Sémantique

Death usually marks the end of a work of fiction; but Alice Sebold’s The Lovely Bones begins with death – the death of the protagonist, no less. Right at the beginning of the book, Susie Salmon introduces herself, and tells us that she’s been killed and is now in heaven. The novel, then, is a look at how Susie’s family copes with her death and how she watches over them, hoping that her killer gets caught. Sebold gives us a detailed description of the after-world, creating specific rules around what heaven means according to her. Sebold’s interpretation of heaven is an interesting one – a place where dead people can create a reality of things they really love. If what you love intersects with what someone else loves, you’ll meet that person in heaven.

Although Susie has found herself in heaven, her attachment to her family and her murder means that it will be difficult for her family to move on in the wake of her death too. In spite of the fact that Susie knows this, she hopes that her killer will be recognized and be given his comeuppance. Susie cannot remove herself from her life on Earth, as she lives with the people she is involved in – her family, her first crush, a girl she brushed accidentally while she was leaving Earth, and of course her murderer. There is nothing Susie can do except be a passive observer. Her unique involvement in the story allows the novel to be from the point of view of a first person narrator, as well as third person omniscient narrator.

The novel sucks you right from the beginning, with the heart-rendering descriptions of a family trying to cope with the death of a loved one, as well as the dead person’s observations of a life she’s not a part of anymore. The incidents are at once touching and comic – very apt of life itself. Sebold’s tone is quite artful, and she is successful in creating a family that we are bound to feel for. The characters are well drawn out and rarely do we find any shallowness in her portrayals. There are many characters, but Sebold gives almost all of them equal importance. Although a little lengthy, the book is quite a grasping read. I might want to nitpick about the last two chapters, which left me very dissatisfied with the close of the story – it almost felt as if Sebold had no idea what to do with it, and decided to finish it off in a hurry. But that doesn’t mean the rest of the book is not worth it. More than likely, you’ve not read a book with this premise, so I’d recommend you give it a shot.

I am really curious about the Peter Jackson film-version of the book to be out soon. I usually don’t recommend books be changed for films, but in this case, I wouldn’t mind if he tweaked the end for the movie audiences.

I disappear from here when either of these two things happen – (a) I’m not reading at all, or (b) I am reading a lot. I am happy to report, that although most of the times it’s option (a), this time I absconded due to option (b). Since most of my readings happened one after the other, I had no down time to review and record all the books, so I’ve decided to do a quick, one/two-line review of each book:

Sula by Toni Morrison – Morrison remains one of my favorite writers, because re-reading this after almost 10 years was just as great as the first time around. No one can take you into a different world, and yet remain true to human feelings, like Morrison can.

Meridian by Alice Walker – An early work by another favorite writer, this one is quite different from her other books I have read, but a great look into a Civil Rights Activist’s life.

Clear Light of Day by Anita Desai – My first full-length Desai, and I loved it – subtle, lyrical, complicated. A great read if you like Indian fiction in English

Desirable Daughters by Bharati Mukherjee – This book boggled me – it came across as a pulpy, detective novel in the garb of serious fiction. It was over-bearing and needlessly lengthy.

Bombay Talkie by Ameena Meer – Did not like it. One of those books that tries to be an exposé of the Indian upper-class, but ends up being superficial and stereotypes everyone.

Breath, Eyes, Memory by Edwidge Danticat – Again, re-read this beautifully written book about three generations of mothers and daughters and their complex relationships. Set in Haiti and New York.

There are so many books, and so little time to read. Maybe that’s why it’s quite difficult to read more than one book by the same author (unless you’re a die-hard fan of the writer). Avid readers usually read the most well-known book by an author. In Khaled Hosseini’s case, it has to be The Kite Runner, the book that shot him to fame. Although my initial opinion of The Kite Runner was quite positive, looking back at the story and his style, I don’t think it was as great as I might have thought. What I did remember was that the book was really easy to read (a luxury one needs to indulge in every once in a while). And I knew that his second book would be equally simple as a book. I was proved right and wrong at the same time.

