In Paper Towns, John Green again creates quirky outsiders just on the edge of full-blown geekery; I often wonder how much of these male lead characters are evidence of Green’s own idiosyncratic personality. Quentin Jacobsen, or Q as he is more commonly known, is close to graduating from high school. Friend to the band geeks, but not musical himself, his social group hovers towards the outer edges of the high school milieu. His next door neighbour is the queen-bee of the high school social world, Margo Roth Spiegelman, who he has been madly in love with since they were children. As children, they discovered a dead body in a local park but drifted apart over the years. Until one night, just a few weeks away from graduation, Margo appears at his window and lures him into a night of adventure of elaborate pranks and spirited youthful antics. The next day, she disappears.

It was life as it had always been — only more fatigued. I had hoped that last night would change my life, but it hadn’t — at least not yet.

Q is left behind with a series of clues, including highlighted passages of Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself”, and induced by his all too brief contact with Margo, sets off to find her and discover who she really is. Until about halfway through I thought that Paper Towns was going to follow the same paths as Looking for Alaska and An Abundance of Katherines – and while all three novels have very similar storylines, Paper Towns diverges from the usage of a female character as the gateway to the male’s understanding of love, life and everything in between. While Q’s quest does have aspects of this, the combination of analysis of “Song of Myself” and Q’s unveiling of his illusions of Margo and lack of real understanding or knowledge of her as a person elevate Paper Towns to a increasingly complex self-referential piece of literature.

And all at once I knew how Margo Roth Spiegelman felt when she wasn’t being Margo Roth Spiegelman: she felt empty. She felt the unscaleable wall surrounding her. I thought of her asleep on the carpet with only that jagged sliver of sky above her. Maybe Margo felt comfortable there because Margo the person lived like that all the time: in an abandoned room with blocked-out windows, the only light pouring in through holes in the roof. Yes. The fundamental mistake I had always made — and that she had, in fairness, always led me to make — was this: Margo was not a miracle. She was not an adventure. She was not a fine and precious thing. She was a girl.

In discovering Margo, after an epic twenty-four hour road trip with his closest friends (and it must be mentioned that Green writes friendships so well), Q learns that a) she didn’t want to be found, and b) his illusions and his idealization of her does not match up to the “real” image of Margo Roth Spiegelman. This unequal distribution of images of a person isn’t unsettling to Q’s entire understanding of life, however, but offers him a lesson in the perception of the Other, and that ultimately reveals more about himself than it does about her. While Margo is an intriguing character, the novel is about Q’s revelation about perception and understanding, and it is written in such a beautifully simple and engaging manner, keenly aware of the growing pains of adolescence. Margo is used as the motivation that sets in motion Q’s mission to further self-awareness, but in a much more complex and satisfying way than Green’s previous novels.

I have so much more to say about this novel, but I think it is going to take several further readings before I really am able to articulate what I want to say. (And, incidentally, I think that someone with the knowledge and extreme patience with French psychoanalytical theory could write a killer Lacanian analysis of Paper Towns.) However, Paper Towns is a deeply insightful novel, with characters and issues that are easy to relate to, and, finally, a female character that is more complex than divining light for the slightly awkward male character.

You just got to see that junk is just another nine to five gig in the end, only the hours are a bit more inclined toward shadows.

Carroll’s descent into heroin begins when he starts shooting up under the mistaken belief that marijuana, not heroin, is the habit forming drug. Young Jim guides us through his journey toward and through (but not out of) his addiction and the risks he takes in order to get his fix. The beginning of the diaries start off innocently enough, his peers are his school and neighbourhood friends, they commit crime and take lighter drugs, engage in sometimes funny pranks, and the usual boyish behaviour you’d expect. It is only through comparison that we can see any evidence of the loss of innocence/childhood/faith (delete as appropriate), because Carroll himself doesn’t seem to want to expand upon this. It seems, through his bleary eyes, that the drug addiction is to be seen as something of a gain, an extension of himself, something that offers a better version of himself through the purer state of existence that he aims for.

