metamorphosis. I have kindly (thank me) provided the meanings so you (philistines) may better appreciate this picture.

But a week ago

This hill that was

A rugged

Topaz of dry grass

Is now a nowy

Smaragd of green.

Nowy Smaragd = new emerald

Sunset at Colva is the poem I would pick as a favorite if pressed. It is evocative and creates a perfect picture of a sun slowly slipping, red and resplendent, into the sea.

Estaminets=A small café

Incarnadine=red color

Aubade

(An aubade is a poem or song of or about lovers separating at dawn.

Aubade has also been defined as "a song or instrumental composition concerning, accompanying, or evoking daybreak)

This comes next because of a leisurely and detailed listing of things we see if we stroll out at daybreak for a dozen eggs. The author does not shy away from listing scenes that are not pretty. Dhobi’s boy taking a dump on the roadside is as assiduously noted as the pretty rhododendron sun. You can see a further example of this if you check out the poem featured on Ashwin’s page

I picked Channo’s Tandoor because it reminds me of summers in Delhi when we used to pick up rotis from a tandoor nearby, to save our ladies the bother of making endless rotis and also because we loved the crispy earthy taste of real tandoori rotis. Again, the poem paints a perfect picture of the Tandoor which is turned into a community centre in an instant.

Majorda Jaycees Princess. I knew one such Veronica Dias; she won a minor beauty contest, and thought she was too good for our little town.

Grandmother is such a lovely look at a crabby old lady, I could cite several ladies who could qualify for this portrait.

Truck Driver gives you a peek into the world filled with machismo and vulnerability. In a few deft strokes you get the picture of a life condemned to greasing palms and easing loneliness with a bottle of the local brew.

Vasco Da Gama takes a cynical look at that renowned adventurer. Ah, how many heroes of yore are the result of good publicity agent? How many real heroes have passed on unsung?

All I wish is that this lovely slim little volume were illustrated. I know, it is much better to get a picture into your head, but like Alice, I like a book with nice pictures. A set of drawings by one of those renowned Goan illustrators would have been like a cherry on a yummy layered black forest choclate cake.

There are a few glimpses into the goodies that Ashok Mahajan has presented to us in his lovely book. As I said earlier, the full feast is but an email away (or maybe some kind soul will teach me how to upload large file on some sites like rapid share so that many more people may have access to his poems).

Totto-Chan, The Girl in the Window, Tetsuko Kuroyanagi

2010-04-27T19:17:00.001-07:00

What do parents do when they realize that their child can not fit into a normal school? Where is a child to go if he cannot be affiliated to a school or college? What will children do if they do not score good grades? What kind of a life will they have when they have to be on their own?

Surely these questions have plagued all parents, especially when they see that their child is not in the top bracket. Some parents try to turn their children into machines, forever at their books. Children are scolded if their grades are not up to the expectations of their parents.

What does a child feel when faced with all this? When they find themselves being forever pushed to do what they are unwilling to.

On the other hand, aren’t children the flower of this earth? Shouldn’t they be allowed to grow and prosper at their own pace?

The most important question of all is what is more important, knowledge or education?

Many educated people will agree that knowledge is more important, it is more important to let a child learn at his own pace, that material possessions are immaterial. But how many people have the courage to let their child tread on a path of his own making. When faced with the crucial issue, it is easy to wish that one’s child lands a place in a prestigious university, taking up a course that will lead to a cushy job.

We have seen this issue under a scanner in movies like Taare Zameen Par and Wake Up Sid. But before all this came a lovely little book called Totto-Chan

The heroine of this book is a little child called Totto Chan who is expelled from first grade because she keeps disrupting the whole class. The worried mother hears of a school run by eminent educator Sosaku Kobayashi, which is different. Instead of foisting its system on the child, it adjusts to the need of each child. This is a school where the personality of the child is what matters, everything else is secondary. Totto-Chan’s mother hopes her child will be accepted here, and is able to get some education without the stigma of being expelled. What she forgets is that the child should like the school too.

When she saw the gate of the new school, Totto-chan stopped. The gate of the school she used to go to had fine concrete pillars with the name of the school in large characters. But the gate of this new school simply consisted of two rather short posts that still had twigs and leaves on them.
"This gate's growing," said Totto-chan. "It'll probably go on growing till it's taller than the telephone poles!"
The two "gateposts" were clearly trees with roots. When she got closer, she had to put her head to one side to read the name of the school because the wind had blown the sign askew.
"To-mo-e Ga-ku-en."
Totto-chan was about to ask Mother what “Tomoe” meant, when she caught a glimpse of something that made her think she must be dreaming. She squatted down and peered through the shrubbery to get a better look, and she couldn't believe her eyes.
"Mother, is that really a train! There, in the school grounds!"
For its classrooms, the school had made use of six abandoned railroad cars. To Tottochan it seemed something you might dream about. A school in a train!
The windows of the railroad cars sparkled in the morning sunlight. But the eyes of the rosy-cheeked little girl gazing at them through the shrubbery sparkled even more.
“I Like This School!”

Here is how Totto Chan’s interview with her headmaster went.

