THE GLASS CASTLE

The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls

Memoirs do not interest me much but who can resist an introduction that begins like this:

“I was sitting in a taxi, wondering if I had overdressed for the evening, when I looked out the window and saw Mom rooting through a Dumpster…I was stuck in traffic two blocks from the party where I was heading. Mom stood fifteen feet away.”

I first read “The Glass Castle” in 2006. A couple of weeks ago I came across this intriguing opening again. Mid-way, 2018, time to read it again.

This memoir not for the faint-hearted.

A memoir not for the fainthearted.

This wild memoir of unusual easy going parents and their three daughters and a son, related by the second daughter, Jennette, reads like fiction. A family much in love, so together, and so desperately poor. In spite of the atrocious life they lead none of the children hate their parents or run away from home. They hardly ever rebel. They readily accept hardships and try their best to be of help to each other, make things better.

The father is intelligent, imaginative, creative. A dreamer who drinks excessively, gambles, draws elaborate plans to build a “Glass Castle” for the family, tries to discover gold, and researches to develop technology to burn low-grade bituminous coal more efficiently. To his favourite daughter, Jeannette, whom he calls “Mountain Goat”, he gives the best gift, the planet Venus in the sky. Nobody can take that away from her. He can accept any job and do it well. He often does but he gets easily bored, picks fights, gets drunk and leaves his job within a short time.

The mother, a teacher by profession, artist, poet, novelist does not believe in routine work, not even for a good wage and neither does she believe in selling any of her art-work. She’s is a free spirit.

The reader wonders how parents could bring up their children in utter poverty, allow their starving children scour rubbish bins for food, and clothes. There are times when they don’t even have drinking water. They are left to fend for themselves. The tough times they go through are due to the parent’s choice of a life style for the children. The children grow up independent. It would be easy to judgemental with our own ideas of parenthood. We find it disturbing to accept that parents who love their children, think they are doing the right thing letting a child as young as three fend for itself, believing it to be in the child’s best interest.

Both parents are able bodied and could find work easily. The children endure much hardship but are not sorry for themselves. When I read this memoir words like dysfunctional, or selfish or child-abuse did not come to mind.

“Loving, sweet, touching, heart-wrenching, sad, frightening, emotional, embarrassing, uplifting, annoying. Unbelievable” – a jumble of descriptions more suited.

The writing is interesting and sumptuous. Descriptions of even the most decadent times of their lives are sharp, detailed, colourful. During one family argument language that the father and the mother-in-law spit at each other is outrageous and hilarious. One comes across new terms of non-endearment too risqué to mention in this polite review.

There is humour too:

“We kept our sugar in a punch bowl on the kitchen table. This rat was not just eating sugar. He was bathing in it, wallowing in it, positively luxuriating in it, his flickering tail hanging over the side of the bowl, flinging sugar across the table.”

Sometime close to the end we learn this “Mom by the Dumpster” is not destitute, she has her collection of antique jewellery she keeps in a self-storage locker, she owns property in Phoenix and gets oil-lease royalties from her land in Texas. She always wears a two carat diamond ring the author and her brother found and gave to their mother.

An unbelievably true story that could easily be mistaken for fiction.

The Glass Castle by Jannette Walls
Published by Simon & Schuster, 2005

Floating Petals review by Mohsin Maqbool

(Goodreads Author)

Mohsin Maqbool‘s review

Nov 08, 2017

It was amazing

I HAD Leela Devi Panikar’s “Floating Petals” lying in my library for 10 months. I was thinking Leela’s book to be a run-off-the-mill stuff, so I wasn’t giving it much importance. However, towards the beginning of this month I thought I shouldn’t be jumping to conclusions, so I picked it up and started reading it. Right at the beginning of the book I found Leela’s entry to the BBC World “My Hometown” 200-word writing competition. One reading it I realized what a stupendous writer Leela is. There was no stopping me now from reading the book from front cover to back cover. One more thing: Leela had won the BBC writing competition.
“Floating Petals” is a book containing 14 short stories, each more beautiful than the other.

Hip author Leela.

“A Piece of Bread” is a lovely story about a girl’s first day at school. She is only interested in reading. She has probably learnt to read at home while waiting two years for school to reopen during the Japanese occupation. I am not sure but it could be a story about Leela’s childhood itself.
She is a brave and determined girl as, while most of the other students are crying or feeling morose, she is the only one who wants to read. Ironically, the first day of school is disappointing for her as there is no reading but only the eating of bread and butter.

A baby sucks a mango.

Here is the first sentence followed by the first paragraph from the story:
“Now I am tall.
“I lean over the sink as I suck on a large yellow mango stone. There are bits of mango flesh around my mouth and on my cheeks. Mango juice runs in rivulets down my chin and drips into the sink. Ugh! Now it runs down my arm and drips off my elbow.”

The difference between free and enslaved feet in the China of bygone days.

“Floating petals” is a cutting-edge story about a Chinese woman with four-inch feet. Here short feet are supposed to be a sign of beauty. In reality, babies in China during the 18th and 19th century had their feet tightly wrapped with a bandage so that they would not grow. Once they were married, it would be impossible for them to run away from home. In fact, they would be walking extremely slowly taking short baby-like steps. This tradition was carried out as women could not be trusted, not in the least bit.
“The woman rubbed Ma-ling’s feet with ground almond and frankincense and a generous amount of alum. She bound her feet with strips of wet cotton back and forth in a figure of eight, curling her toes back to the soles of her feet.”
It is a melancholic but beautiful story.

Chinese female mourners in hooded dresses.

The last story “After the Wedding” is absolutely beautiful and extremely touching. It is the story about an illiterate farm girl, Wenli, who gets married to a city man. Her husband hardly ever speaks to her. All of Wenli’s desires and wishes seem to have been crushed after marriage.
Here is an excerpt from the story: “Handfuls of perforated paper were thrown into the breeze to frighten away the spirits. After the funeral, the mourners were given red packets of money for good luck. Attending a funeral was an act of courage and they were rewarded.”

Howrah Station (West Bengal, India) circa early 1960s.

In “At the Railway Station”, Leela witnesses pin-drop silence when she arrives there at dawn. It could be any station in India. Soon with the emergence of light, a quick transformation is seen at the station with the hustle and bustle of passengers, rushing of porters (who are called coolies in the subcontinent), and the opening of shops. There is a beggar child too who overwhelms Leela with melancholia.
“Running Away” is a fabulous story about a girl who runs away from home as a blind woman, whom she took care of once, had told her that she would love her to stay with her. The day she runs away she is so excited that she even forgets to wear her shoes. However, running away is not as good as it seemed at first, as she misses her parents, her Mom’s cooking, and the fish her mother cooked which she earlier had found to be extremely smelly.

The long migration of the sparrow occurs in the dark, with only the stars and an imprint in the brain to guide them.

“Homeless Sparrow” is the story of a sparrow who has been guided by his mother to fly far away in search of a new home when their much-loved habitat has been destroyed. “The Shadow” is unique with the story being narrated by the shadow of a person. “Love is All You Need” is one of my favourite stories in the book, so read it and find what it is all about. “The Couple” is about a ghost couple who visit their home (which has been reoccupied), the terrace of an office building, and a disco just below the terrace where they dance on the strobe-lighted floor with many living couples.
Have you ever read a story where one of the planets or one of the stars is the narrator? Well, “Moon” is just that. She travels to earth and a man falls in love with her.
The book is highly recommended for all those who love reading fiction. Each of Leela’s short stories is amazing in its own way. I must also add here that her English is top-notch and her creative writing is superb. Her stories are full of alliterations. She uses simple language which even a layman reader will be able to understand.
If you don’t read “Floating Petals”, you will truly be missing a beautiful work of art.

The Windup Bird Chronicle

The Windup Bird Chronicle
Haruki Murakami

It’s a dark place where I got lost.

A novel in layers: the real world, and parallel worlds of fantasy and dreams. The writing reverberates with the now, the future and the past, real and supernatural.
A tale of questions asked, but often not answered. Its a tale of coincidences.

The story begins with the search for a missing cat. The mystery begins with Kumiko having gone to the end of a deserted alley where an empty house stood and had not told her husband, Toru Okada about it.

Here too, are Murakimi’s love of deep wells, cats, music, cooking. Western classical music and jazz, his penchant for women’s delicate shell- shaped ears, women elegantly attired: suits, skirts and crisp blouses, hand bags, hats and heels. All mundane on the surface but really not.

Two wells, one deep-dry, cold, silent. Lieutenant Mamiya is thrown into it, a well pierced by a daily shard of sunlight that appears for a few moments each day and at the same time. The other a deep-dry, dark, silent well. Toru Okada voluntarily spends time in it. “Poor Mr. Wind-Up Bird” climbs down into the well to seek meaning to his life. Here he encounters out-of-body experiences. Okada’s forays into the dry well allows him to find an alternate world, mysteriously peopled, and though he is confused by their secrets he seeks the experience. Eventually both men are saved from their deep physical wells, one turns into a philosopher. Okada is saved when the well suddenly fills with water. He carries on with his search.