Now there’s one set of gimmicks hid up there and it’s the filthiest spike you ever could see, been used by guys I prefer not to think of out of the fact my stomach is a bit upset. But you bet your ass there is not one bit of hesitation in drawing your shot into that harpoon and shoving it into your mainline. If you got dope you will get it inside you no matter how and I will too I can’t deny that. But here’s what I can’t get. Willie asks me for a slug of soda so I pass him the bottle and what the hell does he do but pull that old second grade bullshit of wiping off the top of the bottle before he takes some. Shit, I men anything I can give him from that bottle he’s gonna get a lot easier from using the same spike. None of these lames think twice, or once, in fact.

It’s difficult to feel any sympathy for Carroll, and he wouldn’t want it if we did. Though there are very few moments of inspired prose, Carroll jerking off on the roof under the stars and moon stands out as one instance of vivid imagery, the majority of The Basketball Diaries is tediously boring.

Cannery Row in Monterey in California is a poem, a stink, a grating noise, a quality of light, a tone, a habit, a nostalgia, a dream. Cannery Row is the gathered and scattered, tin and iron and rust and splintered wood, chipped pavement and weedy lots and junk heaps, sardine canneries or corrugated iron, honky-tonks, restaurants and whore-houses, and little crowded groceries, and laboratories and flop-houses. Its inhabitants are, as the man once said, ‘whores, pimps, gamblers, and sons of bitches,’ by which he meant Everybody. Had the man looked through another peep-hole he might have said: ‘Saints and angels and martyrs and holy men,’ and he would have meant the same thing.

John Steinbeck’s Cannery Row is set in the waterfront street known as Cannery Row in Monterey, California. Somehow, in the space of what is comparatively a novella, Steinbeck lets us into the worlds of a multitude of characters who reveal themselves to be more than our initial impressions of them and a testament to the necessity of community. The narrative is fractured, with short chapters dedicated to different characters as the poorer inhabitants of the street attempt to throw a party for Doc, a marine biologist who has offered much to the community. While the intention, led by the bums of the Palace Flophouse, is good, the follow through just doesn’t go quite to plan; but, the community eventually pulls together to throw a party that honours the kind-hearted Doc.

Within the narrative itself, Steinbeck – mainly through Doc’s observations of marine life, but also through the omniscient voice of the narrator – reflects on the natural world and how it reflects our own. Seemingly tranquil sea life proves to be capable of the the most vicious violence, the bums catching frogs for money is described with the detail of a bloody battlefield, a gopher builds a home in a safe area but cannot find a mate so moves on to a more dangerous area. The attention to these aspects of nature reveals life on the Row to be similarly delicate ecosystem.

Early morning is a time of magic in Cannery Row. In the grey time after the light has come and before the sun has risen, the Row seems to hang suspended out of time in a silvery light. The street lights go out, and the weeds are a brilliant green. The corrugated iron of the canneries glows with the pearly lucence of platinum or old pewter. No automobiles are running then. The street is silent of progress and business. And the rush and drag of the waves can be heard as they splash in among the piles of the canneries. It is a time of great peace, a deserted time, a little era of rest.

Despite the brevity of the text, the nuanced cast of characters and their stories feel complete. To add more to them would be going overboard. Steinbeck’s simplicity, he possesses an innate awareness of the aspects of these characters which make them a.) interesting to a reader and b.) integral to the Cannery Row hive. They may not be extraordinary people, but their talents, their humanity and their generosity lend them a dignity which cannot be denied. Dora, the madame of the Bear Flag brothel, sends her girls out to look after the children of the town when influenza strikes and the ill cannot afford medical assistance, despite it being the busiest time of year at the brothel. Lee Chong owns the grocery store, and though the locals owe him large amounts of money, he doesn’t chase it up – knowing that eventually they’ll repay him rather than trek to the market in the next town. Henri the local artists constantly builds and dismantles his boat, never wishing to complete it.

Financial bitterness could not eat too deeply into Mack and the boys, for they were not mercantile men. They did not measure their joy in goods sold, their egos in bank balances, nor their loves in what they cost.