As a story and as a narrative, A Thousand Splendid Suns was easy enough to follow. Hosseini’s style was quite similar to his first novel, although the historical upheavals of Afghanistan and its effect on poor families are much more detailed and nuanced. Hosseini’s interest in the lives of two young girls and their familial situation reminded me a lot of the films of Majid Majidi. Majidi’s films are based in Iran, and although have a tinge of sadness, are always somehow rooted in hope and joy.

Hope was a huge part of Splendid Suns too, however, I soon got tired of how depressing the story was. It’s hard enough to read about a husband abusing his teenage wife; it gets really frustrating when he marries another teenager and abuses her too. There was too much violence, inside and outside their homes. There was hope, but one knew that you had to wait for it.Without giving too much away, I was bothered by the fact that the women in the story had to depend on another man to finally find vindication and freedom. I was annoyed by the fact that one character had so much power over the female protagonists. And when the protagonists finally break loose from him, it’s too little, too late. Or so it seemed to me. The novel dragged a little towards the end, and much of what happened was quite expected.

Over all, Hoesseini’s second work elicited a reaction that one often has when you read an author’s second work. It rarely stands up to the high expectations set by the first work, and yet is endearing to you because you’re familiar with the author’s style and it’s fun to read the similar patterns. I’d still recommend one read The Kite Runner and only read Splendid Suns if you’re looking for a quick yet interesting read.

A few pages into Michael Cunningham’s The Hours, I knew that this would be one of my favorite books of all time. However, with a caveat. Unlike other “all time favorites,” I don’t think I’d re-read this book in the future. The reason for both those statements is the heart-wrenching subject-matter of the book. Centered around three women at three different time periods – Virginia Woolf in the 1920’s, Laura Brown in the 1950’s and Clarissa Vaughn in the late 1990’s – the book does not go beyond their routine for a day, yet manages to cinch the attraction to death and the curious grip that depression has on the characters. Death and depression – two words I’d use to describe the book, and I think those two words are enough to guess why I wouldn’t dare to touch the book again.

Cunningham is an exceptional writer. Just a few days ago I was telling a friend about my preference for dialog-driven narratives, rather than narratives that are heavy on description. Cunningham is very, very descriptive. However, I managed to stay interested; heck, I loved his descriptions. I would have never guessed that I’d enjoy an extended metaphorical description of a headache! You got to read it to believe it.

I love multiple narratives, and it works wonders here too. The stories of the three women are parallel and seemingly unconnected, and I loved the fact that Cunningham doesn’t try too hard to link them all together. I absolutely admire the author for converting  into fiction the day in the life of a non-fictional Virginia Woolf and the amount of research that that might have needed. The other two women – although not as enigmatic and awe-inspiring as Woolf – hold their own, and one wants to read more about them.

It seems a vain effort to praise a book that’s so beautifully written. Cunningham spins a tale with the most sublime words, but the tale is about the most morbid topics. That’s the dichotomy that makes the book work. If you’re not afraid of melancholy, go read this book. If nothing else, you’ll learn a few new words!

In an inconspicuous street in downtown Hamilton in Bermuda, there is a quaint little shop called Twice Told Tales. This ingeniously named store obviously sells second-hand books. One might not imagine going to a bookstore while on a vacation to Bermuda, but that’s exactly what I did. I love non-commercial bookstores, especially “adopting” books that have been abandoned by their first users. Also, how can one let a good deal on a book slip by? Twice Told Tales was small, also functioning as an internet café. Most of the books there were larger volumes about travel, which I gladly overlooked. The interior of the store, however, had several paperbacks and I spotted Nick Hornby’s About a Boy and Michael Cunningham’s The Hours. Incidentally, I’ve heard about both these novels due to their film adaptations, and I really liked both the films.