With a hasty bow, Totto-Chan asked him spiritedly "What are you, a schoolmaster or a stationmaster?"
Mother was embarrassed, but before she had time to explain, he laughed and replied, "I'm the head-master of this school."
Totto-Chan was delighted. "Oh, I'm so glad," she said, “because I want to ask you a favor. I'd like to come to your school.”
The headmaster offered her a chair and turned to Mother. "You may go home now. I want to talk to Totto-Chan."
Totto-Chan had a moment's uneasiness, but somehow felt she would get along all right with this man. "Well, then, I’ll leave her with you," Mother said bravely, and shut the door behind her as she went out.
The headmaster drew over a chair and put it facing Totto-Chan, and when they were both sitting down close together, he said, "Now then, tell me all about yourself. Tell me anything at all you want to talk about."
"Anything I like?" Totto-Chan had expected him to ask questions she would have to answer. When he said she could talk about anything she wanted, she was so happy she began straight away. It was all a bit higgledy-piggledy, but she talked for all she was worth.

Never ever was Totto-Chan’s hyperactive behaviour, which got her expelled from her first school, mentioned. Rather, every time the headmaster encounters Totto-Chan he pats her on the head and calls her a good little girl.

The children are allowed to study in the order that they like. They are not punished for being inattentive, and are not required to follow a curriculum. They are encouraged to learn more by practical means. If they have to learn about botany, what better way than to spend a day in the fields with the farmers and grow something of their own? Sports day’s are organized in such a way that the handicapped children win prizes. Children take turns to speak on a topic every day after lunch. There are ballet classes too. They are organized in such a way that the children feel these are fun events instead of a burdensome chore.

Totto-Chan grew up to become a famous TV personality Tetsuko Kuroyanagi. She attributed her success to the valuable lessons she learnt in this school. The book was her tribute to her beloved old teacher, Sosaku Kobayashi. The book became a huge bestseller and Tetsuko instituted a Totto-Chan trust out of the proceeds that undertakes education of deaf children.

Our children are our most precious thing. In our eagerness to produce a clone of several other successful models, don’t we push them to alter their personalities? It would be so much better to have children with distinct personalities who lead happy lives doing things they love.

It is absolutely imperative for every parent to read this book once.

Tomoe School is a wonderful school;

Inside and out, it's a wonderful school!

The Pregnant King by Devdutt Patttnaik

2009-12-22T18:44:00.000-08:00

After I read the book through, I put it down and cried. Like Jayanta, the king’s younger son, I cried for “the imperfection of humans and for our stubborn refusal to make room for all those in between.” We are limited in our perceptions by our limited imagination, and having learnt about the world from persons of limited wisdom, our intellect is not allowed to form to its fullest. We no longer have teachers and thinkers of high caliber amongst us to challenge our minds. Our education is filled with pre-set syllabus and pre-set ways of understanding it. No wonder, as each generation develops, we find ourselves less tolerant of people who are not like us and pick fights over petty issues of region, religion and class. We follow customs and conventions of the society without trying to understand them, discarding them or adopting them for our convenience.

The Pregnant King by Devdutt Pattanaik is a tale told of a man, a king of a prosperous kingdom who finds himself bearing a child. Due to this ‘aberration of nature’ he finds his mind in a turmoil. His feelings for his child are more maternal than paternal and he finds himself grappling with issues of Dharma and of existence itself. Although this mythical tale of Yuvanashva is set in time more ancient than Mahabharata, the author takes the liberty of setting it parallel to parable of Pandavas.

Through the tale, we learn the ambiguous roles that many kings had to play. There were both feminine and masculine sides to them, their subjects learnt to revere them for their ability to portray the best of both sexes as an additional blessing instead of a curse for their multi-sexuality. We learn many of the old traditions that were coined for the good of people, the vedic way of life that ensured harmony and prosperity. The caste system which is much reviled now, was a means of allowing people in different walks of life to live with dignity.

However the fissures in this perfect way of life were already evident. When Ashwathama discarded his varna to become king, when Kshatriyas used deceit to win the war, when Dharma was abandoned in an attempt to cling to power. Then, as now, the final message is that it is Love that is most important, in its most sublime form, Compassion.

Here is a gem from the book – “Careful of the word unnatural. It reeks of arrogance. You are assuming you know the boundaries of nature. You don’t. There is more to life than your eyes can see. More than you can ever imagine. Nature comes from the mind of God. It is infinite. The finite human mind can never fathom it in totality.”

The tale is carefully woven. As in Mahabharata when the seeds of discord were sown generations before the actual war, here too we go back to the story of Yuvanashva’s mother, the widowed regent Shilavati and go on to learn life in Vallabhi the kingdom into which she is married. Yuvanashva is a sheltered child and needs to fulfill his primary function, father a son and provide and heir to the throne of Vallabhi before he can become king. It becomes hard to fathom whether Shilavati is hanging on to power for its own sake or as a maternal instinct to protect her son and allow him time to procreate. Kaliyuga is about to dawn and it is indicated when people use dharma to further their own end.

The wisest of Rishi’s Angirasa laugh when the Chief Priest Mandavya wonders why power corrupted the mind of Shilavati, she was a woman after all. “He thinks women are not corrupted by power” they laugh. The Angirasa also descend on the Pregnant King and seek to pray to him as they think he is a special signal from Gods. They open his mind to the ambivalence of human forms. Not all are rigidly male or female.

