Getting Back…

And now for something completely different.

When I was at that age when reading suddenly became an indefatigable hunger, I began to consume anything and everything that came close to me. If I understood it – and my comprehension skills were growing each day – I would read it. While the small, local library was good to keep me entertained for a while, eventually their stock would feel too sparse and I would be left feeling the need to read more. A majority of the books we had at home were in Marathi, my mother tongue. Like most children going to schools where the medium of teaching was English, my Marathi was rather basic. But when I began devouring books in the language – first out of helplessness, then curiosity, and later because why not? – I became more and more comfortable with the language, taking pride in my extensive vocabulary.

I’ve been in the US for nearly nine years. With time, my speaking Marathi has taken a setback, and moreover, my reading speed has slowed down immensely. So I was hesitant to begin reading the book my parents mailed to me. Most Indians my age might know Priya Tendulkar, daughter of famous playwright Vijay Tendulkar, actress and activist. Knowing my interest in women’s literature, my parents sent me this short story collection - Jave Ticha Vansha (I will try to update with a translation of the title.) Consisting of eight short stories, all (except one) from the point of view of women – Tendulkar’s collection is heart-wrenching, tender, and poignant. Because her writing style flows so easily, I didn’t have too much trouble reading. The stories had the ability to pull me in, and I finished the book in three days (which is a record of sorts, for me). Tendulkar writes from many women’s perspectives, of relations between mothers and daughters, husbands and wives, and of issues that can only arise in typical Maharashtrian middle-class families. The familiarity she evokes is gratifying. The stories are ridden by one similar theme however: the unhappy wife, the dissatisfied woman. Maybe that’s a reflection of Tendulkar’s own life also.

I will always think of English as my first language. But Marathi is the language of my family and I hope never to lose touch with it. Are any of you like me, trying to keep the memory of another language? What do you do to ensure you stay connected? And if you, like me, hold pride in knowing multiple language, let me just say, the pride is totally worth it.

Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House

If you know me, you know I love anything to do with horror. I watch scary movies, love to listen to spooky tales. Unfortunately, I read horror fiction the least. My most favorite horror novel, The Exorcist, has set a high standard for scary fiction, and I’m always in the search for a book that will send a chill down my spine. If you search online for the best horror novels of the past century, Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House is sure to come up in one or more lists. That’s why I was happy to find her at the library and the book quickly wrapped me up in its odd, chilling atmosphere.

The story starts simply enough with Dr. Montague, a scholar interested in “the analysis of supernatural manifestations.” He finds Hill House, a strange, abandoned property, and three people to join him in living there. Two women – Eleanor and Theodora – have had brushes with the paranormal, and the third, Luke, is the heir to the house. The four meet at Hill House and  strange incidents ensue. That being said, The Haunting of Hill House is anything but expected. Jackson is a deft writer, and although for the majority of time the novel is only filled with four (or five) characters, she makes those characters immensely memorable. While Eleanor is always in focus, it is to Jackson’s credit, that Luke, Theodora (I love that name, by the way), and Dr. Montague are all etched with a distinctness. The foursome are completely aware of the unique nature of the house, and they face the horrors that accost them with humor and wit. Jackson balances out the creepy descriptions with wonderful repartee and often with beautiful, evocative ruminations of the mind.

I know horror fiction is not everyone’s cuppa tea; but if you want to slowly ease yourself into the genre then this is your book. I doubt it will scare your pants off (which is what I was hoping for), but it will play with your senses and make you think. It’s one of those that you’ll yearn to come back to, and even a slow reader like me finished it in three days. If you’ve read Jackson’s famous (notorious?) short story “The Lottery” before, then you’ll find the element of strangeness here too. But if you didn’t like the short story, don’t let that stop you from venturing into her longer fiction.

Mistress by Anita Nair

I apologize for the long absence from this blog. I have had an extremely busy 2012 and my fiction reading took a beating with the increase of my work-load. I gave up on way too many books the second half of last year, and my humble resolution for 2013 is to read, read, and read. I picked up Mistress by Anita Nair because I wanted to read something with a hint of familiarity – an Indian novel by a woman writer. In that department, I was not disappointed. I cannot say that about the rest of my reading experience with this book.