After the first disastrous attempt to give Doc a party – to which he doesn’t even arrive, and great damage is inflicted upon his house – the street not only makes outcasts of the perpetrators; but begins to suffer itself. It’s as though if one part of this community is ill at ease, the whole community faces great misfortune. As Mack and the boys are gradually forgiven, the town heals, the illness and misfortune lifts. It’s a beautiful illusion, and it is impossible not to feel a deep yearning for a sense of community as deep and essential as is evident in Cannery Row. Does community like this exist anymore? Did it ever?

‘It has always seemed strange to me,’ said Doc. ‘The things we admire in men, kindness and generosity, openness, honesty, understanding, and feeling are the concomitants of failure in our system. And those traits we detest, sharpness, greed, acquisitiveness, meanness, egotism, and self-interest are the traits of success. And while men admire the quality of the first they love the produce of the second.’

Cannery Row is a deceptively simple story – the inhabitants of a street gather to throw a party for an honoured resident – but the heart and the faith in humanity that Steinbeck imbues this story with is amazing, and difficult to forget. Celebration of good deeds and genial warmth are essential to the proliferation of the human spirit, and despite their lack of ambition or lofty pursuits, and in this the folks of Cannery Row are richer than most.

Sweet Thursday is a sequel set years after the events in Cannery Row, although I will be trying to get a copy soon, I think I’ll let the pleasures of Cannery Row linger a little while longer.

I took the past few days off, an internet sabbatical perhaps you could call it. Maybe it’s just me, but every so often the internet just becomes just too much and I feel myself going slightly screwy with information overload, to the point where it feels like the only possible release is a Scanners style explosion. However, the best remedy is usually to turn off the computer, remove myself from most, if not all, online services, and take some time to rejuvenate. If I were rich, this would probably involve expensive day spas and intensive massages by attractive young men;  instead I’ve just hung out with my Dad, worked (a surprisingly effective way to boost my self-confidence) and caught up on some (offline) reading.

In the time before deciding to take some time off the internet, I did come across some interesting links which might, if you’re not already suffering from hyper-information related illness, also be of interest to you.

• David Foster Wallace it turns out was a prolific book annotator. The University of Texas acquired his archive and have put examples of some of the items online. His annotations of a few novels can be seen, including a scribbled addition to a  portrait of Cormac McCarthy. Fittingly enough for a man with an impressive vocabulary, there is also a look inside his marked up dictionary.
• I’m not sure how I’d missed this previously, but the Carson McCullers Center of Columbus State University also has a blog, keeping interested parties up to date with the events and happenings organized by the center. One to keep an eye on, perhaps.
• Hey Oscar Wilde! It’s Clobberin’ Time!!! is a collection of visual interpretations and portraits of authors and fictional characters.
• And, finally, Toby Lichtig is determined to do what those of weaker resolve have failed time and time again, to give up book buying for six (6 … 6!! SIX!! SIX!1!?) months. Godspeed Toby Lichtig, godspeed.

[image credit: Virginia Frances Sterret, frontispiece to Old French Fairy Tales, by the Comtesse de Ségur. Philadelphia, 1920, via archive.org]

What I appreciated about Hoax Nation was the breadth of topics covered, however the limitations of space in Arcade’s signature small sized books meant that some foundational information was left out, leaving this particularly ignorant reader to seek out more about the Ern Malley affair and Bodyline scandal in order to better understand the hoaxed material related to them. Nonetheless, Hoax Nation works as a brilliant starting point for the reverse side of the official Australian history. Covering the famous literary hoaxes of Norma Khouri and Helen Demidenko which played to cultural perceptions and caused debate about the accountability of publishers, it seems that for every hoax that was executed for fame, fortune and glory, there were many that worked on a multitude of levels.

It certainly seems as though hoaxes originate in response to a demand, or are created to fill a perceived gap in culture (in the 1980s and 90s there’s little doubt the advent of multiculturalism coincided with a proliferation of ethnic and indigenous identity frauds in the arts, especially literature – impostors, in particular, flourish when we regard the background and identity of the singer as being as important as the song). And in the heat of the battle, whether the conflict is over politics, culture, history, science or religion, truth is often the first casualty and hoaxes can appear on any side.

