SHORT FICTION
Different destinies
|
`Ruth Prawer Jhabvala describes the book as potentially autobiographical. And reading through the stories, one is tempted to ask: how much of it is drawn from the writer's own life?'
|
WHAT would life be like if I were granted another life? This is probably a central question in many minds. My Nine Lives attempts to answer this question by looking at nine possible destinies. The author describes the book as "potentially autobiographical". And reading through the stories, one is tempted to ask: how much of it is drawn from the writer's own life?
Ruth Prawer Jhabvala is, perhaps, best known for her association with the Merchant-Ivory combine, having collaborated with them on several successful scripts. She is also the author of 12 novels, having won the Booker for Heat and Dust in 1975.
Jhabvala was born in Germany, her parents were Polish and she left for England in the wake of World War II. Her latest, subtitled Chapters From a Possible Past, is extremely personal. The central character, the "I" in each story, is the writer herself, looking at different destinies. The characters change from chapter to chapter but are vaguely familiar. The stories all centre on relationships, on the search for "someone better, stronger, wiser, altogether other... ", as the author explains in the first chapter "Apologia".
The narrators of all the nine stories are attracted to Indian spirituality but trapped by sensuality. The men they fall for are not the "happily ever after kind"; instead they range from small shopkeepers, politicians, gurus... Some stories leave you wondering why the women put up with selfish, egoistical men. All are also of mixed parentage, trying to come to terms with it. The parents are usually rich, beautiful or powerful (not necessarily in that order) and believe that the daughter is an intellectual. Most of the stories involve a three cornered romance. In "A Choice of Heritage", the father (an Englishman) brings up his wife's child from a love affair as his own and much of the story revolves around the narrator trying to find a balance between her two fathers.
None of the stories is in the immediate. The narration has the quality of looking back from a distance. All have a thread of sorrow running through them with the search for love failing at some point. Each story can stand by itself and the pen and ink sketches that introduce each story have a mellow feel to them.
R. KRITHIKA
My Nine Lives: Chapters of a Possible Past, Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, John Murray, Rs. 395.
Printer friendly
page
Send this article to Friends by
E-Mail
Literary Review
