Sémantique

Being in graduate school, one can’t help but hear about Haruki Murakami in the context of contemporary literature. It’s quite amazing, to say the least, that a writer who writes in Japanese, is read so widely in this country. Which other authors could boast the same with their translated works? Not many. That, and my fascination with Japan, always had me curious about Murakami. But his books were never on sale, and I had a tight budget every time I went to the book store. I started reading After Dark at Barnes & Noble once, but had to keep it away because I needed to buy something else. I got really lucky this week when I was out with friends and came across a store going out of business. They had everything on sale! Spanking new copies for half the price?! Was I in heaven or what? I am glad I thought about looking for Murakami at the store. This time, I wasn’t going to let it go.

As the name suggests, the novel starts at night, and plays out in real time till the sun rises the next day. There is Mari, a nineteen year old girl, trying to spend a night out, alone. There is Takahashi, a young man, who starts a conversation with her. The writer breaks the fourth invisible wall that helps us see the goings-on, as he often uses “we” and includes the reader into the mix. We’re helpless, but we’re right there. This unusual trick does wonders to add to the eerie feeling that the novel creates. The middle-of-the-night landscape of downtown Tokyo is barren and Murakami takes little to no effort to describe it to us. Instead, he repeatedly tells us about what Mari is wearing, or how beautiful her sister Eri is. Eri has been asleep for a while now, and Mari is awake, trying not to sleep. Each of the characters are running away from something, or caught in a world they cannot make sense of. Takahashi wants to become a lawyer, but it doesn’t seem like that’s his dream. Mari is going to go to China, but she is afraid of doing so. Eri is caught in the world of sleep, and wakes up in a place that’s indescribable. Having seen (and disliked, sorry to say) Jean-Luc Godard’s Alphaville, it was interesting to note the use of similar tropes in the movie and novel, namely the use of the television set. There is a namesake hotel in the novel called Alphaville too, which is obviously not a co-incidence.

Most of the times, I’ve been rewarded reading shorter texts of hefty writers like Murakami, and After Dark was no exception. I understand why reviews by his fans opine that this might not be his best work. It is a little too straightforward. But I did feel a profundity in its simplicity. The characters weren’t really explored deeply (on purpose, I think), and yet they left me with a deep impression. The romanticized idea of spending a night out, meeting someone new, talking all night long to them – these are all used by Murakami, and yet the novel is not stereotypical. I really look forward to getting my hands on more of his books. And I won’t be surprised if I turn into one of his fans.

Robert Neville is all alone. He leads his life with seeming easiness – doing chores around the house, fixing things, cooking, and so on. But he is alone. Not lonely alone; but alone alone. Eerily so. And that eeriness will not get to you so easily, because just like me, you must have seen the movie, or at least heard the story from someone. But still, in the first few pages of the book, Neville’s aloneness is striking. He goes around the house, doing things, and keeps thinking about “them.” We are not told who “they” are, but just by reference, we know that they’re not good news. And as nightfall comes, and as Neville locks himself inside his house and plays loud music so that he can’t hear their sounds, we slowly begin to feel his aloneness. His solitary existence, surrounded by blood-thirsty vampires, not only scares us, but bothers our sense of complacency. Matheson takes us on Neville’s journey, forcing us to wonder what we would do if we were the last living being on this planet.

You might be familiar with the premise of the story – almost everyone in the world has fallen prey to a mysterious bacteria that turns them into vampires, who sleep by day, and awaken at night, roaming the streets in search of fresh blood. Neville is the last man alive, uninfected. And although the story is as much of a sci-fi thriller, it is also a story about the future of our world if wars continue to happen, the role of morality in a world that’s slowly coming to an end, the changes that would happen in a man if he were suddenly thrust into loneliness for three long years. Matheson does a great job juggling all these different ideas in the book – and most importantly, the book is a success with just one major character who has to bear the burden of all the action and thought. Neville, not so surprisingly, talks to himself all the time. His inner monologue is often funny, at times thought-provoking. There are many instances of hilarity in the novel, which breaks away suddenly from the tense atmosphere it creates, shaking the reader into laughter and then coming back to its grave subject. It works so well!

I cannot help but mention the book with reference to the movie, since I saw it first. The movie takes substantial liberty in changing the story-line. The reason that the virus spread in the movie was due to a cure for cancer; in the book the spreading of the virus and the quick mutation of humans into vampires is discussed at length. A scientifically sound reader would make more sense of it than I did, and if would be kind enough, would even explain it to me later! More importantly, in the movie, Robert Neville was a scientist, who actively looks for a cure for the virus. But in the book, Neville is just a common man. He teaches himself everything he needs to know about the virus by going to the library and bringing back books. That to me, is much more believable than the happenstance of the last man being one who can cure the virus. To add to the feeling of loneliness, the book’s Neville doesn’t even have a dog, unlike his movie counterpart.