While many of the hoaxes seem to have been carried out for the sheer joy of mischief, many including the curious case of George Barrington, appear to have been committed for more politically motivated reasons. A pickpocket sent to the convict colony of Australia in the late 18th century, a number of best-selling books telling of the imagined life in the new colony were published under Barrington’s name. Known as something of a celebrity criminal in England, the move to Australia saw Barrington eventually become a police superintendent, and supposedly, halt a potential mutiny on the journey over. Largely plagiarized from other sources – and yet still quoted today as legitimate historical sources! – there is little to suggest that Barrington actually wrote the stories. Nonetheless, the books not only whet the appetite for tales from Australia and narratives of convict life, but also as proof, as it were, that criminal reformation in the antipodes was a successful endeavour.

Hoax Nation: Australian Fakes and Frauds from Plato to Norma Khouri features a wide array of hoaxes – from art, literature, fauna, landscape, and Australian legends – bursting with fascination and a salute to the numerous bullshit artists who have peppered our history with intrigue and humour. Not always merely for the fun of deception, many of these hoaxes force us to ask important questions about identity, about authenticity and about our preconceived cultural perceptions.

[Disclaimer: publisher supplied copy, with thanks to the team at Arcade Publications. For my reviews of other Arcade titles, please see: Madame Brussels: This Moral Pandemonium, E.W. Cole: Chasing the Rainbow and Our Girls: Aussie Pin-Ups of the 40s and 50s.]

“May I be excused for a moment?” he asked.
“Is it important?”
“I think I have an eyelash in my pupillary sphincter,” replied Colin and the class erupted into laughter. Ms. Sorenstein sent him on his way, and then Colin went into the bathroom and, staring at the mirror, plucked the eyelash from his eye, where the pupillary sphincter is located.
After class, Hassan found Colin eating a peanut butter and no jelly sandwich on the wide stone staircase at the school’s back entrance.
“Look,” Hassan said. “This is my ninth day at a school in my entire life, and yet somehow I have already grasped what you can and cannot say. And you cannot say anything about your own sphincter.”
“It’s part of your eye,” Colin said defensively. “I was being clever.”
“Listen, dude. You gotta know your audience. That bit would kill at an ophthalmologist convention, but in calculus class, everybody’s just wondering how the hell you got an eyelash there.”
And so they were friends.

Socially awkward and intellectually gifted, Colin Singleton is broken up over his most recent break-up with Katherine #19. (I’ve tried not to over think how such a socially inept young man has managed to charm nineteen Katherines, when he is completely and utterly devoid of social skills.) His best friend, the hilarious Hassan, takes him on a cross-country road trip to heal his wounds, landing finally in Gutshot, Tennessee via a visit to the grave of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. There they meet Lindsey Lee Wells and decide to stop in Gutshot working for her mother. Bonding with Lindsey and her friends, and working on his formula to predict the outcomes of his Katherine relationships, Colin learns a little about himself, and a lot about life.

The reading quieted his brain a little. Without Katherine and without the Theorem and without his hopes of mattering, he had very little. But he always had books. Books are the ultimate Dumpees: put them down and they’ll wait for you forever; pay attention to them and they always love you back.

My main issue with Looking for Alaska [review] was the use of Alaska as a narrative device rather than a fully fleshed out character; her motivations are hidden, but only to be uncovered by our sleuthing protagonist. In An Abundance of Katherines, the female romantic lead, Lindsey, forms a more genuine connection with Colin without the manic mood swings or mysterious air, before exploring their relationship further. Though Colin does come to see the unpredictability of life as a grand pleasure through Lindsey’s influence, it seems to shift based on more a shared experience – they both overcome heartache and find each other, and happiness, despite of it.

An Abundance of Katherines is full of random trivial tidbits and a number of seemingly insignificant subplots, all of which somehow manage to strengthen a reader’s perception of the story and the characters. The friendship between Hassan and Colin is very funny, a pair of more unlikely friends you could not imagine, but their sincere affection and friendly vernacular are so endearing. Even if his use of female characters is a little problematic, John Green knows how to write about close friendships and An Abundance of Katherines is a clever and amusing look at the complexity of friendships, relationships and our own understanding of life.