I started reading About a Boy that night at the hotel room and continued reading it on the long journey back and a few days of the New Year in Houston. Usually an easy read like this doesn’t take me a long time, and although I was slow, I relished the book’s every page and incident. I am in love with the British way of conversing, their lifestyle and attitude, which seeps through the pages of this book. Will Freeman, one half of the protagonist duo, is a womanizer you can’t help but love. Your heart goes out to Marcus, the other half, who is a dysfunctional, precocious boy. Anyone who has gone to school and been singled out for being different will identify with Marcus’s loneliness at and fear of school. But we’ve lived through it, and want to cheer Marcus to get over it too.

The conversations between the various characters are the highlight of this book: the ones between Will and Marcus being the craziest and funniest of them. The narrative is in third person, but the chapters alternatively focus on Will and Marcus’s POV. It is especially interesting to read one single incident through the POV of both of these characters. Will’s mind is a hilarious place and it is a joy to know what’s going on in it. If you’ve bullied a kid in school, you must get to know Marcus, a boy who is a misfit for no good reason.

If you’ve seen the movie, be warned that the end of the movie was completely changed for apparent commercial reasons. The end of the book is much les… climactic. Like any good book, the end of this one makes you want to stay a little longer in the lives of the characters. You are not ready to leave them just as yet and you take solace in the fact that even if you’ve closed the book and kept it away, the characters are still there, living their life.

First of all, I need to ask forgiveness to the handful of readers that this blog might have, for my prolonged absence. For one reason or another, I’ve been reading books that I don’t want to read, but must read. As a friend pointed out, it’s a little ironic that I read to study and I read for fun. The joy, however, of reading a book for the pure, headonic pleasure of reading is indescribable. So although, Amitav Ghosh’s Sea of Poppies was first on my reading agenda, its higher level of prose tired my already weary brain, and I just had to squeeze a pulp-fiction-ish work in between. That’s how I came about reading Vikas Swarup’s Q & A.

I had heard about the book first in terms of its movie version, Slumdog Millionaire, which sounded pretty interesting. Naturally, I had to precede the movie with the reading of the book. I didn’t go in with too many expectations and that helped in the reading of the book. The story was attractive – a poor, boy-of-the-streets hits the jackpot when he is able to answer all twelve questions in a Who Wants to be a Millionnaire? type program. But how does he do it? Is he an undiscovered genius? Has he managed to cheat? Surprisingly, no. Ram Mohammad Thomas, the protagonist and winner of a billion bucks, is just plain lucky. In a series of twelve chapters, we come to know that the twelve questions that lead Thomas to his win had an uncanny relation to twelve incidents of his life that helped him know the answers to strange questions like “Who invented the revolver?” or “In which play by Shakespeare do we find the character of Costard?”

I must reiterate that conceptually the story seems fascinating. However, one can suspend disbelief to only a certain extent, and as the  narrative goes on, it gets harder and harder to link the questions to Thomas’s life. The stories by themselves are nice to read and have touches of the writer’s flair; but when you read them in the context of the quiz show, it all becomes a little too far-fetched. Also, it did not help a person like me, who is a staunch believer in either hard work or intellectual capabilities, that Thomas was just so lucky as to have at least 11 of the 12 questions directly related to what he has learned from life. Luck shmuck aside, Thomas must have the memory of an elephant to remember those specific incidents and answer the questions.

I don’t want to be too hard on the book, because as I said earlier, it’s a fun story to read and you’re rooting for Thomas throughout the book. The characters are likeable and there are some really well-written, funny incidents. On the other hand, I must nit-pick on the fact that the writer often flails between writing in the past tense and present tense when he is relating an incident of the past. That really got on my nerves, but I had to ignore it. It’s probably not even the writer’s fault but just shoddy editing.

If you find the movie interesting, I’d suggest you read the book first. Although it seems like I’m saying the contrary, it’s not such a bad book.