Most gripping chapters of this novel are the historical, WWII, episodes, terrifying war stories told by Lieutenant Mamiya. This man, a stranger, makes Okada’s acquaintance when he brings a rather mysterious gift, bequeathed to him by Honda, an old psychic friend. A friendship develops between the two.

We come across strange coincidental happenings and meet a number characters. Kumiko, Okada’s wife disappears and her brother, Noboru Wataya, has a strange hold on her. May Kasahara, the teen-ager, is often present in Okada’s life without being there with him. Sisters, Malta Kano and Creta Kano, are both steeped in mystery. Malta predicts bad things could happen and warns Okada beware. Creta knows that she appeared in Okada’s dreams. Nutmeg Akasaka and her son, Cinnamon, are able to appear and disappear, they play a big part in Okada’s life. Mamiya, the stranger, turns up with a gift from Honda, the psychic. Female characters resort to prostitution and easy sex. In much of Murakami’s writing there is “The violence and sex abuse” which he says, “are a kind of stimulation”, mmm.

The structure is often one of disconnect; and is unusual. There are abrupt breaks between sections that go back and forth, portraying past and present and future, real and surreal. Questions asked are not answered. Mysterious phone calls are not accounted for. There are long paragraphs of telling that often add explanations.

Lack of reason and logic makes the tale indecipherable on first the read. A second reading will be required to reach the depth of this story.

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, paperback, 607 pages of small font, by Haruki Murakami proved to be most challenging.

…“It’s a dark, cool place, and you have to be careful, or you’re lost. . . . You have to leave yourself.” – Haruki Murakami.

Paperback from Gerakbudaya Books, Penang.

Arundathi Roy

The Ministry of Utmost Happiness

“To me, there is nothing higher than fiction. Nothing. It is fundamentally who I am. I am a teller of stories.” Arundhati Roy

And stories, she tells them well. I have read God of Small Things three times and listened to the audio-book. Each time, the novel overwhelmed me with emotion and passion. Each time, I was struck with admiration and awe for this fine writer. Each time, structure and the depth of her story, her language and detailed observation amazed me.

She is a fine essayist too, and has written a great deal of political non-fiction. The Algebra of Infinite Justice (2002) is an eye-opener. She is a daring fighter for the cause of the downtrodden and the marginalized in India, and has led protests for the causes she believes in. She has endured threats and lawsuits. She has an in-depth knowledge of India and its history. She is also a global philosopher.

This second novel, The Ministry of Utmost Happiness, a 445-page hardcover, fearless attempt at part fiction, part history, part politics, is an ambitious project bound up in social and political angst. She dazzles us with much beauty, and exposes herself brilliantly with amazing storytelling skills. From time to time the writing is poetic, the language colourful and unique, showing detail and acute observation.

But much of the book introduces a glut of characters with their unpronounceable Muslim and Hindu names, slowing readers down. We come across a large number of place names unfamiliar to most English readers. Further confusion is added with generous splashings of dialogue, poetry and quotes in Hindi, Sanskrit and Urdu … I think. It becomes a little tedious. The book covers vast swathes of history, and with this much information, a reasonable clarity of momentum cannot be maintained.

The first part gives us deep insight into the lives of the marginalised Hijra. It introduces, clarifies to the reader, the culture of genders other than male and female and the cruelty they suffer. Brilliantly written is the section on how Anjum makes a home in a cemetery which then becomes a colony for anyone seeking refuge form ‘Dunia’, the male/female world.

The Ministry of Utmost Happiness feels like three novels in one:

The story described above could easily be Book One.

We have Toli’s story, about a former architecture student closely resembling the author, and her mother’s story, transparently biographical. The Tilo-Musa love story could be Book Two.

And Book Three could recount the India/Kashmir/Pakistan tug of war with all its horrors.

There is much narration, and a feeling of information overload. Though all plots are tied up, the work feels laboured.

The many stories of India’s 70-year history, stories bound up with a vast number of different people, different languages, different religions and different cultures, is too diverse to be the subject of one book and one telling. It begins to border on the tedious, and makes for a vast continent of confusion. We go back to the partition of India and Pakistan, we cover the Pakistan-Bangladesh war, we get glimpses of the Sikh massacre after Indra Gandhi’s assassination. There is the Bhopal disaster, the Poolam Devi story, the Maoist revolution, the Hindu-Muslim riots and atrocities of Gujarat, the emergency, terrorism, the treatment of Dalits. There are classes, castes and different genders. Horrors and brutality abound.

I can understand the author’s anger at the way minorities have been treated. She speaks with passion about outrageous atrocities carried out by both sides in the Indian-administered Kashmir tug of war with the pro-Pakistan Kashmiris.

Though the events are woven together seamlessly, there comes a point when one begins to feel enough is enough.

The Ministry of Utmost Happiness is one of Utmost Misery. Almost relentlessly so.

My last visit to Kashmir was one of joy and peace. I found the Kashmir Valley and mountains of great beauty, of hospitable people, Moghul gardens filled with rose scents and the riotous colours of flowers, tranquil lakes and shikaras (small boats), houseboats and snow-covered mountains, clear streams. I can compare The Ministry of Utmost Happiness to this valley with expanses of beauty, but tamped down with soldiers and police, terrorists and jihadis, informants and torture, horrors and killings, spies and counterspies.

Now that she has covered the political history of India, here’s hoping this brilliant writer gives us stories of a less complicated kind.

Book Review — Nutshell

Nutshell by Ian McKuan

“Oh God, I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself a king of infinite space – were it not that I have bad dreams.”

Hamlet, William Shakespeare

I am a big fan of Ian McKuan. My love for his writings goes back to the Cement Garden (1978). Since then, I have read nearly every book he’s written, and I eagerly await each new masterpiece. No disappointment, each novel strong and precise.

Nutshell is a story told by a child in the womb. A tale of much humour, wit, cleverness. It’s insightful and suspenseful and often  times gripping.  But what appeals to me most as a writer is the author’s way with words.

The tale: in order to spend time with her lover Claude, who is her brother-in-law, Trudy asks her husband to give her a little time and space by moving out of their home, his inherited family home, while she is pregnant. John obligingly moves out. Claude, John’s brother, moves in to give Trudy some company and support. Together they plot to kill John so Trudy can inherit the family home and sell it. The lover and she then can enjoy their life together. There are no plans for the baby-to-be.

A tale of few characters …

An unborn child who is confused and worried about his future. He also wants to save his father from being murdered. The foetus would prefer “to get born and act” and not “lie idle and inverted wasting precious days”. He also worries about his mother, who will be an accomplice if they murder his father. The foetus says: “could my mother who never had a job, launch herself as a murderer? No pay, no perks, no pension but remorse.”

Trudy, a beautiful, manipulative mother-to-be, does not love her husband. She is carried away by love for her brother-in-law, and does not worry too much about the unborn child.

John, the father of the unborn child, is naïve and sees little beyond his interest in poetry. “His visits don’t end they fade” sums up much of the father’s character.

Uncle Claude wants the house and his brother’s wife and has hardly a thought for the unborn child. He’s prepared to resort to murder to achieve his goal.

A brilliant story, brilliantly written.

P.S. The author goes into descriptions of wines in too much detail, I thought — they border on too much telling — but the novel’s readability and interesting plot compensates for this slight irritation.

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Book Review THE VEGETARIAN

The Vegetarian by Han Kang

A three-part tale skillfully translated by Deborah Smith.

“The Vegetarian” is not about vegetarianism and it’s not about Korean culture. It’s a compelling, stunning tale of choice. This elegant, poetic writing and story portrays deep insight into the human psyche. The hopelessness of seeing no other escape except to go into oneself. The interesting monologues reveal the space within.

Change in the lives of Yeong-hye and her husband is triggered by bad dreams the wife has. She decides to refrain from eating meat, a drastic decision against ordered social norms, that her her husband and her family can’t accept.

… Continue Reading

THE PIGEON

The Pigeon by Patrick Suskind

‘How quickly the apparently solidly laid foundation of one’s existence could crumble.’

The Pigeon by Patrick Suskind (1988) translated by John E. Woods

The Pigeon, a novella, by the author of well-known the novel Perfume, The Story of a Murder, follows a simple plot but is packed with suspense.

It is the story of a man who has had a disappointing childhood and later a disappointing marriage. Jonathan Noel has spent 20 years contented without connection with people. He is a security guard in a bank in Paris. He lives alone and frugally, enjoys his independence. Having achieved invisibility he loves the daily ‘sameness’ of his life and work. He knows the only person he can depend on is himself.

His home is a one room flat, which he has set up with all the comfort he requires. He has to share a bathroom with other residents but he makes sure he meets no one. He listens by the door and opens a crack and checks no one is about before leaving his home.

‘He could interpret every crack, every click, every soft ripple or rustle, the very silence itself.’