In other news I got a CAVAL card the other day, which means I can borrow from every academic library in Victoria. C’mon, that is exciting news! Every university library in the state! This newly gained access to (probably) the best library facilities in the state will help me with my comprehensive reading goal. Who knows how far I will actually go with this endeavour, but maybe speaking about it in a public forum will be just the motivation I need to stick to it.

Otherwise, I’m really enjoying the Penguin Book of American Short Stories – who would have thought I’d be so taken with and kept awake at night by Nathaniel Hawthorne? Or happily read Herman Melville over lunch? Seems that the random choice from the limited literature section at my school library was a good one. I’m only a few stories in so imagine what further treasures are to be found!

So, until I determine how I’m going to tackle this comprehensive reading project, I’m going to take to curling up and watching the wild weather with some good books.

[image credit: a Library Project poster from 1941,  from Work Projects Administration Poster Collection of the Library of Congress.]

Jerome Searing is an orderly serving in Georgia in Sherman’s army. An exceptional marksman, he is given the task “to get as near the enemy’s lines as possible and learn all that he [can.]” As he enters the depths of the forest, his comrades predicting they’ll never see Searing again, contemplating that their enemy could potentially get hold of his rifle when he comes to his certain end. Methodically Searing makes his way through the growth, the danger of the task exciting him emotionally, but not physically. Finding the enemy gone, he discovers a plantation house, deserted, desolate, and in a state of great decay.

But it was decreed from the beginning of time that Private Searing was not to murder anybody that bright summer morning, nor was the Confederate retreat to be announced by him. For countless ages events had been so matching themselves together in that wondrous mosaic to some parts of which, dimly discernible, we give the name of history, that the acts which he had in will would have marred the harmony of this pattern.

While aiming his rifle at some distant Confederate soldiers, the plantation house collapses around Searing. Meanwhile, Searing’s brother Lieutenant  Adrian Searing is directed to advance in the same direction as his brother. Jerome regains consciousness, briefly hallucinating that he has been buried and his wife is kneeling on his chest. Caught trapped beneath a number of fallen beams, with only his right arm able to move, he slowly struggles to free himself. Unable to move the debris, he notices his rifle pointing at his forehead, remembering that he had cocked the gun and set the trigger and that the slightest touch could set it off. Continuing to free himself, he realizes that the rubble too could discharge the rifle, leaving him effectively helpless.

Gradually he became sensible of a pain in his forehead – a dull ache, hardly perceptible at first, but growing more and more uncomfortable. He opened his eyes and it was gone – closed them and it returned. ‘The devil!’ he said irrelevantly, and stared again at the sky. He heard the singing of birds, the strangely metallic note of the meadow lark, suggesting the clash of vibrant blades.

A severe pain in his head, he floats in and out of consciousness, sinking into a number of reveries. Fear and pain take hold of him, and he attempts to discharge the rifle to end it; only when he successfully uses a board to touch the trigger, the gun doesn’t fire but Jerome Searing dies regardless. He is, twenty two minutes after Lieutenant Adrian Searing has started in the same direction, discovered by the soldier, who pronounces the man dead, at least having been dead a week.

What struck me about “One of the Missing” is how intensely such a short passage of time is described and drawn out. Time is distorted – not only in Adrian’s estimation of the time of Jerome’s death – but in the narrative itself. What occurs within the twenty minutes reads like Jerome is in agony for days. War changes a man so irrevocably that his own brother is unable to recognize him. The suggestion that the stray bullet from the rifle has already penetrated Jerome’s brain is disturbing in his own inability to consider it a possibility, even as he feels a searing pain in his head. Even without having comprehensive knowledge of the historical context, “One of the Missing” is a war story that doesn’t romanticize the damaging effects of war and the split second decisions made under immense pressure.

[image credit: Ambrose Bierce, portrait by J.H.E. Partington.]