Myths are philosophic tales to educate us through entertainment and exist to inform us that nature is more powerful than any of us. Those readers who loved reading stories from Chandamama, tales of Mahabharata and Ramayana, Vikram and Betal stories will love this book. I was able to devour the 149 page book in 5-6 hours of continous reading, I found it gripping and unputdownable. The finale was satisfying and disturbing at the same time.

Devdutt Pattanaik has made a career out of studying the ancient myths and decoding them. He has his own website here.

Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami

2009-12-05T04:24:00.000-08:00

I can be highly suggestive when it comes to picking literature. I am more likely to pick up a book that has been written about well, and spoken of as a classic. It was this instinct I followed when picking up Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami. Why this one by this writer? Because Kafka is my favorite author and I liked the use of his name.

Some books are not written asking for appreciation. They exist and wait for you to pick them up to read. If you do so, YOU are rewarded, if you don't its YOUR loss. This is that kind of a book. It does not hang around waiting for you to award it 4 or 5 stars, it is 10 stars already, and if you recognize that fact, its your good luck.

Now, what kind of a genre does the book fall into? Is it a romance? Drama? Fantasy Fiction? A coming-of-age tale? A combo of the last two? It does defy compartmentalizing. What do genres exist for anyway? So that the bookstores and librarians know where to slot it?

I am asking a lot many questions, mainly because I am trying to find words and phrases to describe the book best, knowing I am going to fall short. Ok here goes.

Kafka on the shore is about a 15 year old boy who is trying to escape a horrific prophesy. To avoid it, he has to run away from home. On his travels he learns about life and that even if he cannot avoid fate, he learns to deal with it. He is also trying to find the answer to a question that dogs most children who have to do without a parent - Were they loved?

"Every time we wish for something with our whole heart, the universe conspires to fulfill it." We have heard this phrase a lot recently. Here in this book we get to see how exactly the universe conspires. We get a bit of 'behind-the-scene' activity that can qualify this books as fantasy fiction. But as the setting is our world, the 'other world' element is so well integrated, that it seems like an everyday happening. The 'niceness' of everyday happenings soften the blow of the bad things that are actually happening elsewhere.

Murakami is an intellectual with varied tastes, you can see as you read his book. And he wears his it on his sleeve proudly, quite like TS Eliot. His literature shows up his taste for western music, philosophy and literature quite unabashedly. He references a lot of a music and books and speaks about them through some knowledgeable character. I quite like the 'international' feel of the book. Though it is set in Japan, it is so contemperory, it could have been in any corner of the world. There are no overt 'cultural' references. No Japanese tea ceremonies or bowing or references to the ancient cultures being best.

The book is crazy, wild, sexy, original and simply fantastic.

What am I going to do next? GRIN. I am going to pick up some Beethoven music that Murakami talked about. I am also going to pick an anthology of Prince, a musician that I love and so does Murakami, and so did Micheal Jackson. Oh. I am going to pick up Norwegian Wood by the same author.

The good old intrigue

2009-09-30T08:23:00.000-07:00

Among the books to fall into my lap recently (link) was The Alexandria Link by Steve Berry.

The novel starts with a bit of an epilogue the purpose of which becomes clear later. The second chapter is when the action starts. Cotton Malone, ex- US agent finds his ex-wife on his doorstep in Denmark to inform him that their son had been kidnapped. Within minutes he finds his house and shop burned to ashes, and is on the run from assassins as he tries to unravel the mystery of his son’s kidnapping.

Several other links open up. Stephanie, Cotton Malone’s ex-boss finds herself embroiled in conspiracies of various sorts. Across the globe in Vienna, another thread in the story is revealed when a mysterious organization called The Order of the Golden Fleece that seems interested in causing economic and political instability by using religious controversies, is found to be embroiled in the kidnapping of Gary Malone.

Soon the kidnapping angle is discarded when it is revealed that the actual quest is the lost library of Alexandria and Cotton Malone is being coerced into tracing it. As the novel progresses, the shit rises higher, and all the good characters seem on the verge of elimination. Sigh !

It’s been quite a while since I read a racy bestseller. As they go, The Alexandria Link is gripping and well written, and keeps you turning pages. Each chapter has this soap opera kind of ‘gasp’ endings which is supposed to egg you on to read the next page without break. It works most times, at times it bugs you. There is plenty of categorical listing of good and bad guys – US, Israel are good guys, Arabs – BAD! Europeans – not too good. All these simplistic allusions get to you at times. Anyhow they are too superficial to really affect you. A lot of heavy tracts of ancient manuscripts are thrown in to make you feel you dealing with serious history. There is a Dan Brown like chase for clues and links that ONLY Cotton Malone is able to decode.

How Sweet!

Now that reminds me of the horribly cheesy ending of Superman II, the Christopher Reeve one (Mind you, I liked the movie). The trio of Zod, Ursa and Non are vanquished, the world is set right. The President of the US is restored to the ‘throne’ of the free world. Supe comes flying in, resplendent in his eye blinding blue suit with the red undie and brings back the top of the White House with the flag with was blown away by bad man. Dhan Tan Na! Superman is here and all is well with the world.

As an aside, I really like the Indian politicians who are so obviously bad, they are human! In books like these, the President of USA is depicted as some kind of an un-impeachable hero. Almost like royalty.

Though this book is better written than the Dan Brown ones, I must say I liked Da Vinci Code better than this. At least he kept the Prez out of it and turned it into a genuine thriller.