I had heard a lot about both Nair and Mistress before I started reading. So my expectations were high. The novel begins in a small city in the South Indian state of Kerala, at a train station. Radha, her husband Shyam, and her Uncle have come to receive Chris, an American. The purpose of Chris’s visit is to interview Uncle (or Koman), a Kathakali dancer and make him a prominent part of his travel book. As soon as they lay their eyes on Chris, both Radha and Uncle feel an immediate sense of attraction, for different reasons. Radha, whose married life is “dead,” finds Chris sexually appealing, and Uncle cannot put a finger on why he feels a closeness to this American man, but certainly feels warmly towards him. Shyam, on the other hand, sticks out like a sore thumb and is excluded from the troika’s discussions and meetings. Set at a resort run by Shyam, Mistress moves forward as we hear the story from the perspective of Radha, Shyam, and Uncle. Unhappiness abounds in the resort, and it is Chris who brings a sense of joy to some of its residents. However, that happiness does not seem to last very long or have a positive effect on anyone.

Nair chooses to give each of the main character a voice, which makes for an interesting reading. An incident when seen through different eyes gives it a multifaceted appearance. What is bothersome, though, is that none of the characters, when they speak, make you feel compassionate towards them. Rather, when I read something through a character’s perspective, I viewed them as shallow, selfish, and quite annoying. With three strong personalities to choose from, I’d not want to sympathize with any. And it is frustrating to read a 400-some page book with no character to root for. Chris, the foreigner, is thankfully left foreign and given no voice, making him a mystery not just to the novel’s inhabitants, but also to us.

The scope of the novel is quite large too, going back in time to Uncle’s father’s childhood. Most of those chapters left me a little exasperated and turning pages with a groan. The author might have wanted to give an ‘epic’ quality to the novel, but for me, it failed with the over-arching story-line. Although I much preferred the present story-line at the resort, instances like Radha reading Nair’s earlier book Ladies Coupe seemed self-absorbed and left me rolling my eyes.

There are a few upsides to the novel though – the story is dripping in culture and dance lore. There is a lot of information about Kathakali and some (not all) recollections of Indian myths are interesting. Overall, though, as much as I hate to say it, I finished the novel only because I had to. I won’t mind reading Nair again, but you’ll have to bribe me with chocolate first.

A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley

Funny things happen when you read books. You try to read a lengthy, complex book and life decides to distract you. You keep the book away, exasperated, mid-chapter, because it has begun to slow down, and pay attention to other things. Then suddenly you remember the book, it mocks you from the dusty night stand and you reluctantly pick it up. You begin it from where you left off and SMACK! It slaps you in the face. It just happens to pick up the pace from the very page you gave up on!

Jane Smiley’s Pulitzer prize winning novel is an American re-telling of King Lear. The author doesn’t go too far away from the primary plot or characters, except the land to be divvied up between the daughters is a thousand acre farmland in Iowa. The daughters, Ginny (Goneril), Rose (Regan), and Caroline (Cordelia), are fathered by the hard-headed Larry (duh, Lear), who impetuously decides to retire and give up his farm to his daughters and their husbands. When Caroline, the youngest and a lawyer, vocalizes her doubts, Larry’s ego is so hurt that he shuns her and breaks all contact with her, deciding instead to give the land to just Ginny and Rose. The two older daughters are happy with his decision, being farm-wives, and are eager to finally be able to own the land that they have helped Larry work on. Although Ginny, our narrator, tries to be the mediator between Caroline and her father, as well as the general peace-keeper of the family, things go south. When Larry begins to become more and more senile and frustrated at losing his power over his land, he begins to hate his older daughters. As Larry loses his grasp over sanity, Rose talks Ginny into re-discovering certain dirty secrets of their past. Slowly, the family and their unity unravels, leading the narrative towards the tragedy it is bound to be.

While the story is familiar to most of us, Smiley does a brilliant job reinventing the classic as a relatively modern one. The characters are extremely compelling, all painted in various shades of grey. Whereas one might sympathize with King Lear, Smiley’s Larry has little to no redeeming qualities. But the daughters, although they have faults of their own, are human and not unlikable. The detailed descriptions of farming and its various processes were (to me) unnecessary and overwrought. There were times when Smiley got a little too much into the narrator’s head, with unending ruminations, which were difficult to read. (I like my stories dialog-driven.) That being said, Thousand Acres is a book like no other. I love a good tragedy, and this quenched that need. The story is a great reflection of how so many families are broken on the inside and how many of them hide secrets that can tear them apart. It is also a book that exhausts you psychologically, but leaves you feeling accomplished when you smack it shut one last time.

The Pilot’s Wife by Anita Shreve

Anita Shreve’s is a name that I heard pretty often, and I was always marginally aware of her popularity. But, for some reason, I’ve never found the need or desire to read her books, even though one of my best friend enjoys her writing. When I found The Pilot’s Wife in the discount section of the store (a steal for $1), I decided to give it a try. The book I was reading then was beginning to get cumbersome, so I moved this one up in my list and finished reading it rather quickly (by my standards).