Just like that. From a hundred miles an hour to asleep in a nanosecond. I wanted so badly to lie down next to her on the couch, to wrap my arms around her and sleep. Not fuck, like in those movies. Not even have sex. Just sleep together, in the most innocent sense of the phrase. But I lacked the courage and she had a boyfriend and I was gawky and she was gorgeous and I was hopelessly boring and she was endlessly fascinating. So I walked back to my room and collapsed on the bottom bunk, thinking that if people were rain, I was drizzle and she was a hurricane.

The novel is divided into two distinct parts, Before and After, although until the After we can only guess what the before and after refers to. I have a soft spot for boarding school stories, stemming I think from a youthful foray into Enid Blyton’s Malory Towers series, which is why the Before section of the novel was so appealing. I really loved the Before section, as the group bonded and went through requisite teenage rituals of drinking and smoking and pulling elaborate pranks, learning to deal with unrequited desires and sex. The companionable intimacy was warm, rich unlikely dialogue and a romanticized view of the banal daily realities of their lives (similar to The Perks of Being a Wallflower’s “we were infinite” moments.) Although Alaska did show signs of being another fantasy of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl for Miles, the one who would show him about life, love and making it through the labyrinth of suffering, it never reached that stage, as the event the Before has been leading up to is Alaska’s death. On the verge of consummating his desire for her, distraught and drunk Alaska asks for the Colonel and Miles to cover for her and she drives off into the night toward her death.

I hadn’t thought of her smell since she died. But when the Colonel opened the door, I caught the edge of her scent: wet dirt and grass and cigarette smoke, and beneath that the vestiges of vanilla-scented skin lotion. She flooded into my present and only tact kept me from burying my face in the dirty laundry overfilling the hamper by her dresser. It looked as  I remembered it: hundreds of books stacked against the walls, her lavender comforter crumpled at the foot of her bed, a precarious stack of books on her bedside table, her volcanic candle just peeking out from beneath the bed. It looked as I knew it would, but the smell, unmistakably her, shocked me. I stood in the centre of the room, my eyes shut, inhaling slowly through my nose, the vanilla and the uncut autumn grass, but with each slow breath, the smell faded as I became accustomed to it and soon she was gone again.

Wracked with guilt, and what feels like only the slightest suggestion of grief, After shows Miles and the Colonel not only dealing with the possibility of their role in her death but attempting to resolve the circumstances of her death. Was it an accidental collision, or illustrative of suicidal behaviour? Miles and the Colonel focus their attentions – perhaps as a way of showing their grief – to playing detective. As the pieces come together, their conclusion amounts to little more than a heartfelt response to a homework essay for a religion class. They don’t come to terms with death itself, only with Alaska’s death. Her role and her death is minimized to freeing them of their own guilt – the upstanding young men learn their lesson, but the manic, troubled young girl must die for them to do so.

All problematic issues aside, Green’s writing style is lively, littered as it is with interesting references and lively dialogue. I’ve a feeling I would have loved it as a teenager, as it focuses on bookish, slightly socially outcast students who manage to navigate the weird terrain of high school with style, smarts, charm and just the right amount of awkwardness. Nonetheless, the reduction of Alaska to a totem of male fantasy and deliverance from guilt is disappointing, but I intend to read more of John Green’s young adult fiction in the future.

Delhi drawing rooms. They were what I remembered of the city from my childhood. Perhaps it was Delhi’s fragmented geography, or that it had no real restaurants the way Bombay had – restaurants that were not attached to five-star hotels – or just that it was an old city, closely bound, with people who all seemed to know each other, but there was no setting, no cityscape more evocative of the city I grew up in than a lamp-lit drawing room with a scattering of politicians, journalists, broken-down royals, and perhaps an old Etonian, lying fatly on a deep sofa. And it was a dinner like this, with two blue and red glass fanooses burning in a corner, jasmine floating in a porcelain dish on a dining table draped in a white tablecloth, with white-on-white chikan-work flowers embroidered on it, and the over-strong aroma of a scented candle, that my mother gave for the writer.