One day disaster strikes, after listening by the door, he opens it just a little and looks out only to be confronted by a ‘beady eyed, diabolical’ pigeon in the hallway, outside his threshold. Jonathan spins out of control. His ordered life descends into anarchy all due to a bird ‘with red taloned feet on oxblood tiles…in sleek, blue-grey plumage’ and the eyes dreadful to behold’.

From then on many emotions come into play. Fear, paranoia, insecurity, anger, envy.
All the events that happen take place in a single day. But the long day eventually ends in a happy transformation.

‘He splashed diligently through the puddles, he splashed right through the middle of them, walked in a zigzag from puddle to puddle, sometimes he even crossed the street because he saw an especially lovely, wide puddle on the far pavement, and stomped through it with flat, splashing soles, sending spray up …it was delightful.’

Suskind weaves a disturbing tale, a tale of depth and tension. He writes sparingly and crisply. The seemingly boring daily details of this reclusive man are complex.

I found this psychological thriller warranted a second reading. I read The Pigeon the first time many years ago and re-read it a couple of weeks ago.

I am certain many of us would love to diligently splash through puddles. Then why don’t we you may ask?

Mmm…we don’t because we can’t find puddles?

Book Review NORWEGIAN WOOD by HARUKI MURAKAMI

“I once had a girl, or should I say, she once had me…
this bird had flown.”
Beatles

Haruki Murakami borrowes his novel title “Norwegian Wood” from the Beatles.

On a cold soggy November day as Toru Wanatabe’s flight makes its decent into Hamburg a version of the Beatle’s track Norwegian Wood comes through the p.a. system. Thirty-seven-year-old Toru feels a shudder go through him. He remembers his story. Eighteen years have gone by when during a walk Nakao said to him:
“I’d never find my way back. I’d go to pieces and the pieces would be blown away.”
The pieces do get blown away but Toru remembers every detail of the sad and strange love story, a story of life and death.

It began as a tale of three close friends Kizuki, his girl friend Naoko, and Toru. They spend much time together. A short time later Kizuki who was good at everything and had everything, it would seem, commits suicide. After this Toru’s and Naoko’s friendship develop into deep love. She becomes a much-troubled girl and eventually ends up in a sanatorium, Ami Hostel, in the mountains.

Other characters come into Toru’s life too. A fellow university student, Nagasawa, strong, debauched. He leads a charmed life at his university and only reads books by authors dead 30 years with one exception, Fitzgerald. Reiki is Naoko’s interesting room-mate. She is wise, kind, and spends much time learning to play new pieces on her guitar. It is when visiting Naoko in the Sanatorium that Toru first hears a version of Norwegian Wood played by Reiki. Midori, another strong character, a wild and energetic girl teaches Toru to take life as it comes. Her energy and flirtatiousness and a sense of sexual freedom give much relief to Toru through his troubled times.

Norwegian Wood

Murakami’s characters are fully developed and strong, and strong too is his dialogue. As always he is good at balancing the light and dark side of life. Throughout the story Toru is torn between his loyalty to Naoko and his attraction to others.

This novel, like his other novels, is deep and philosophical, at times strange but always with a touch of humour. Much of the author’s love of Western music, of pop and jazz, comes into play in Norwegian Wood first published in in 1987

Toru’s painful love story is meditative and quiet. Naoko had insisted he remember her in the future, constantly reminded him not to forget her. He remembers.

Book Review THE DARK ROAD by MA JIAN

The Dark Road by Ma Jian

Aristotle used ‘catharsis’ to mean cleaning ourselves of repressed emotions by experiencing unpleasant emotions – by experiencing pity and fear in a fictional tragedy we can get rid of our own fears.

The Dark Road by Ma Jian, translated from Chinese to English by his wife Flora Drew, is a socio-political novel, one of fear and pain.

The author, a photographer and painter, was one of the early members of the Wuming Group of dissident artists and poets of 1979, and in 1983, he was placed under detention for his art and poems. In 2008 and 2009, he travelled extensively in the interior of China before writing this book, which was published in early 2013.

The Dark Road is not a novel one reads for entertainment, and it’s not for the squeamish. Ma Jian uses the same familiar crisp style of writing he used in Stick Out Your Tongue, his collection of short stories about the Han Chinese occupation of Tibet. And in The Dark Road the author has done an excellent job of writing from the point of view of Meili, the book’s hero who is a country girl of great strength and hope.

The novel is a long dark road of unending misery that revolves around hardships caused by China’s one-child policy and its violent and atrocious punishments meted out to parents and parents-to-be and their families that break the law.

One keeps going until one reaches a cliff where one has to decide to jump or not, knowing there is no turning back. It is raw and distressing but generously spiced with humour.

Meili observes: “A Chinese sturgeon is part of a protected species and Chinese citizen is not protected.
If a Panda gets pregnant the entire national celebrates. But if a woman she gets pregnant she’s treated like a criminal.”

It is the story of Kongzi, his wife Meili and their three-year-old daughter Nannan. Kongzi, as the 76th-generation descendant of Confucius, has a desperate need to produce a son to carry on his line.

The family, fearing the wife will be forcibly sterilized or made to abort her foetus by toxic injection, leave their home and relatives. Escaping the tyrannical laws, they take to the backwaters, literally the toxic sludge of Yangtze tributaries, and live in leaky boats and on filthy mudflats. The schoolteacher husband and his wife eke out a living and manage to educate their daughter while moving from town to town, not staying anywhere too long to avoid being found by the family planning authorities.

Kongzi is ready to accept the fate of a second child born illegally. The child will have no residence permit, no school, no university, no citizenship and no job. In short, the child and later the adult will not exist.

Besides stressing the cultural problems of not having a son, Ma Jian skilfully deals with the various concerns of modern China: polluted waterways, toxic air and food. He brings to prominence corruption, kidnapping, prostitution and pornography – and China’s culture of pirating designer goods. And he touches on some of the side effects created by the Three Gorges Dam.

Reading this book is like travelling on a road parallel to your own. A road of horror, of grisly and graphic happenings with no chance of leaping back into your own sane and comfortable life. For me it was a compulsive read, a poignant, disagreeable one, but one that I wanted to experience.

There is a touch of magical realism, too. The spirit of Meili’s unborn child sometimes takes over the narration as an onlooker.

The Dark Road left me exhausted but thinking deeply about life, about fate, and how fortunate most of us are to live in free countries.

WALKING HOME by SIMON ARMITAGE

Walking Home by Simon Armitage

Walking Home the Pennine Way is not a book of poems from this famous poet but a personal account of Simon Armitage’s experience, walking one of the toughest climbs in Britain. He undertook this task, a walk that stretched about 256 miles, in the summer of 2010. The usual pattern, and the easier one, is to walk from south to north but not the other way round. Simon did it from Edale, his home village in the Peak District, Yorkshire, to the north Kirk Yetholm, the other side of the Scottish border.

Tongue in cheek, he says, ‘As a poet I am naturally contrary.’

He takes up the challenge with a rucksack his mother used when she walked the route at the age of fifty; and his dad tells him he doesn’t need a coat. His wife says if this is a midlife thing why not get a Harley and grow a ponytail. Armed with walking paraphernalia and ‘Avon Skin So Soft’ Simon sets out to take this endurance test, to face the emotional and physical challenge. He trains for the tough job with the motto ‘prepare for day two by walking on day one’.

Simon gives readings along the way at prearranged stops at villages and farms, in private homes, pubs, and churches. A modern troubadour travelling out without cash, passing a sock round for donations. At the stops his borrowed suitcase The Tombstone heavy with his volumes of poetry is delivered to him,.

The narrative is smooth, oftentimes contemplative. It flows beautifully and is filled with humour in spite of his discomfort of moors and bogs, the cold and the wet, the slush and the hard rock, and the bruising and deafening gusts. He perseveres through bleak terrain, across lonely fells towards his Yorkshire village. We see how different each of the farm villages and homes he arrives at are. Simon sees much beauty too and makes acute, detailed observations as only a poet can.

A notification of readings on his website brings him a good crowd of passionate admirers and a mix too of indifferent audiences and farm animals. And readings have ended up in the middle of dart games, or had to compete with the sound of clacking pool balls or bleating of sheep. Simon is surprised by the crowds who turn up and is surprised too by the generosity of villagers and visitors.

His rendition of happenings and his choice of words hilarious throughout the book had me laughing aloud. Often he writes with self-deprecating humour.

At one evening reading –

‘Towards the end, several people in the audience seem moved to tears, covering their eyes with their hands and bowing their heads. One woman takes a handkerchief out of her bag and lifts it to her face. But it’s just the sun, setting directly behind my back, reducing me to flames.’

As an armchair rambler I enjoy reading more than walking tough mountain trails but ‘Waling Home’ made me feel I wanted to join Simon Armitage on his walk.

Walking Home warrants a second reading. I have developed a taste for tea and cake.