The top dog in this genre is undoubtedly Umberto Eco with his The Name of the Rose; these two gentlemen don’t even come close.

Two by Anne Bronte

2009-09-25T19:36:00.000-07:00

The more said about the Bronte sisters is less. Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights is a classic, Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre is likewise, a classic. However the two books by Anne Bronte are often overlooked. She outlived her most illustrious sister, Emily, by a year, dying at the young age of twenty-nine. In her lifetime she wrote only two books, Agnes Grey and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. Even with my avid readings I have not read the other books by Charlotte – Vilette, Professor and Shirley – mainly because I was ignorant about them. These books and Anne’s books were not readily available at my school library, where I read most of my classics. Recently, a friend of mine (Vani) visited my house and was struck by the amount of books I had. She had been gifted a number of books that were lying unread by her and offered to lend them to me. Never the one to look a book-gift horse in the mouth, I agreed. She offloaded a stack of books on to me and I was charmed to find amongst them The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.

I began reading the book and was struck immediately by the way the book avoided the ‘Gothic’ and the ‘Romantic’ traps that were so typical of Victorian novelists. I was refreshed by her normal, colloquial use of language, the simple unassuming style. In fact I read the title page once more to check if the novel had been abridged, and hence simplified, but it was not. Let me outline the plot a little. I had assumed that the Tenant of Wildfell Hall was some Rochester/Heathcliff like creature, prowling amongst great halls full of angst. But this tenant is a mysterious lady called Mrs Helen Graham who is dressed in widow’s weeds and has a little son. She makes her living by selling paintings and seems to be a gentle lady who has fallen on ill days. The parish is abuzz with the new arrival and families start visiting the lady, eager to make acquaintance of her. She seems friendly but a bit standoffish. Her great beauty wins her admirers among the men, which in turn angers their former beaus. Some women are struck with jealousy and spread rumors about her character. It is then revealed that Helen is in fact on the run from an abusive husband, Huntingdon, and is trying to bring up her son away from his harmful influence. What happens to Helen, and how her past is revealed is the rest of the story.

The story was set in Regency and was based on the various young squires (some say the wicked Bronte brother, Branwell was the model) who led degenerate lives, going on wild drinking binges and hunting. Along with this, hitting on each others wives was also a great sport for them. The gentler wives were obviously distressed by the events. To add to their misery, the law was stringent for women. They had no identity or existence without their husbands, could not own money or property independent of them. They could not leave their husbands without their consent, nor claim custody of their children. In such a background the mystery with which Helen Huntingdon has to surround herself is necessary, and the step she had taken was seen as unusually bold for those times. Anne invests strong characteristics in Helen and creates a character of great strength and beauty. Her characters spring out of the book, quite like the one’s created by Charles Dickens. She describes the landscapes beautifully. Her greatest strength however, is her graphic presentation of the society. She is able to bring to life the equally the degenerate lifestyle of Huntingdon and his friends and the family lives of the gentleman farmers that dwell around Wildfell Hall. Her humor is gentle and satirical like her famous predecessor Jane Austen. She is like a bolder and a more decisive version of Jane Austen. While her sisters content themselves with presenting just the lives of Heathcliff, Linton and Earnshaw on one hand and just Rochester and Rivers on the other, Anne meticulously draws the portrait of several families near Wildfell Hall. We learn of the mating rituals of the young and fashionable when Helen is young and is being courted by several gentlemen. Likewise, we learn about the married lives of several people when Helen marries Huntingdon and starts living with him. She gives us valuable snapshots of various lives.

All people who habitually read Victorian or pre Victorian authors like Charles Dickens, Jane Austen, Charlotte and Emily Bronte among them, should read Anne Bronte too and not treat her like a ‘lesser’ Bronte (a fault I was prone to).

At home I was reading Tenant of Wildfell Hall and at work I downloaded her only other book, Agnes Grey. Agnes Grey lists in useful and entertaining detail the travails of a young girl who works as a governess for two families. The book is supposed to be drawn on her own experiences in a couple of households as a governess. Agnes is a young gentlewoman fallen on hard times. But her betters in wealth treat her no better than a servant and often heap abuse on her, neglect her and inflict her with spoilt children. However, she meets a cute curate and the story ends happily. This book is very slim and not ridden with any lengthy digressions that often mar the classics of that age. She goes deep into the psychology of the character and describes their feelings in great detail. She also describes the environs almost photographically and brings the scene alive to us.

The only fault of this work is extreme piety and often correct-to-the-point-of-harshness attitude of the heroine. She allows no levity to the children and young girls, and often follows the story through to make the reader realize that the girls suffered in later due to some frivolity of theirs in young age.

If I compare both the books, Tenant of Wildfell Hall, her second work, is much better. The story is gripping and the female characters are very strong. In face of Huntingdon’s dissipation, Helen seems too correct, but that is the fault of the times. The character of Helen grows from a skittish young girl to a fine woman who is very sure of herself. When she finds love again, she is not afraid of revealing her true feelings and ends up practically proposing to the young man. Again, like Agnes Grey, Tenant of the Wildfell Hall is a slim book and does not put in any story elements that are unnecessary. Her realistic, flourish-less language is a delight to read even in these times. Indeed she writes more like Anne Austen than Anne Bronte. But she has to be lauded for sticking to her convictions and writing the way she did, so apart from the more romantic style of her sisters. With a will like hers and a talent like hers, who knows what beautiful stories she would have turned out, had she lived longer.