The Pilot’s Wife begins with the heartbreaking news of the death of the pilot to his wife Kathryn Lyons. The novel moves forward from there, flip-flopping between Kathryn’s past with her husband Jack, and the present, where she has to deal with the media attention surrounding her husband’s plane crash and the slow unraveling of his secret past. Although it begins in a marginally unconventional way, with the death of the protagonist’s husband, the novel moves in a rather conventional (read disappointing) way. Shreve, without a doubt, is a gifted writer. Her use of metaphors is startlingly beautiful at times. There are certain descriptions that are also rather poignant. However, the novel rests on description on the side of annoying. I don’t care to know what’s on the table, when two important characters are talking about a key progress point in the plot. In that sense, Shreve’s writing seems haphazard and badly organized. Also, it makes me wonder, if the story was long enough to be a short story, and was forcibly stretched and expanded into a full length novel.

Perhaps, like it is the case with many prolific writers, this might just not be the right first Shreve book to read. If you have read other, better works by her, I’d appreciate your feedback.

The Silence of the Lambs by Thomas Harris

Clarice Starling and Hannibal Lecter are names that might not be unfamiliar to the average movie-lover. Made well-known by the 1991 movie adaptation of the book, these two characters are already a part of your pop-culture knowledge, even if you haven’t read the book by Thomas Harris, upon which the movie was based. It is difficult to read a book when you’ve seen its movie version — a well-made, “best movie of all time,” no less — and know the story that unfolds. But The Silence of the Lambs is a little better than your average paperback thriller.

Clarice Starling is a student at the FBI academy, about to graduate, when she is called by her superior (Jack Crawford) to help with speaking to Dr. Hannibal Lecter, a notorious murderer and brilliant psychiatrist, now in jail. Dr. Lecter’s expertise with the crooked human mind might help solve, Crawford believes, the mystery of “Buffalo Bill,” a serial killer who kidnaps women and skins them before he dumps them in rivers.  On the one hand, Clarice has to successfully engage Dr. Lecter long enough for him to give her clues into the case, on the other, she has to balance her academic life and make sure she isn’t “recycled” at school. But the first taste of crime solving is sweet in Clarice’s mouth, and she getsinvolved deeper than she can help herself.

Harris’s writing is crisp and engrossing. Although, I find books with a lot of technical, scientific jargon difficult to read, the author makes it easy to understand and navigate through. The chapters are short and terse, keeping the pace of the novel rather brisk. Even if you know the killer’s identity (via the movie, or 3/4th of the way through the book), it does not hamper the novel’s progress. Clarice Starling is a wonderful protagonist – strong as a would-be FBI agent, sensitive as a woman with a troubled past. In Jack Crawford, she finds a worthy leader – a man with skeletons in his own closet. And what can be said about Dr. Hannibal Lecter? A more interesting antagonist may not be found in recent years. I hope I’m not the only one who kind of liked him and cheered for him. If I am, please don’t tell me.

In My Father’s House by Ernest J. Gaines

Rev. Phillips Martin, who lives in a small Louisiana town, is a Civil Rights Leader in the 70′s. The movement is on the decline, with its prominent leaders being dead, but the people are still struggling for their rightful place in society. Martin is well-respected and the be-all and end-all of the town. This all changes one night, when a stranger knocks on the door of the local boarding-house and shows interest in nothing but lurking around the Reverend’s house. The young stranger, with a curious name like Robert X, is a mystery to all. The townspeople see him walking around at odd hours and are interested in finding out what he wants. When the Reverend finally sees Robert X at a party in his house, he collapses out of shock. He recognizes Robert X as his long-lost son, someone who he had given up as a young man. With this, Martin’s past comes rushing back to him, threatening to loosen his hold on his community and forcing people to lose faith in him.

In My Father’s House is a look into a man’s struggle to establish himself, only to lose it all because of the sins of his past. Gaines does a good job of portraying the Reverend as a man who lifts himself from poverty and depravity, who also decides to shut himself from his past. Even though he has found himself through faith, Martin expects things to be magically ok when they do go wrong. Martin crumbles against the wrath of his past mistakes, and acts in haste, mixing his political life with his personal. But even though he temporarily loses sight, Gaines allows Martin to finally find the answers.

Although my interest is in African American literature by women, this book provided an interesting counter-study of the perspective of men.Gaines tries to scratch the surface of the complex relations between sons and fathers, and by the end of the book, one wonders whether the void between them will ever be filled. If Martin listens to the women around him, it might.