I am Legend by Richard Matheson

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.

The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold

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.

Quick Reviews

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.

Amit Chaudhuri’s Afternoon Raag

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.

An Unending Love Affair – Why I’ll Always Love The Shadow Lines

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.

Reef by Romesh Gunesekera

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.

Monica Ali’s Brick Lane

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!

Khaled Hosseini’s A Thousand Splendid Suns

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.

Michael Cunningham’s The Hours

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!

About a Boy by Nick Hornby

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.

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