Leela Reading photo by Don Ellis

JOSEPH ANTON – Book Review

JOSEPH ANTON by Salman Rushdie

On Valentine’s Day, 14 February 1989, Ayatollah Khomeini, the Supreme Leader of Iran, issued a fatwa against Salman Rushdie for his Satanic Verses. Rushdie called it his Unfunny Valentine. Twenty-three years later, in 2012, he published Joseph Anton, based on the journals he kept while in hiding.

When the fatwa was declared it did not take the Muslim world long to rise up in in favour of it – Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, South Africa, Sudan, Kenya, Tanzania, and Venezuela, all joined in. Muslims in India, Britain and America, too, thrust themselves into the wave of hate and violence and joined the frenzy: rioting, burning and demanding Rushdie’s death, not having read the Satanic Verses nor fully knowing what it was about. Several bounties too were placed on his head throughout the years he was in hiding.

Salman Rushdie was born in India. He grew up there before going to the UK to study. His father Anis, “a godless man who knew and thought a great deal about God” taught his son to think for himself. He passed down to him “an unwavering insistence on human reason and intellect against religious faith.”

As a student in Cambridge, Rushdie became interested in the “the rise of Islam”. He was fascinated with the culture and he treated the prophet Muhammad with much respect as a man. It is from the Qur’an he got the title for his book: The Satanic Verses. It confused him as to why he was misunderstood by so many, especially by Muslims. The Satanic Verses of the Qur’an refer to the time when Muhammad, the prophet, came down from the mountain and reported the apparition of Archangel “Gibreel” who had revealed to him three angels. This led the people of Mecca to include the angels in their religion and worship them as goddesses. Later when Muhammad realized their religion was moving to a monotheistic one he changed his story saying it was Satan who had told him about the three angels.

Joseph Anton, the name Rushdie took for himself while in hiding, is related in the third person. The journal spans ten years from the time the fatwa was issued to the time it was lifted, though not completely lifted. It is still in existence and there is still a bounty on his head. On 24 September 1998, Mohammad Khatami from the Iranian government issued a statement that he neither supported the fatwa nor would he stop anyone else carrying it out.

Rushdie writes of the fear of death, pain and loneliness and heartache of being separated from his wife and son, Zafar, and not being able to see his friends and the rest of his family. He lived in hiding and endured the constant threat of death. Much of the book reads like a thriller. His Japanese editor was murdered, his Norwegian publisher shot, his Italian translator stabbed, many died in riots protesting against the Satanic verses, and his effigy and his books were burned.

Freedom-loving people all over the world took up the cause of freedom of thought and freedom of the written word. Names of influential politicians, well-known writers, publishers, and famous film and theatre celebrities are generously interwoven into his story of life in hiding. The majority of them tried to help him and spoke of the need to uphold freedom of speech. The British Government remained on the fence, never officially denouncing the fatwa, but it gave him protection.

It hurt him that some writers he greatly admired were against him. The Guardian attacked him for not withdrawing the novel. Once, in 1990, Rushdie met with Muslim leaders, offering to proclaim his faith in Islam but he would not withdraw the paperback Satanic Verses nor apologize for writing it. The meeting solved nothing and later he was ashamed that he had even offered to meet with them. Rushdie tells us his mother, then living in Pakistan, received support and comfort and was never threatened. Neither were any members of his family or his friends in India and England.

During this time of hiding he also went through personal problems. He had “no one to fulfill his deepest needs.” His first wife Clarissa died of cancer, his second and third marriages broke up, his fourth to a model-actress and TV host fell apart. Reading about the behavior of the wives, I feel he had a capacity to attract some of the worst women.

On 16 June 2007, Rushdie was knighted by the Queen for his great contribution to English literature: Sir Salman Rushdie. Many of the Muslim countries were outraged. Al-Qaeda condemned the Rushdie honour. “An insult to Islam,” they screamed.

Rushdie tells us exactly what he was feeling and doing throughout his long banishment from normal life. But this work does not have the imagination and the wonderful style his writing is famous for, nor does it contain much humour. At times it is as if there is too much name-dropping. He is also quite annoyed with the pressure of the round-the-clock security that he found restricting. I felt this annoyance with his own safety arrangements was unreasonable, and a little lacking in gratitude. I was also not comfortable reading this book in the third person. The author, Salman Rushdie, whom I greatly admire, and for whose life I feared while reading the book, loomed up before me ever present, and I found it disconcerting and confusing each time he referred to himself with the third person “He”.

This 636-page hardcover volume of purple, with its suede-like cover, is pleasure to feel and to hold. The pages are well laid out and a good font size makes it a comfortable read.

The photo below is of an interesting incident. I was reading Joseph Anton in our garden and put the book down to go inside to get a drink of water. When I returned, I found that Spooks, our cat, had brought me a present and laid it beside my book.

Jo with a sympathetic friend

More Rushdie Novels

Grimus (1975)
Midnight’s Children (1981)
Shame (1983)
The Satanic Verses (1988)
The Moor’s Last Sigh (1995)
The Ground Beneath Her Feet (1999)
Fury (2001)
Shalimar the Clown (2005)
The Enchantress of Florence (2008)

Leela Panikar ©

MORTALITY

Book Review
Mortality by Christopher Hitchens

Mortality

It is be fitting that thoughts of mortality should crop up at the end of 2012, an eventful year that seemed to have run off too fast.

On New Year’s Day, 2013, I read Christopher Hitchens’ ‘Mortality’ that focused on the last 18 months of Christopher Hitchens’ life of cancer, a time when he lived ‘dyingly’. His father had died at the age of 79 with a similar cancer. A 61 Hitchens felt he could possibly outdo that, live longer than this father. He would live ‘to read – if indeed not to write – the obituaries of elderly villains like Henry Kissinger and Joseph Ratzinger.’

‘Mortality’ begins with an introduction by Graydon Carter, Vanity Fair Editor, and ends with a touching afterword by Carol Blue, Hitchen’s widow. This last book, written while ill with cancer, mostly during the time in the hospital, is both awe-inspiring and sad. It gives a candid insight into the anger, grief and pain of a brilliant thinker, speaker and writer. He writes graphically. Stark, frank descriptions of the evil of his illness – cancer of the esophagus. His speech was often affected and he ended up unable to read and write. This is the worst tragedy that could befall a writer, reader and debater.

He denounced and convincingly discredited Nietzsche’s famous maxim that ‘whatever doesn’t kill me makes me stronger’.

It was while he was busy promoting his memoir Hitch22 that he learned of his illness. In Carol Blue’s words, he ‘insisted ferociously on living’ and carried on with his public-speaking engagements even when it meant vomiting ‘with an extraordinary combination of accuracy, neatness, violence, and profusion’ before going on stage’.

Hitchens writes ‘I have more than once in my time woken up feeling like death. But nothing prepared me for the early morning in June (2010) when I came to consciousness feeling as if I were actually shackled to my own corpse.’

‘All of life is a wager.’

Throughout his illness he remained objective, not fatalistic but recognizing the certainty. Many new treatments were tried. If they did not work on him he hoped they would be ready and available soon for future suffers.

The day 21 September 2011 was set aside as Hitchens prayer day by both well-wishers and not so well-wishers. Everyone would pray for Hitchens. People prayed for him to suffer and die as punishment for his disbelief in a god; others prayed for him to get well so he might repent, know the mercy of a good god; and yet others prayed he would convert before it was too late.

He remained true to the ideas that animated his life. He never gave up his principles, his beliefs, his honesty and convictions. He was not going to become an abject creature and throw himself before a god he knew did not exist. An ethical life is possible without religion.

When giving an interview to Anderson Cooper on CNN 360 in August 2010, he stressed his beliefs, saying he was not about to give up and find religion in the last days. When promoting his book ‘God Is Not Great’ he did not go seeking like-minded people but went to the American Bible Belt to debate.

Hitchens continued to burn the candle at both ends. He kept up book tours, speaking events and debates. He did not think it proper to cancel bookings, arrangements that involved much preparation on the part of a great number of organizers.

Skull Collection

In the first part of his memoir Hitch22, he wrote about death:
‘One always knows there is a term-limit to lifespan, just as one always knows that illness or accident or incapacity, physical and mental, are never more than a single breath away’. A premonition?

He continued to write for Vanity Fair and, as he said, it was not as parade of his illness but the narrative of his life.

Hitchens’ great sense of humour was evident at all times. Once when debating with him on ‘Freedoms of Speech’, Shashi Tharoor, in the midst of the debate, burst out laughing and declared he could debate Hitchens as he enjoyed him too much.

At the BBC Munk event in Canada, on Thanksgiving Day, 24 November 2011, a short time before his death, Hitchens debated Tony Blair on the subject of ‘Religion: a Force for Good in the World’. The debate lasted for one and a half hours of lucid and intelligent talk. His pain and discomfort, and the deteriorating effects of his illness, were clearly evident.

‘Practise staying alive but prepare for death.’ He wrote with dignity, heroically accepting his situation and refusing to let it stop him writing an inspiring book. In the last few pages of this short book he only managed to scribble notes to his editor.