After a stint in London, Aatish returns to Delhi to revise his novel, he spends his time with his devoted girlfriend, Sanyogita, and attend numerous parties and events. Recommended a gym by a family friend, he meets the enigmatic trainer Aakash. The two build a friendship which seems to be based on mutual admiration or envy of the other. Aakash, though living in a poor area of Delhi and with no entry into the privileged world that Aatish lives in, manages to integrate with Aatish’s social circle and significantly improve his social standing. Throughout the novel the writing is lushly floral and colourful, as Aatish casts a watchful and aware eye over his surroundings, both those familiar and unknown.

The light in Delhi had changed; it came now from another angle, and far from striking the surface of buildings, seemed to lose its footing on rooftops and columns. And though it was warm, you could sit in it for hours without breaking into a sweat. Hazy and scented with smoke, it rose like a glow from the city, heightening the sensory power of the Delhi winter. The bougainvillea, the occasional smell of kebabs, the wail of a garbage collector created so acute an impression that it was as if some part of an old photograph, having shed the inertia of years, had gently begun to move.

Using himself, or a fictionalized version of himself, characterized as a writer allows Taseer to subtly provide an interesting form of self-criticism, in a way preempting any criticism from the reader. It’s a clever technique, but not used to excess. Aatish receives the long awaited readers notes from the revised version of his novel; Aatish and Sanyogita discuss the merits of the work of Aatish’s writer friend and mentor; Zafar, Aatish’s Urdu teacher and renowned poet, and the writer friend provide him with writing advice – all of these incidences add a touch of self-awareness to the text. Not enough to distance the reader from the powerful narrative, but enough to give reason and evidence as to why The Temple-Goers is written as it is.

His face brightened. ‘Writing something modern, I hope,’ he said, ’something fresh and original.’ Then using the English words ‘fiction’ and ‘non-fiction’ in both instances to mean fiction, good and bad, he said, ‘In the way men live today, the pressures upon them – and there are great strains and injustices – you’ll find fiction. The past is all non-fiction.’
‘And write in English?’
‘In English,’ he answered firmly. ‘The Indian languages are finished; or, at least, literature in them is finished. When I began there were magazines, poetry meetings, the progressive writers were still around, poets could write for the screen, there were readers, libraries, critics – all gone, swept away in one generation. It’s a very fragile thing, you know, literature; it needs an infrastructure. You can’t spend your life writing into the dark like me.’

The blurb and prologue of The Temple-Goers hint at a highly televised murder which doesn’t really come to the forefront of the narrative until the last fifty pages. While I did enjoy the rest of the novel, the gradual build up of Aatish and Aakash’s relationship and the gradual decay of Aatish and Sanyogita’s relationship, the vivid imagery of an India still trying to find it’s identity and the profound schism between the country’s rich and poor – the set-up in the promotional material or the introductory chapter of the supposedly crucial murder (and, presumably, who committed the crime, and all the how and why questions that come along with it) creates an expectation which is never quite fulfilled. When the murder and its wide reaching repercussions do reach their climax, it feels all too rushed, given the languid time spent on all the other details of the narrative. This horrific event, the brutal murder of a character we have come to know not intimately, but enough to feel the shock, however predictable it is, and the ways in which the convictions play out are accelerated so much that their effects aren’t as deeply felt as other aspects of the novel. Perhaps this expedited account is to suggest the stark difference between the daily realities of Delhi and how quickly events can change our circumstances, our relationships and our friendships. Regardless, I wish it had been drawn out more, reading another two hundred pages of Taseer’s vibrant writing would have been a pleasure.

A compelling narrative about friendships and rapacious ambition, and a portrait of a modern, changing India, The Temple-Goers really surprised me. From the promotional material and vague recollections of interviews and brief mentions in articles, along with the publicist-ready catchphrase of “the Indian Bret Easton Ellis”, I expected something a lot more dry, amoral and disconnected. Instead, The Temple-Goers offers a rich insight into another culture undergoing an immense shift, while personalizing this through understandably flawed and conflicted characters.

[Disclaimer: publisher supplied advance reading copy. An extract of The Temple-Goers is available online.]