About Planet eBook and Our Free Classic Literature eBook

2009-09-02T19:40:00.001-07:00

About Planet eBook and Our Free Classic Literature eBook

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How Green Was My Valley

2009-08-18T08:10:00.000-07:00

Some books, I am sure, seek you out.

I had gone to this second hand bookshop on a lazy Sunday afternoon. I was browsing through the books. Actually I was hoping to get some old romances which abound in these shops. Some Georgette Hayer, some Nora Roberts, a bestseller or two, pulp fiction. I did pick up Jackie Collins' Hollywood Husbands, ok, mission accomplished partially. Some more digging and I come across a collected works of Sherlock Holmes, great. And then this book by Richard Llewellyn falls into my hands.

Years ago, sometime in the 80s, Doordarshan (god bless it) used to show award winning (or acclaimed) films on late nights fridays. I was about to snooze off when I saw the start credits rolling for the movie How Green Was My Valley. A few scenes and sleep was far away from my eyes. I watched the movie mesmerised. I had absolutely no idea (as there was no google then) that this was a movie adaptation of an acclaimed book.

As was the movie so was the book. One chapter into it, and I was hooked. Llewellyn recreates life in a mining town in Wales with simplicity and candor. We get to know about a respectable family of Morgans. The father, Gwilym Morgan, the mother Beth and several brothers and sisters of the narrator Huw Morgan. The father is a true patriarch who holds his family together and plays an important role in the community. The mother is, likewise a matriarch who is able to manage her home and hearth well and keep a hospitable table.

The life in this family and the little community is ideal as long as all the members are able to stick to their roles. In such a perfect state, the little village can rival Eden. The local pastor Gruffydd is an able mentor to his folk. Even the owner of the mines, Mr Evans is not too inclined to greed and pays his men good wages. In such a scenario, the valley is beautiful and green despite the mining. The accidents in the mines are fewer, the people less ambitious, more god fearing and happy.

Soon, fissures start appearing in this Eden. Fear of exploitation by the owners bring in the Union which in turn makes the owners more wary. The new owners are greedy and want to dig more without a care for the environment, making the slag heaps rise higher. There are more accidents and women and children are suddenly made vulnerable by the rising deaths. People start leaving the village in search of a better future. The close knit little community crumbles.

This is backdrop in which little Huw grows up, and loves to distraction. He does not want to change this way of life and wants the Eden of childhood intact.

We can feel the love with which the pretty portrait of a conventional life in a little Wales village is drawn. Like Huw, we want it to remain as it is, quaint and lovely. We want to see his father and brothers marching in home from the colliery covered in soot and rubbing it all off with a bath of hot water. Sitting down to a hearty meal with the pastor and later singing Welsh songs in their hearty voices. We want to see Bronwen, his beloved sister-in-law, happy in her domestic life with Ivor. His sister Angharad peeping out of the window to take a look at Mr. Gruffydd, hoping he would return her passion. Little Huw who finds love of his own when he takes Ceinwen over the hills.

It is a novel of epic proportions. I have found that the Huw Morgan saga continues in 3 more books by the same author. I hope I find these books too somewhere.

The movie - Superlative.
The book - of course more detailed and super-superlative.

Warning - I am devouring books these days.

Time is nothing !

2009-08-15T20:05:00.000-07:00

It has been my fortune to read two wonderful novels in the recent times. Novels that have excited and challenged me. Both the novels play with Time. One is a scholarly research into the past of a fictional poet couple, another about a fictional creature who is at the mercy of Time. Past and present are required to be blended seamlessly in both these novels.

Possession by AS Byatt was gifted to me by a blogger friend who I had the privilege of meeting. One chapter into it and I was hooked. It was about a research scholar Roland Mitchell who comes upon a letter hitherto undiscovered from a Victorian Poet (fictional) Randolph Henry Ash to some unknown woman. I have done a year of MA English Literature and am quite familiar with the tracts of texts that delve into the personal life of writers, trying to find clues to their genius. It seems voyeuristic and thrilling at the same time. I have read scholars who tried to decode who the 'dark lady' was that Shakespeare mentions in his sonnets. I can imagine how such a letter would throw scholars like these into a tizzy. So it is. Roland keeps the letter a secret while he tries to unravel the mystery behind it. RH Ash had an unblemished personal life and this hint of extra marital romance is sure to create waves in the literary world. As Roland has a hunch that the lady in question is Christabel LaMotte, he has to take Dr Maud Bailey into confidence as she is the one who knows all there is to know about the Victorian poetess who was thought to be a lesbian.

Together Maud and Roland try to piece the story of the Victorian lovers together, like stalkers from another age they try to follow the steps of the past lovers. They cannot keep their stealth for long as established scholars can sniff out that this couple is up to something. More people get sucked into the story till it becomes a delightful, almost comic, free for all.

The book operates on many levels, it is a work of astounding scholarship, as AS Byatt creates two poets and also a body of their work. It is also a gentle sweet stabbing satire on scholars who get too voyeuristic and too meddling and too digging at times in trying to discover all about their favorite authors. It is also a story of a love of great depth unearthed gradually and lovingly recreated. There is a romantic tension between the two scholars Maud and Roland as well, and they find themselves shedding their inhibitions and bonding as they journey along the path of the lovers past. It is a mystery too, as secrets spill out of Victorian closets. It even has a twist in the end.