Hitchens, a brilliant thinker, writer, speaker, debater and humourist remained all that to the last and then we lost him on 15 December 2011.

Many friends, writers and celebrities attended his memorial. Here is a link to Vanity Fair‘s memorial for Christopher Hitchens. I found the readings of his essay The Vietnam Syndrome by Sean Penn quite powerful and Salman Rushdie chose to read a humorous one ‘Porcophobia’.

Hitchens left us many messages but one stands prominent for me:

‘Think For Yourself’

Leela Panikar

Book Review THE GARDEN OF EVENING MISTS

The Garden of Evening Mists
by Tan Twan Eng

The Author in Penang

Tan Twan Eng is the author of two books:
The Gift of Rain -long listed for Man Booker Prize
The Garden of Evening Mists – short listed for the Man Booker Prize

Mnemosyne Greek Goddess of Remembering

The novel begins with a quote from Richard Holmes:

There is a goddess of memory, Mnemosyne; but none of Forgetting … twin sisters, twin powers. this sums up the story: Remembering and eventually Forgetting.

Tan Twan Eng has chosen a difficult and unusual relationship of hate and love between his characters. To this day an older generation of Malaysians bear a grudge towards and a deep hatred of the Japanese. This is not totally unwarranted. The Japanese army and government in the country in the name of the Imperial army carried out unwarranted cruelty towards the Malaysian civilian population during their short occupation of the country, 1941 to 1945.

The Garden of Evening Mists set in the lush and cool tea plantation of the Cameron Highlands of Malaysia is her story told by Judge Teoh Yun Ling.

‘In the shallow, a grey heron cocked its head at me, one leg poised in the air, like the hand of a pianist who had forgotten the notes to his music. It dropped its leg a second later and speared its beak into the water.’

The sad and painful story told by her when she retires early from her position as a judge. She is diagnosed dementia and eventual total forgetfulness.

‘Something seemed to detach from inside me and crumble away, leaving me less complete than before.’

Tan Twan Eng’s prose often poetic tells the story of two sisters imprisoned by the Japanese during the World War II occupation of Malaysia. Teoh Yun Ling reveals how at nineteen she escapes but her older sister Teoh Yun Hong, an artist and an admirer of Japanese gardens dies in prison. Teoh Yun Ling trains as a lawyer. She visits her parent’s tea planter friends in the Cameron Highlands where she meets Aritomo Nakamura, an imperial Japanese gardener in exile. He has made his home in seclusion in a remote part of the hills on the side of the jungle. She becomes his apprentice in the zen garden in order to eventually build a garden in memory of her sister. During her apprenticeship she comes to learn much about gardening, the art of archery and tea ceremony. She learns martial arts and about the Japanese tattoo culture. The author also gives us an insight into the Communist guerrilla warfare and the communists of Malaysia before independence from Britain.

With her learning partially done Teoh Yun Ling leaves to follow her pursuit as lawyer and eventually becomes a judge. She comes back to the old sanctuary, Yugiri, the garden that now has fallen into neglect. She begins to restore it and at the same time tries to see if she can find the map where her sister had died, a map in a secret tattoo.

The novel contains many beautiful passages and the structure of the story is complex. The author skilfully feeds in, little by little, the background story of the two sisters in the prison camp and violent behaviour of the Japanese. It is not until two-thirds into the book that we get to learn the full story of the sisters.

The idea of impermanence and memory and forgetfulness is beautifully women into the novel.

I am a great fan of Tan Twan Eng. If the reader does not savour the novel slowly much of the beauty of the passages will be lost, and attention must be given to abrupt transitions. For me Teoh Yun Ling lacked some of qualities of the softer side of a female. And I also felt some of the tea story could have been left out and the garden descriptions could be reduced. The surprise of the tattoo map, the horimono, towards the end of the story could prove a little disturbing.

I thoroughly recommend this book and for me it also warrants a second reading.

Tan Twan Eng and me, star struck.

I first met author Tan Twan Eng at Hong Kong International Literary Festival in 2008. Meeting him at the Penang Arts and Literary Festival in Nov 2012 was extra special as Penang is where we are both from.

NARCOPOLIS by Jeet Thayil

Narcopolis by Jeet Thayil

Review

Narcopolis joins the array of novels bold, revealing the life below the surface of the beautiful thriving old city, Bombay. It deals with drugs and addiction, sex and love, violence and perversion, god and death. Not the type of raw book I would chose to read ten years ago. I have grown up.

A varied cast populates the unfurling opium smoke – a murderer, businessmen, pimps, prostitutes, thugs, poets, painters, all drowning in degradation, lust and crime. We are drawn into a languorous world of shocking low life in and around Rashid’s opium house on Shuklaji Street sometime in the 1970s, place of alleyways, and villages and old buidlings. We meet Dimple, the eunuch who prepares the pipes for the regular clients, the preparation an art like a sacred tea ceremony. He shows up as a beautiful lady who enjoys reading, goes to the cinema to watch lengthy Bollywood movies and listens to stories Mr Lee relates. Mr Lee, a Chinese refugee, a former soldier who fled communist China brings us a glimpse of the Mao era. Gritty Rashid, owner of the den, protects his family, especially his young son, from exposure to low life of drugs and alcohol and prostitution.

The drifting characters give the novel a historical perspective as it moves in a haze with the arrival of hippies and an international groups seeking cheap solace. Indian politics and religious uprisings and violence are touched upon.

The tale moves to the present. After an absence the narrator returns to find a very different Bombay (Mumbai) in 2004. He comes seeking his friend Rashid, and others he knew. The old place has disappeared giving way to proper roads and tall steel and glass buildings. He manages to contact his friend now old and sad and disillusioned and under the control of his educated son. His son a fervent Muslim with flexible morals sells cocaine to the infidels, associates with women, and enjoys porn magazines. If necessary he might consider becoming a suicide bomber.

Narcopolis read on the Kindle

I found the novel stark, tragic and beautiful except when the focus shifted to China and Mao. I found this section trailing into distraction.

Author Jeet Thayil

The author, Jeet Thayil, a poet, had at one time succumbed to addiction.

Man Booker prize short list

Jeet Thayil Narcoplis
Hilary Mantel Bringing Up the Bodies
Tan Twan Eng (one of my favourite writers) The Garden of Evening Mists
Deborah Levy Swimming Home
Will Self Umbrella
Alison Moore The Lighthouse

LETTER BY LETTER

Silent work behind the monument

Dear Shobha, this is in appreciation of the tremendous hard work that I know went into your thriller. Three hundred and three pages of letters made words, led to ideas that made one novel. A big cast of characters remembered and developed, a story line that did not lose its way. Plucked from imagination ‘The Silent Monument’.

This is a big achievement for any writer and my friend did it. Thank you for an interesting read. More success with your writing…
Happy Birthday, Shobha!

The Silent Monument by Shobha Nihalini

SALMON FISHING IN YEMEN by Paul Torday

Book Review:
Salmon Fishing in Yemen by Paul Torday

Belief in the impossible and the impossible accomplished.

An interesting concept introducing Salmon Fishing from the misty cold wet highland rivers of Scotland to the hot dry treeless desert wadi that sees water sometimes. This is the vision of the Yemeni Sheikh His Excellency Muhammad ibn Zaidi bani Tihama and the task presented to the British Dr. Alfred Jones, working for the civil service at the National Centre for Fisheries Excellence.

The unbelieving scientist Alfred Jones who thinks this an impossible task is reluctantly converted over a time and after meeting the spiritual Sheikh who believes and is focused. In the end Sheikh’s dream becomes the scientist’s dream and together they make it a reality.

Humorously related the story takes on an unusual structure, presented as part emails, part letters and part diary entries, giving voices to the many characters. These take the form of conversations – between the Alfred Jones and his ambitions career-wife who thinks the salmon project is a harebrained idea and her husband a ‘no hoper’; insights in the dealing between the scientist and Anita Brookner who is a high powered agent for the Sheikh; and what goes on between various other characters in the civil service. The many voices and points of view can be confusing at times and sometimes there is more telling, and less showing.

Most interesting and hilarious part for me was the true hipocrisy of the civil service, how governments work. Officials with an eye on foreign policy take credit for ‘all’ when all goes well and wash their hands off the project when things do not.

There are breath-taking descriptions of salmon and water, interesting fishing scenes and without being boring much information on salmon and salmon vocabulary.

I found the end of the story a little disappointing and also found the Sheikh’agen a little weak in the end. But in spite of my view of the end Salmon Fishing in Yemen novel is a great read. Humorous, insightful, and full of interesting facts woven in seamlessly.

Salmon Fishing in Yemen confirms the idea if one believes in something wholeheartedly, however difficult the project, however impossible the project seems, it can succeed. And that is my belief too.

PS: The movie is about to come to the Hong Kong circuit.

The Fear Index by Robert Harris

The Fear Index

From Dickens of two hundred years ago I jumped straight into a future thriller ‘The Fear Index’ by Robert Harris on Kindle e-reader. I also listened to the unabridged audio book version, narrated by Christian Rodska.