Very rarely have I read books after watching the movie – but I’m glad I read this. I think I like Matheson, the writer.

It’s very rare that I read and enjoy a book like Amit Chaudhuri’s Afternoon Raag. My mother often reminds me how I kept badgering both my parents to tell me stories. And I’d demand new ones – not finding solace in the familiarity of a story told over and over again, like some other children might. That love for stories has not left my disposition. So when I pick up a work of fiction, I am looking to read a story – a new, fantastic tale. I love getting into the lives of other characters, watch them unabashedly and know that they’ll always be there, hidden under the shiny cover of a paperback. So when a book like Afternoon Raag doesn’t tell a story, but more or less meanders over descriptive passages, back to back, with no end or beginning, one would think a reader like me would be disappointed. And one would be wrong.

Although it doesn’t have a story, the novel captures the reader’s interest through a medley of musings, strung together in an erratic manner by the author. I almost imagined myself having an afternoon chat with the narrator, when he reminisced about his life – his childhood in Bombay, and his brief stay at Oxford as a student. That the novel mostly focused on those two aspects of the narrator’s life was especially interesting to me, because I am from Bombay, and I’ve experienced the life of a student in a foreign country. Chaudhuri’s descriptions of both these are quite nicely done. He obviously has an eye for detail and when he uses a metaphor, which he does rarely, it is sharp, surprisingly smart, and tends to put a smile on your face. I loved his description of Western Bombay. Every little detail was lovingly written, showing that the author truly appreciates the city for what it is. I identified with the narrator’s observations of student life as they reminded me of my first years in the US.

Besides these two aspects, Afternoon Raag, as the name suggests, is about music – which again hit close to home for me. I studied classical Hindustani music as a child, and have clear memories of going to classes, learning raags, practicing with friends, taking exams. Chaudhuri’s detailed description of a harmonium gave me goose flesh, and although I hated my music teacher back then, made me yearn to go back to learning music. His paragraphs on how to tune of tanpura transported me back in time. I wonder if the writing at this point was so specific that someone who isn’t into classical Indian music will appreciate it, but it’s worth a shot.

This might not be genre I love to read, but somehow, it felt like a refreshing change. Chaudhuri is almost a poet, with a lyrical quality to his prose. His sentences are long, rambling, and yet lucid. For someone who doesn’t care for a story, but loves to read something that’s expertly written, this is a book to look out for.

Firsts are always special. First love, first car, first job – you get the drift. For me, Amitav Ghosh’s The Shadow Lines was the first hard-core literary book I ever read. For the kind of book it is, it could have made or broken my love affair with books. Fortunately, it did the former. Not only was it the first real literary book I ever read, it was also the first book I ever wrote an essay on; it was my first real ‘Indian Literature in English’ book.

But The Shadow Lines will not be special just for these firsts. It is a book bigger than I will ever be able to encompass with my limited vocabulary. Unlike other books that I deeply love and cannot live without – I might not read TSL over and over again — it’s just not that easy a read. One of the reasons that I am such a big fan of Amitav Ghosh is because he doesn’t treat his readers as school-children, spoon-feeding them a story. Ghosh’s imagination is expansive, and he sets on his flight, expecting you to keep up with him. He is unapologetic about how smart he really is – if you can fathom the story he is trying to tell you, you can’t help but feel smart yourself.

TSL introduced me to the idea of a nameless narrator. Someone had to point it to me, in fact, that the person through whose eyes we see the story, doesn’t have a name at all. The idea itself was so fascinating. TSL also made me fall in love with the non-linear narrative. Mostly based on memory and how it affects the larger picture of life, the book bounces back and forth, between time and space, leaving you grappling for something central to hold on, simultaneously forcing you to get into the story, unabashedly.

Tridib, the person around whom the story revolves, is a character worth remembering forever. I think I’ve had a crush on him for the last ten years. Heard about through his brother, his lover/good friend, and the narrator, you never see anything through Tridib himself. The characters build his story for you – making him into a kind of myth. Tridib is one of those rare characters that says very little, but leaves an everlasting impact on the readers’ minds.

For a dreamer like me, TSL made a wonderful difference while I was growing up. It told me that it was okay to live in a life of imagination. It was not such a bad idea to sometimes leave your skin, and live someone else’s life, in a voyeuristic manner. It taught me that when you imagine, you do so with precision, because otherwise it’s just no fun. It gave my young mind the impetus to dream, wonder, and wander away to unknown places.

It’s been over ten years since I first read The Shadow Lines, but even today, the book holds me hypnotized. It makes me smile, and cry, and think. If that’s not the true testament of a good book, I don’t know what is.