A magnificent book to be savored again and again.

The Time Traveller's Wife by Audrey Niffnegger was recommended to me by
Couchpapaya many times over. When I saw the trailer of the movie that was based on the book, I knew it was time to read it. I received the book from flipkart on thursday the 12th of August, 2009 I read one chapter and was immediately hooked. I devoured the book by late last night, 14th August, 2009. The title of this blog is a quote from the book.

A BIG RECKLESS NOVEL.. UTTERLY CONVINCING says a blurb in the back by Daily Telegraph.

So True.

How can I describe this book? It is so bold and original and so sure footed. Henry DeTamble is a time traveller. His body gets pulled into different time zones by its own accord, and the experience is not pleasent. He arrives naked in a spot that is not always of his choosing, he has to forage for money and clothes and survive till the time he is pulled back. He has to maintain a strict regimen about his time travels and be very moral. He will not use (except for a few notable exceptions) his time travel for profit, nor does he reveal the future too often to the 'straight' travellers. His concern is how to lead a normal life despite his digressions. Clare is sucked into his world when she is six years old and Henry is 36, he knows things about her that she doesnt and he knows he has to be very patient with her. It is like a love story that is constantly travelling back and forth into time. He knows their love will endure and she has to believe it, have faith in him.

The book is carefully dated and timed to make the reader realise at what point in time they are. It is easy to feel disoriented in a book like this, but Niffnegger is sure footed and you travel with her, eyes open, taking in each marvel. Henry has to keep fit, running miles everyday to be able to survive when he arrives in a different time zone, buck naked and vulnerable. He has to learn how to pick locks and steal, passing time sometimes in jail. Similarly Clare has to keep faith, learn to fend for herself when she finds Henry missing. She has to get on with her life and keep her body and soul together.

As I read this book, I was reminded of Possession that I read earlier, and realising that these two books really challenged me. My cup of happiness was filled to the brim when I saw a quote from AS Byatt in the middle of the Niffnegger book. It proabably wont make any sense out of context, but here is a part of the quote anyway.

This is always where I have been coming to. Since my time began. And when I go away from here, this will be the mid-point, to which everything else ran, before, and from which everything will run. But now, my love, we are here, we are now, and those times are running elsewhere.

Incidently, both the books have been made into movies. Possession stars Gwyneth Paltrow and Aaron Eckhart as the scholars and Jeremy Northram and Jennifer Ehle as the Victorian poets. The Time Traveller's Wife will star Eric Bana and Rachel McAdams. I have not seen either of these. TTW is yet to release and Possession can perhaps be found on DVD if I look for it. If I do watch the movies, I will surely write about them as well. But I do wonder how stories with such 'scapes can be made into films.

Hollywood Husbands - Jackie Collins

2009-08-04T23:42:00.000-07:00

I grabbed this book from the second hand book store. Its been a long time since I indulged in a bit of lit-trash. I have read a couple of her books earlier, Lucky and Hollywood Wives.

Jackie has this trademark style. She introduces several strands of stories at the outset, linking the characters in some way. For instance, in this book, there are three friends who struggled together once upon a time in Hollywood. Jack Python is rich and successful as TV talk show host. He is handsome and scores easily with women. He is dating Clarissa, a noted film actress and is thinking of settling down with her. Howard Solomon is a studio CEO and starlets love to dance at his whims. He is married to Poppy but wishes to play the field. Mannon Cable is a filmstar married to beautiful girl, but still years for his ex-wife Whitney Valentine. Jack Python has an older sister called Silver who has just bounced back from a total washout stage to being the top star on a TV show. She is single and despite being in the late forties, can pick and choose. She has a daughter called Heaven and they do not get along. Heaven is living with her grandfather. Her uncle Jack looks after her well. On the other hand, a famous model Jade has just moved to LA from New York. Wes Money is a bartender and drug runner, he is a survivor and a real man. All these fates are intertwined.

Oh.. there is a side plot of a psychotic killer on the loose. The novel gives us tantalising glimpses of her background and the people she has done away with, making them look like accidents. The reader is kept guessing about her identity. All we know is someone is gonna pay....

In typical Jackie style, we get a quick character sketch of all couples in the first couple of chapters, we get to know their agli pichli. What the chars have been doing and where they are headed. Then the story starts, things happen to this of that person, the story moves ahead. Some chars get together and make violent love. Some chars fall into a flashback, some cheat, some break up, some meet and fall in love and all that jazz.

Jackie Collins tries to be brash and brave and shocking. Errr maybe at one time she was. Now she aint. Despite her characters trying hard to be bad, they wind up being good. Even a drug sniffling, ass-licking, wife cheating b**tard like Howard whimpers tamely by the time the book is to end. Silver falls in love ... jeez ! Wes Money turns straight (in his dealings - his orientation is straight right from the start). All the husbands turn seedha sada at the end.

What Jackie is, is a good read. Her books are racy, fluffy, frothy. Good for airports. I hardly ever fly, but there are times when I feel I am waiting at an airport. When I am home, I am just whiling time till I am back to the kitchen for dinner, or off to sleep, or doing some other chore. Jackie is a perfect read for the waiting period.