What I admire most about Robert Harris is the extensive research he does for each one of his books, whether set in the past historical Pompeii or in the port city Archangel in Russia or into the computer world.

The Fear Index reminded me Bill Gates’ talk of 1999 ‘Business at Speed of Thought’.
‘As I was considering these issues…a new concept came into my head: The digital nervous system. A digital nervous system consists of the digital process that enable a company to perceive and react to its environment, to sense competitive challenges and customer need and organize timely responses.’

The Fear Index: Dr. Alex Hoffman and Hugo Quarry are partners in an investment company in Geneva – Hoffman Investment Technologies. Alex, the physicist is the brains of the operation. He programs his smart computers to generate huge financial returns for their clients. Hugo Quarry, an Englishman, is the financier who takes care of the business side. The success of the company is due to the vast sums the investors are able to reap due to the company’s digitized programme, VIXAL-4’s calculations of the money market.

The operation moves along well allowing both men the means to enjoy expensive life styles. Alex pursues his hobby acquiring Antiquarian books. Being a paperless advocate he insists on a totally paperless office and so he keeps his antique book collection a secret. Alex’s wife is well provided for and is a high-powered artist who converts body scans into glass sculpture. Hugo follows an expensive decadent life-style with yachts, fast women, and faster cars.

Soon fear on fear mounts. The super computer develops a personality of its own. The artificial intelligence evolves its own algorithm and starts to work for itself. It begins to virtually stalk the creator. It rearranges Alex’s life dangerously. Alex receives the first edition of Charles Darwin’s The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals, with the bookmark on the page about fear. It appears he purchased and paid for it. The super computer takes over his life and his business. It begins to work on the financial market. The out-of-control computer disseminates information in nanoseconds and sends out ‘buy and sell’ messages. It creates price shifts that cause volatility and fear in the financial market. Neither Alex nor his team of computer experts is able to control the output of the VIXAL-4’s “brain”. Considerable tension builds up. The rest thrilling and nail-biting, and I am not revealing more.

The plot is riveting. One does not need knowledge of high technology or of hedge funds and stock markets to enjoy this thriller which is part sci-fi and part mystery. Yes, there is murder too. The ending leaves one imagining a sequel.

‘The Fear Index’ had me contemplating on our super technology assisted lives. Artificial intelligence has already taken over the many tasks we did for ourselves and much is now taken for granted. I am thinking about my own electronic future. Will computers move beyond my control?

CHARLES DICKENS

Great Expectations By Charles Dickens

Each time I read and reread Dickens I find his writing more interesting, more humorous, and revealing more layers.

In February on Charles Dickens’ 200th anniversary Don and I read ‘Great Expectations’ at the same time on our kindles. It is the second reading for me having read it the first time many years ago. Our reading took us a little longer than most modern books do, but it was much fun. Most nights we compared what we had read during the day and came up with humorous incidents that had us laughing again. We were filled too with much appreciation for this 200-year-old author.

Dickens is satirical of his times, looks deeply and critically into the foibles of his society but 200 years later we find the same foibles in our society. Great Expectations at first seems simple but it is a complex novel of love and cheer, loyalty and betrayal, guilt and innocence, and sympathy, sentimentality, and much wry wit.

The story is full of forebodings and dark too from time to time, but keeps the reader engaged throughout. We get great insight into the lives of the ordinary people and high society, into the lives of the poor and rich. The language is a little archaic but does not slow the reader. Much of the text is beautiful.

Expectations are several. We follow Pip’s character as he grows from a village boy to a young man lost to a man sensible and cultured and with good values.

A very strict and nasty older sister and her husband, Joe, bring up the orphan Pip. Joe, a kind mild mannered blacksmith, is a good influence in Pip’s life. His first expectation is to get a good education. But he is soon contracted by Miss Haversham to serve his apprenticeship with Joe with a view to becoming a blacksmith. Becoming a blacksmith is not part of the Pip’s ambition. His expectation is to be part of high society. The young boy wants to be well educated and move away from the village, move up to high society. Soon a mystery benefactor arranges through a prominent London lawyer to buy him out. Circumstances change immediately and Pip is sent to London on his way to becoming a gentleman. That comes at a cost. He is in Iove with a highly placed young lady in Miss Haversham’s care. And he knows nothing of money management and gets into debt squandering his quota of money from his benefactor in high living. Due to even more higher expectations he’s deeply disappointed when he finds out his benefactor is no nobleman. His fierce anger towards the man who is a criminal, whom he at first found not up to be to his expectations turns into kindness and love. This love for the stranger nearly costs his own life.

Towards the end he realizes that many of his expectations were merely superficial. He sheds his false values and looking for deeper meaning in life finds happiness and love.
Humour in the first chapter: Pip as a young boy is in the churchyard on a foggy evening and walks about looking at inscriptions on the tombstones, one of them is his parents’, both his father and mother buried in the same plot.

‘At the time I stood in the churchyard reading the family tombstones. I had just enough learning to be able to spell them out. My construction even of their simple meaning was not very correct for I read “Wife of the Above” was a complementary reference to my father’s exaltation to a better world.’

And Dickens has such witty and clever way of saying things. When Pip is a young man of means he says of his housekeeper and her niece:

‘They both had weak eyes, which I had long attributed to their chronically looking in at keyholes, and they were always at hand when not wanted, indeed that was their only reliable quality besides larceny.’

Love it.

My Collin’s Classics

Note: About Collins

In 1819, Millworker William Collins from Glasgow, Scotland, set p a company for printing and publishing pamphlets, sermons, hymnbooks and prayer book. That company was Collins and was to mark the birth of HarperColins Publishers as we know it today.

THE MASQUE OF AFRICA

The Masque of Africa
Sir V. S. Naipaul

‘Masque’ comes from 16th/17th century Italian musical theatre. This masque is neither courtly nor festive. It is no entertainment, no pageant.

Sir V. S. Naipaul is one of my favourite authors. I am an avid reader of his writings and have a good collection of the author’s books. But with ‘The Masque of Africa’ he has sorely disappointed me.

In ‘Finding the Center’, V. S. Naipaul says “Half a writer’s work . . . is the discovery of his subject”. The Nobel Laureate has chosen to travel through six African countries to get to know his subject. Beginning with Uganda, the centre of the African continent, he travels through Nigeria, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Gabon and completes his journey in the southern part the continent, South Africa. He sets out to study subversion of old Africa by an outside world. It was to be a cultural one and the author succeeds in keeping it to just that in all the countries but when gets to S. Africa he plunges headlong into politics.

He has attempted to capture the mystique of some of the traditional and indigenous beliefs of the countries he visits, no single cultural unit. He touches on Animism, Islam and Christianity. It is too challenging and vast an attempt on African culture and in trying to cover too much the writing becomes sketchy and superficial. The author fails to come up with a passionate study. There is no enticement for a would-be traveller. It is not a book on African beliefs either.

As a knighted author of much fame he is, without doubt, a vip traveller in these countries he would have been given special treatment in places he went to. He is accompanied by citizens well placed – politicians, bankers and writers but throughout the book the author sounds like he is a budget traveller and often alludes to petty finance. He has no money to give for offerings to witch doctors; fails to observe the custom of taking gifts. At times he implies he’s afraid of the witch doctors in spite of his highly placed entourage. Burial places of kings, shrines, witch doctors have been randomly selected but much of the interpretations of tribal customs, the cult and invocation of spirits seems to have been covered halfheartedly.

The keen observation often shown by Naipaul as a writer comes through from time to time but not enough to redeem this book. Sad to say there is much oversight. It could be fault lies with the editor(s), agents and publisher.
The word ‘perhaps’ is used too often, once it is used four times in eight lines.
A blanket, meaningless statements occur, one example: “Near Lagos it has two wide lanes; and just as in India” – India is a continent, where in India?

The author’s love of animals is seen when he makes observations about cats and kittens but at times it is like something out of a child’s book and come as a distraction.
“In the second gateway a small white kitten with a patch of colour on its back was crying. It was like the kitten I had seen in…It was possibly the last of its litter, surviving heaven knows how. I had to leave the dainty little creature opening its mouth and crying, still remarkably whole, still nourished by the milk of its mother, now perhaps persecuted and killed.”

In “A Way in the World” Naipaul’s abhorrence to cruelty is mentioned and here too he talks about cruelty, cruelty to animals – the cruelty of eating animals like horses, elephants, cats, dogs, bats. So wherein comes the ‘un-cruelty’ of eating cows, chickens and fish I wonder.

I thought a certain amount of arrogance is displayed when visiting a Babalawo magician:
“in the corner something lavatorial and disagreeable were three shrines the oracles…”

Naipaul’s uncluttered prose is evident in all his writings. Quote: I wish my prose to be transparent—I don’t want the reader to stumble over me.
But here his unclutter borders on simplistic.
“I went to the lavatory. I saw the family dogs in two big paved cages at the back of the yard. One cage had small dogs. The other cage had big dogs, a Dalmatian and various hounds, all fine and well exercised and happy. While I watched I saw them fed by a servant who entered the cages with their food. I could have looked at the feeding scene for a long time.”