One of the best things about reading a book like Reef is that you are ready for it to be anything. The name doesn’t give away much, you haven’t heard of the writer, nor his style; it isn’t exactly old, but it isn’t new. The unexpectedness is so very refreshing; and I was ready for it after my last, lengthy read. Published in 1994, (and short-listed for the Booker Prize), Romesh Gunesekera’s novel is one of the simplest books I’ve read in the recent past. And yet, one of the most interesting and beguiling of works. The story begins in present day England, at a nondescript gas-station, and quickly bounces back to several decades ago, to 1962, when the narrator was only eleven years old. The narrator is seen to be taken as domestic help at the house of a rich, young man Mister Salgado. We get to know Mister Salgado (through the narrator, Triton) who is a marine biologist, living a comfortable, luxurious life in Sri Lanka. Through the eyes of Triton, we see the life of his master, his lover Nili, and their social circle. Triton, young though he is, is a curious boy, whose observations are often mature for his age – ranging from deeply philosophical, to highly blasphemous! What is important, however, is that we get to see his affluent master and his friends, their thinking and way of life, through a person who is quite removed from it. Triton is a loyal servant to his master, making sure that he does his work at the best of his abilities, thereby endearing him to the reader. Simultaneously, his young master is nurturing and kind, resulting in a mutually beneficial relationship. Triton, Mister Salgado, and Nili make an unusual family, that eventually faces problems that threaten to doom their beautiful life.

Gunesekera’s story is not over-flowing with a plot. But what little he has to say, he says it with utmost care and skill. His writing is at once simple and complex, making one go over a sentence, only to come back and mull over its loaded descriptiveness. The narration is taut, helping me finish the book in under two days (and aren’t we all happy when we ravish a book like that?). What was most amazing for me was the realization that I had not read anything by a Sri Lankan author before! And I’m glad I’ve corrected that. Another interesting thing was that in spite of being a male writer, Gunesekera’s observations are quite feminine in its details. This is not a bad thing, of course. The skill of the writer was obvious because he never forgot that the narrator was only eleven. There were times when the narrator did sound a little precocious, but that wouldn’t be entirely untoward, taking into consideration the fact that he had to grow up much quicker than other boys his age.

When you pick up a book to get into the groove of reading after a month-long reading hiatus, you want the book to slap you in the face, wake you up, and get excited about the activity of reading itself. But that’s only the best case scenario. With Monica Ali’s Brick Lane none of that happened. I started the book and I wondered every now and then, why I was still reading it and why I wasn’t keeping it down. I finished it to save face (from myself), but rest assured, what’s going to follow is not going to be pleasant.

I’ve said this before, and I’m saying it again – I hate to say anything negative about a book. I’m not a writer, after all, what do I know? But Brick Lane just didn’t do it for me. The start was interesting enough – beginning at the beginning, with the birth of the protagonist Nazneen in a small village in Bangladesh. We are told right then that Nazneen will grow up to be someone who will not question fate, and will live life with its ebb and flow, going where the tide takes her, never swimming against it. That is, I must admit, a refreshing characteristic, but it gets to be old after a while. I had so many problems with the book that I need to make a list, so that I contain it in a respectable and readable manner.

• Nazneen gets married off to a man twice her age and sent to London, and she doesn’t question it. She makes her home with a man she hardly knows, and tries to find joy in the small things that life offers her. But over all, Nazneen is a reticent live-r of life.  I’ve yet to come across a central character that is so laid back. We see life of an immigrant through Nazneen’s lack-luster eyes, and I was constantly reminded of Ashima in Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Namesake. But Ashima seems much more interesting when compared to Nazneen.
• The problem, however, might not be the character of Nazneen herself, but Ali’s writing style, which is rambling and often lead the reader to a cul-de-sac. There were passages that went nowhere and left me confused. The metaphors were liberally distributed, and got quite annoying after the second chapter. Writing needs to be poetic, but it needs to be curtailed. I am not a fan of long books, and this one was 400 pages long.
• Ali’s focus is nothing in particular. Is it about racial tensions in London? Is it about a marriage that works despite differences in age, lifestyles, morals? Is it about Nazneen’s sexual awakening? Is it about how she changes over her lifetime? We are given a little of everything, but nothing specifically to go away with.
• Nazneen’s tie to Bangladesh is her sister Hasina and Ali even brings a little of the epistolary form into the book with the help of Hasina’s letters to Nazneen. But all of the letters are in bad English (which is supposed to mean they are in bad Bangla, I suppose, since the sisters don’t speak English), which I skipped over. Not only were the letters a break from the flow of the novel, they were so difficult to read because they were not in proper English. I am sorry that Hasina had to be given such a poor way of being involved in the story.
• The only person whom I actually cared about in the book was a friend of Nazneen’s called Razia. That was the only character that showed a proper growth arc and was so down-to-earth that I liked her. But she was often reduced to a caricature and was strictly kept as a supporting character.

I am not sure why this book has won so many accolades, and I am interested in knowing what others thought about it. No doubt there are people out there who enjoyed the book, and I’d like to know why. At the same time, I’d love to know if some of you have read it and thought the same as I did. I wouldn’t feel so miserable about a bad review if I knew I had company!