She likes to draw a strong character that reminds you of someone in the entertainment business. So Silver is drop dead glamourous and talented and a diva like - say - Marilyn Monroe. Clarissa is a serious actor in the mold of Susan Sarandon or Meryl Streep. Mannon Cable is like Clark Gable (hey it rhymes even ! ). So while aam readers like us dont know these people intimately, we know through gossip rags the kind of things they do. So whatever Jackie tells us about them seems believeable.

Racy Fun and Glamourous. Thats what the book is !

Two - By Truman Capote

2009-06-13T20:49:00.000-07:00

It was the movie Capote that introduced the writer Truman Capote to me. It was a no-holds-barred view, showing the warts of the writer in full. I did a bit of research on the author and discovered that, besides the acclaimed In Cold Blood he had written the famous Breakfast at Tiffany's too. I was floored. I had no idea that the famous iconic movie was a book. Following my usual keeda about reading the book and watching the movie (Atonement, Slumdog M, Love Story, Gone with the Wind and many others I cant remember right away), I ordered the books right away.

Breakfast at Tiffany's:

Holly Golightly is a socialite, to put it politely. She tried her hand at a film career with little success, though the foray groomed her to behave like some hi-fi princess instead of poor trash that she really is. Now she does what she is best at, escorting rich and famous men. They provide her with some immediate social and financial security. Not for her the ruminations on what she will do when her looks fade. She is ridiculously young - just in her late teens, not an age when girls worry about what comes next. The sweep of her ambition is to marry someone rich so she can have what she wishes for.

Paul, the author who moves into the apartment above her discovers that she is a delightful person. She is sweet, caring and totally bindas. She lives in the moment and almost nothing shakes her.

I am not sure whether I can discuss the end where the book and movie make significant departures, but all I will say is that there is no romantic angle between the author and the girl in the book.

The Poet and the Prostitute is a common theme in literature. The assumption is that only the poet has the sensitivity to see beneath the surface and look at the woman in a prostitute (Pyasa). Other men are merely consumers, who look at the goods on offer and take their pick. They will screw the prostitute and take home the pristine to be a wife. Rarely will they stop to ponder at the prostitute in the wife (who will marry only for material benefits) or the pristine in the prostitute (who has a soul that is untouched by the material).

Holly Golightly is so alive, so beautiful, so fragile, so lively that she captures our imagination. Luckily for us, she is played by the incomparable Audrey Hepburn in the movie. Despite the differing fates she has in the book and the movie, she is still the best girl ever !

In Cold Blood

This novel has interesting origins. Truman Capote, already an acclaimed author, looking for new subjects to write upon, chanced upon a 300 word article in The New York Times about the multiple murder of a farmer's family in Holcomb, Kansas. This prompted Capote to go to Holcomb for some ground research on the story. He had a feeling it would make good material for a book. He took along his childhood friend Harper Lee to help him out. Lee and Capote met everyone in Holcomb and took first person accounts of the murdered family, Clutter. Capote also closely followed the progress of case by Alvin Dewey, who was investigating the crime. Subsequently, Dewey and his team nabbed the criminals, Smith and Hickock and trials began. The prosecution had the case neatly sewed up as they had formal confessions and all the evidence in place. As anticipated, the criminals were sentenced to hang till death.

Capote started speaking to the criminals and went into their backgrounds, talking to their family as well. He had material all ready for the book, but had not yet written a word.

However, this is just the background of the book. This is all revealed in the film Capote.

The novel states the details of the crime, traces the criminals, the work done by the KBI. Despite being a true story, it reads like a fictional thriller. It ends with a usual epilogue that tells what the surviving characters of the book (some of the citizens of Holcomb) did after the affair was over. What makes the book so effective is the fact that it is a true story. That feeling stays with you throughout the reading of the novel. Like a master craftsman, Capote keeps you engrossed in a story that you already know and on tenterhooks for an end that you already know. It the facts that you dont know, the little things, about the characters that add to the basic story and make the book so readable. At the end of the reading, the cut-out characters of the drab newspaper reports, the Clutters, Dewey, Nancy's boyfriend Bobby Rupp, her best friend, Susan are turned into people with flesh and blood, people who you may know. Christ, Bobby Rupp and Susan could yet be alive.

Truman Capote :

It's as if Perry and I grew up in the same house. And one day he stood up and went out the back door, while I went out the front.

Capote was an abandoned child, he grew up at the mercy of various relatives in Alabama. He was a childhood friend of Harper Lee and appeared in her novel "To Kill a Mockingbird" as Dill. Right from an early age, 11, he wrote stories and got them published too. He lived his life kingsize, a toast of the social scene in New York, a braggart (Dill was a braggart too and it seems he kept the habit as he grew up), not humble, enjoyed running others down, used people to further his own ends. Okay ! All said and done, an amazing writer. He is extremely surefooted with his stories, telling us things at their proper place, not a minute later or sooner. It is almost as if he can visulize his story, map it mentally, and put things right where they belong. Writing is a craft as much as art, and requires blood and sweat. But you need talent for this craft to turn it into art. Some people just have it. Truman Capote was one.