Sir Naipaul did not achieve his purpose:
“To reach that beginning was the purpose of my book”.
But he left me happy with this lovely piece of Bantu wisdom –

“YOU ARE A PERSON BECAUSE OF ANOTHER PERSON”

Getting Your Book Reviewed

Getting reviews: Good and bad

Article by Randy Dotinga, Christian Science Monitor contributor.

Thinking about writing a book and printing it through one of those self-publishing outfits? Get ready to work: you’ll have to take on the task of convincing people to read it or pay someone else to take on that chore. Sure, you can shell out $149 for a listing and a chance at a professional book review by the trade journal Publishers Weekly. But that’s no guarantee of a cover-friendly “couldn’t-put-it-down page-turner” blurb.

A self-published memoir is “heart-wrenching but sometimes plodding,” says one new Publishers Weekly review. A Civil War novel is an “intriguing but not altogether successful.” It’s even worse for a compilation of allegedly comic essays (“precious few laughs, or even grins”) and a religious book (“ill-informed and insipid”). Three really good August novels. Those are some expensive ouches.

Wouldn’t it be nice to pay for a review and get to spike it if the reviewer thinks your book stinks? Now you can. A literary agent and the former book editor of the Rocky Mountain News have co-founded a new book-reviewing website that does just that.

At BlueInk Review, “serious reviews of self-published books” come at a price – $395 or $495 each once you click the “Order your review!” button. That’s a lot of money, but it comes with control over whether a review ever sees the light of day. If you don’t like the review of your book, it doesn’t run. The BlueInk Review will be a boon for authors if they can manage to get positive reviews and find someone (readers, mainstream publishers, libraries, their moms) to care about them.

Unfortunately, BlueInk Review fails – so far – to prove that the self-publishing world is bursting with hidden talent waiting to be discovered. Yes, a few self-published authors have become stars. But such a high level of success is exceedingly rare, and the latest several reviews published by BlueInk Review as of Aug. 10 tell us why.

Almost all of the reviews are lukewarm or negative. They describe books as “stilted” and marred by “many faults,” an “unprofessional tone” and “promising but underdeveloped stories.” Wow. This is a small sampling to be sure. But they’re all reviews that the book authors themselves allowed to be published. How bad might the killed reviews be? We’ll never know.

There’s one thing we do know: the self-publishing industry and the new pay-to-play book-reviewing industry thrive on amateur authors who are full of dreams and money.
Keep your dreams, folks. But first spend your money on classes, workshops, and honest guidance from professional writers who know what they’re doing.

Leela comment: And after that rap two gems:
Bathing Elephants
Floating Petals

Man Booker Prize 2011

Man Booker Prize 2011
The long list announced on 26 July includes two writers I am familiar with.
Booker Prize winner Alan Hollinghurst, author of The Line of Beauty and The Swimming Pool Library. At the time when they were first published, both books I found too sexually explicit and I left them partially read. I picked them up again this year. Hollinghurst’s writing is truly beautiful if one is able to accept or set aside graphic descriptions of homosexuality. Both exposed me the sadness and loneliness of homosexual men especially as they aged. In The Swimming-Pool Library the connections between two generations of gay men shows us the shifting social expectations. I am looking forward to reading Hollinghurst’s The Stranger’s Child, which foreshadows change, in civil partnerships of gay men (and women). With recognition of gay unions in many parts of the world it would be interesting to see change of outdated social mores. The life and legacy of a war-slain Georgian poet of The Stranger’s Child brings this change more to the forefront.

Having met Allan Hollinghurst in person, I found him to be a dignified, down to earth, quiet gentleman. He had time to listen to his readers. I was much impressed by this, so unlike some writers I have met who are standoffish.

Julian Barnes essays are sharp and witty. The Lemon Table treats aging with humour and emotion. Many of the characters have “an awareness of their own folly for refusing to relinquish the pleasures and passions of the younger self, and a concurrent awareness of a growing inability to pursue those passions with consistent vigour.“

It is believed for the Chinese, the lemon is the symbol of death, and where the characters gather to discuss mortality is the ‘Lemon Table.’

The Man Booker Prize long list this year includes a former winner, former shortlisted and longlisted authors and four first time authors. Three Canadian writers are also among the 13 chosen.

The List
Julian Barnes The Sense of an Ending (Jonathan Cape – Random House)
Sebastian Barry On Canaan’s Side (Faber)
Carol Birch Jamrach’s Menagerie (Canongate Books)
Patrick deWitt The Sisters Brothers (Granta)
Esi Edugyan Half Blood Blues (Serpent’s Tail – Profile)
Yvvette Edwards A Cupboard Full of Coats (Oneworld)
Alan Hollinghurst The Stranger’s Child (Picador – Pan Macmillan)
Stephen Kelman Pigeon English (Bloomsbury)
Patrick McGuinness The Last Hundred Days (Seren Books)
A.D. Miller Snowdrops (Atlantic)
Alison Pick Far to Go (Headline Review)
Jane Rogers The Testament of Jessie Lamb (Sandstone Press)
D.J. Taylor Derby Day (Chatto & Windus – Random House)
The four first timers to lookout for are Yvvette Edwards – A Cupboard Full of Coats, Stephen Kelman – Pigeon English, Patrick McGuinness – The Last Hundred Days, and A.D. Miller – Snowdrops.
The longlisted authors were chosen from 138 books submitted, and this year seven of those were called in by the impressive list of judges: Matthew d’Ancona, writer and journalist; author Susan Hill; Chris Mullin, author and politician, and Gaby Wood,head of Books at the Daily Telegraph,. The Chair -Dame Stella Rimington.
The short list will be announced on Tuesday 6th September and the winner of the 2011 Booker Prize on 18th October.

The Book Thief

Markus Zusak
The Book Thief

Read on Kindle

Death is the narrator of ‘The Book Thief’. An intriguing idea but often I missed Death as the teller and heard the writer speak. Death is shown as compassionate and appreciative of humans and at times is unwilling to have to fulfill his duty.

The Book Thief is the story of a young girl, Liesel, hinted as being Jewish, left in the care of non-Jewish German foster parents. The foster-father is kind and considerate and the foster-mother rude and harsh on the surface but caring and deeply loving. The story takes place in a town of extreme poverty near Munich, not far from Dachau, in the time of Hitler.

The death of Liesel’s brother on the way to the foster parents and the disappearance of her mother, presumed sent to a death camp after she is placed in foster care, play a large part in shaping the young girl’s character.

As Liesel grows up in a Jew hating environment she becomes a good keeper of secrets. Books rare as they are banned and burned by the Hitler authorities. She hides the fact she reads, hides the books she manages to steal. Her foster parents are portrayed as strong characters; with kindness and care they help the child grow up. They assist her in keeping secrets in spite of their constant fear of their foster child being revealed as Jewish and later the fact they hide a Jewish young man in their basement.

The idea of long phrases as titles for chapters is interesting though sometimes they give away the plot too soon.

Author, Markus Zusak tells a good story, a truly lovely story of intrigue and strength of character but ruins the novel with much unnecessary detail and imagery. His invented words and phrases are good and clever at times but often too creative. They confuse and break up the enjoyment of the story. Instead of ‘walking’ we have – The feet scolded the floor and Grimy tears were loosened from the children’s eyes – ‘the children cried’ would have been adequate.

Short stories within the story, poetry and drawings lead to tedious reading. More confusion is introduced by magical-realism.

His generous smattering of German words and phrases and their immediate translation into English for the benefit of the reader is annoying and lead to constant break in the flow of a good story.
And clichés abound: ‘You are either for the Fuhrer or against him,’ etc, etc.

The end comes too quick, too easy and too clean.

As a reader-writer I found the work laboured. The story could have been told with more impact had the writing been tighter.

In spite of the over inventive writing and cluttered art of story telling I would recommend the Book Thief. It is an interesting, passionate and touching novel.

Leela Panikar

Patriotism

Yukio Mishima: Patriotism

From a British book stall at Expo 70 in Osaka, Japan, I picked up a stack of books by Japanese authors, some written in English and some translated. Since then I have become totally fascinated by Japanese culture, stories and writers.

‘Yukoku’ – Patriotism is a rare short story, beautifully translated by Geoffrey W. Sargent.

This haunting tale of a young married couple dizzyingly in love portrays tradition and culture that value love, honour, duty. To these three qualities is added death. It is the character of the young wife that struck me most. Reiko’s loyalty, love for her husband and bravery grips the readers, keeps them focused in this extraordinary tale of a culture too difficult and complex to understand by anyone steeped in modern or western standards.

The couple is acutely aware of each other. Reiko of her husband’s manliness and strength and love for her. He is the sun around which her world revolves. Lieutenant Shinji Takeyama deeply and passionately loves his beautiful, chaste and devoted wife to whose warmth he returns each night from training as a soldier.

Right from the beginning the story is overwhelming.

Only a few months into their marriage the lieutenant learns of the failed coup in which some of his close friends are involved. It would require him to carry out the assassination of his comrades and he himself would carry the dishonour of being branded as member of the mutiny team. Reiko learns the news on the radio and waiting alone at home knows finality has come. Her noble husband will perform ritual seppuku. From their first day together she knows as soldier’s wife she must be prepared for death of her husband at any time. She calmly readies herself, gets things in order. She will accompany him in death. With quiet deliberation she packs her best kimonos, labels them for her friends, packs up the few trinkets she owns, addresses them and sets them aside, and waits for her husband to return.

When he eventually arrives home he tells her what has happened and what he must do. He will commit seppuku that night. She asks permission to follow him. They prepare themselves. They share ‘sake’ and experience one last passionate, seductive, and sensual love making, they find their awareness of each other is even more acute.

Trusting her implicitly he asks her to witness, and to help and hasten his death. This she does. She sits watching her husband’s pain of dying, and when his sword slashing his stomach does not kill him he, accompanied by feverish death throes, tries to cut his throat. She helps him loosen his collar. After her husband is dead she calmly sets about preparing her own demise.

What follows is a most touching scene of human bravery and dedication. She leaves her husband’s body and descends sensuously to the ground floor in ‘her socks slippery with blood’, her white kimono now boldly patterned by blood, her husband’s blood. She switches off the gas, pours water on the brazier of half-burnt coals, and unbolts the door leaving it slightly ajar. She applies make up and goes to sit beside her husband with the dagger her mother had given her at marriage. She kills herself.

A breathtakingly beautiful read.

The author, Yukio Mishima committed seppuku on November 25, 1970 at the age of 45.

Dreams from my Father

Dreams from my Father by Barack Obama

Great men become greater.

Dreams From My Father is an autobiography written with a beauty of language that could easily be mistaken for fiction of a literary stature. Throughout the three sections — his origins in Hawaii, his life in Chicago and his visit to Kenya — Barack Obama’s reflections shape the book with much intelligence. Dreams from his father… not quite his own dreams and not his father’s dreams either.

It is a book about divisions and parts and exposures to cultures: Hawaiian, American (black and white), African and Asian. And being closely knit with each. It is an understandable whole, a rich personal history.

Barack Obama is born to a white American mother from Kansas and a black Kenyan father. His parents part company soon after the birth of the child. His father returns to Kenya and Barack hardly has him in his life after that. He is brought up by his mother and grandparents in Hawaii. When his mother remarries, mother and son go to live in Indonesia where he is brought up by his Indonesian stepfather. Living and attending school in Indonesia exposes him to a totally different culture and experiences. His mother sends him to America to complete high school.

Soon after, he travels to Kenya, where he gets to know his father and meets his ‘brothers and sisters’ and a horde of aunties and uncles and other relatives. On his return to America, he continues his studies and, after graduating, he goes to Chicago to work in underprivileged black communities before deciding to go to law school at Harvard.

Hawaii, Indonesia, America, and Kenya give texture to his life. His exploration of his identity and understanding, his taste of a varied life of weaknesses and strengths, is written with honesty, sensitivity and openness.

Barack Obama is a great writer and it is not surprising that his oratory reflects a man of conviction, and a man who is comfortable with himself.

We are indeed fortunate to have such a man live amongst us and for us to be in an era where we get to read him, see him, hear him, and experience the changes he hopes to bring about.

Kindle

Kindle

A quantum leap in reading.

In December 2009, on a no-special-gift-giving day, Don presented me with Kindle 2.

Imagine a hard cover 1cm thin and weighing 289 grams (10.2 oz) and readably squeezed into it 1,500 books. That’s my Kindle, a mean machine and thing of beauty. Slim, sturdy, comfortable and delicious to handle.

Within 45 seconds I purchased my first eBook, right on the device, wireless and no computer connection. Kindle works on the phone principle – 3G. I have another 349,000 titles to choose from.

Rotation of 15cm (diagonal) screen gives landscape or portrait viewing. Six different font sizes make for effortless reading. And the 16 level grey scale and 600×800 pixel resolution in the electronics paper is glare proof and easy on the eye.

Page turns back and forth, previous page or next page on the press of a button, and Kindle remembers and bookmarks the last page read. When it is reopened next it brings up the location. Built-in dictionary and access to Wikipedia allows looking up words on the reading page. Like pencilling in, highlights, notes and comments are made on the page. Books purchased and all notations are backed up by Amazon. Speech function will read book aloud and turn pages. Don’t expect a passionate, emotional human voice, just a friendly robot.

I am a great fan of Audio Books and Kindle downloads these too.

Recharging is fast and Kindle remains charged for about four days of avid reading, with wireless turned on, or two weeks turned off.

Besides books Kindle also gives access to daily newspapers, magazine subscriptions and blogs and has a built-in PDF reader. Browse the internet, send emails, do word processing on the machine and acts as a MP3 player. Kindle apps are free for iPhone and iPod.

A huge bonus for us writers – Kindle e-books CANNOT be passed on or re-sold after they are read. There is still hope I can move out of sleeping beneath the underpass.

Will I still buy physical paper books. Yes. My reading, like the octopus, has many tentacles and will grab on to every kind of reading material available. Nothing really replaces anything. ‘Everything just splinters.’

More at: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0015T963C

Sir Jeffrey Archer

A magical event at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club with Lord Jeffrey Archer – a story teller, a politician, an orator and a phoenix that keeps resurrecting. I first met Mr. Jeffrey Archer at a book-signing event, next to the Prince of Wales Pub, at Sung Hung Kai Centre, Hong Kong in September 1994; and he has hardly changed physically since then. He is just as sprightly and open and vocal.

This time he’d arrived at end of March in Hong Kong soon after his exhaustive travelling, book signing and talks in Canada and the United States.

The latest of his 14 books, A Prisoner of Birth, another prison caper, rose to No.1 and became a bester-seller in 3 days, became also No. 1 in SCMP. The inspiration for his title and the book is based on the convicts he met in prison. A Prisoner of Birth is a story about a man who is wrongly accused for the murder of his best friend and is sent to a high-security prison-Belmarsh in south-east London, the same prison where Lord Archer convicted of perjury in 2001 spent the first three weeks of his two years behind bars.

He guessed many of us assembled there were writers and as such were possibly interested in how and when he writes. When writing he goes to his holiday home in Spain (and this is only for millionaire writers amongst us). The place affords him quiet space for writing, his needs are well met, and not having to cook and clean and look after children affords him the peace he seeks. He wakes at five am, and starts writing at five thirty. He uses a felt tipped pen and writes in batches of two hours with two hour breaks in between. It is not unusual for writer to go through his draft 17 to 20 or more times, he said. He always believed he could not write without absolute silence and mostly manages 100,000 words a year.

But while in prison he wrote a million words. He was constantly bombarded with ear-splitting noise from both sides of his prison room, loud reggae music from boom boxes; and endless swearing. He came up with three volumes named after Dante’s Divine Comedy, Belmarsh: Hell, Wayland: Purgatory, and North Sea Camp: Heaven. All three published to critical acclaim. He said he never swore in prison, and within three months, 95% of the prisoners, maybe more, never swore when they were with him.

He spoke fluidly. Q&A mainly focused on politics of Britain and USA. He answered questions candidly with a huge sense of humour. Questions were good too; nobody made long speeches before asking convoluted questions.

Lord Archer is a great admirer of Blair and Obama. Blair, he said, was one of Britain’s great prime ministers with flair and charisma. He referred to Obama’s speech on race relations and compared it with Lincoln’s on slavery and Kennedy’s on segregation.

One questioner wanted to know if Britain had forgotten Hong Kong. He said Britain had not. Britain was not interfering but giving Hong Kong plenty of leeway and watching it very carefully. He also said he was surprised by the amount of love and respect Hong Kong had for Britain, and especially for our last governor, Chris Patten.

He ended his talk by saying there are many very good writers but for every thousand good writers there is only one story teller. With this he asked to be excused to read a piece of writing. No, he did not read from his book but read an anonymous piece. First author, I have known, who read but not from his book! No self promotion here, none needed.

A Somerset Maugham’s retelling of an old story, anonymous, which appeared as an epigraph to John O’Hara’s book…

Appointment in Samarra

A merchant in Baghdad sends his servant to the marketplace for provisions. Shortly, the servant comes home white and trembling and tells him that in the marketplace he was jostled by a woman, whom he recognized as Death, and she made a threatening gesture. Borrowing the merchant’s horse, he flees at top speed to Samarra, a distance of about 75 miles (125 km), where he believes Death will not find him. The merchant then goes to the marketplace and finds Death, and asks why she made the threatening gesture. She replies, “That was not a threatening gesture, it was only a start of surprise. I was astonished to see him in Baghdad, for I had an appointment with him tonight in Samarra.”