Since each story presents its own technical problems, obviously one can't generalize about them on a two-times-two-equals-four basis. Finding the right form for your story is simply to realize the most natural way of telling the story. The test of whether or not a writer has defined the natural shape of his story is just this: After reading it, can you imagine it differently, or does it silence your imagination and seem to you absolute and final? As an orange is final. As an orange is something nature has made just right.

The above quote has been pulled out of Wikipedia, because it illustrates his writing so well. Only a true author can be dispassionate about his own experiences, and make it seem as if it happened to someone else. In Breakfast at Tiffany's, which is a compilation of some short stories, there is a very personal story about Truman Capote and a crazy aunt who he grew up with, called A Christmas Memory. At no point in the story do you feel it has anything to do with Capote. The story is like a portrait of a poor trash disadvantaged old lady who is determined to live life on her own terms. And, at the begining of the collection, we have a similar story of a pretty young poor girl, Holly Golightly, who is determined to live life on her own terms. It is as if the writer can sense the spirit in people, whether they are beautiful and young or old and decrepit. In Cold Blood gives us the workings of the mind of criminals, how ordinary they seem, and the triggers that set them off that make them commit crimes on an impulse.

A magnificent writer, he should be on the shelf of all book afficionados.

Under a Bell Jar

2009-04-18T19:41:00.000-07:00

It can be both beautiful and terrifying to look inside a human soul

I think this was said by DH Lawrence. It is hard to show someone the insides of your soul. Do we dare? Not me. Not one person in the whole world know all about me. We have been trained from childhood onwards to put out only a bright good face to the world and keep our demons to ourselves.

Sylvia Plath, the extraordinary poet, dared to show the world her demons by writing a book about her early days of grappling with mental illness in her first and only novel - The Bell Jar. The protogonist of the novel is Esther, a girl from a small New England town who has studied on scholarships and got straight A's all her life. It starts with her internship at a fashion magazine in New York with 11 other girls from eclectic backgrounds. For the girls, it is a step forward into life, to be able to live in New York for a month at the expense of a magazine.

"I
Am a pure acetylene
Virgin
Attended by roses,
By kisses, by cherubim,
By whatever these pink things mean."
Fever The Collected Poems [Sylvia Plath].

This novel that begins on a note of hope and a promise of a life well spent soon disintegrates as a sensitive Esther is not able to cope with the hurts of life. She can cope with studies and papers and excel at them, but life terrifies her. Soon the month is up and she is back at her small town, with her mother and steps into her first deep depression, followed by an attempt to kill herself with an overdose of sleeping pills.

"Dying
Is an art, like everything else.
I do it exceptionally well.

I do it so it feels like hell.
I do it so it feels real.
I guess you could say I've a call."
Lady Lazarus [Sylvia Plath].

Death eludes her and she finds herself put into a variety of mental institutions. This was the early '50s when electric shocks and unsympathetic doctors actually complicated the state of the patients' mental health. However, after a couple of bad hospitals, Esther's treatment at a swanky mental resort is sponsored by a philanthropic woman.

Even when her mental state is at an ebb, Esther does not stop experiencing life. We all do it, but are not sensitised enough to feel each moment. That is a gift given to Esther - to feel each moment of her life as it walks past her. She gets into the details of her life with Buddy, her boyfriend, her first witnessing of a childbirth, her blank outs, her curious relationship with Joan- who seems more of an alter-ego or a shadow- than a childhood friend. Her detailing is so perfect that you are let into her murky world and she does not spare you the torture she went through. It is like an autopsy of a soul.

"A certain minor light may still
Leap incandescent

Out of kitchen table or chair
As if a celestial burning took
Possession of the most obtuse objects now and then—"
Black Rook in Rainy Weather[Sylvia Plath].

Such achingly beautiful lines these are. And the novel too, is full of her quiet gift for words, not flamboyant, but precise and perfect. Kafkaesque - yes, that is term I would use for it, especially as Sylvia Plath seems to start, in terms of timeline, right where Kafka left off.

The novel is also described as a feminist tract because of Esther's rejection of traditional woman's role of marrying and keeping house and having children. In the current times it seems as if Esther was merely trying to assert her individuality in times when it was anachronistic to do so. She was woman ages ahead of her times, one of the catalysts for change, no wonder she is still an icon for a thinking woman.

This above line should be end of this blog with my tribute to all budding writers - especially bloggers - in Slyvia's words. But I wish to discuss just one more thing. I have read about the first sexual experience of another writer as well, Han Suyin. Interestingly, Han Suyin describes a void she felt after her first sex, a nothingness. Sylvia leads us into a realm of pain and hemorrage. It is almost as it they want to cut out the passion that lead up to it, and reject any feminine impulses they felt at the moment. I feel that is what the feminist writers missed out on in their literature, in an attempt to reject all feminine myths, they rejected their own femininity. But I guess, at that time, it was necessary to do that to bring about the change. And for that, all women have to be grateful to them. It is because of their sacrifices that we are able to vote, claim right to be educated alongside men, some of us can lead degenerate lives, be single mothers, marry lesbian lovers, heck, just be ourselves.

"Our kind multiplies:

We shall by morning
Inherit the earth.
Our foot's in the door."
Mushrooms [Sylvia Plath].

These lines are for all my fellow bloggers ! Our tribe multiplies as we talk, our foot is in the door.

Ryan Adams singing Sylvia Plath