First Impressions
LOVE is a compulsive emotion. And when it overtakes reasonable common sense, delusion sets in. Three Dog Night by Peter Goldsworthy opens a new window to the rich world of Australian literature. Drawn around the Walpiri tribes, this story moves with the pace of a maniac speedster braking only to refuel. As the story takes shape we realise Goldsworthy's skills in spinning a tale full of human craftiness.
When psychiatrist Martin Blackman returns to his native Adelaide after a gap of many years with his English wife Lucy, he tries to resume his relationship with his childhood buddy Felix only to realise that Felix is a haunted man. Once a brilliant surgeon, Felix is now ill and consumed with overriding cynicism and surprised grief. Martin and Lucy, the loving couple, both counsellors, decide to step in and help. But things take an unexpected turn when Felix asks Martin to loan his wife for a dinner.
Goldsworthy writes with conviction and has visualised a marriage that takes itself apart bit by bit. As the realisation of his wife's betrayal dawns on Martin, he is overwhelmed by his own hate for his sick friend. Very much a thriller, Three Dog Night leaves you reeling under a gamut of feelings — love, despair, desolation and then the waiting sadness.
Three Dog Night, Peter Goldsworthy, Penguin, Rs. 350.
YOUNG Binapani belongs to a small town in Assam where life rolls on at a rather gentle pace. But she is confronted by a set of new questions each day. Why are girls not allowed to study? And the question of poverty? Why are some more poor than others, some subject to limitations on the basis of their caste? Binapani wants answers to all this and much more. Her mind wonders as to why the local nationalist hero is always in hiding. Before there is any answer to all her questions, she is sent to be married off to a much older man. Life assumes a familiar pattern where routine and drudgery merge when Binapani meets an old friend. They resume their association and suddenly the world is full of endless possibilities. Binapani's story changes with the historical backdrop against which it is written. Her relationships assume other proportions even as the country goes through the throes of upheaval. A poignant and telling story, this is the tale of childhood lost in transition to womanhood.
Dawn, Arupa Kalita Patangia, Zubaan, Rs. 295.
ALEXANDRA FULLER carries the "white man's cross". This intensely personal memoir is set in Africa where the author spent her childhood years. Her account of going back to the country and being faced with the changed situation is informative as well as interesting. However, Fuller gets lost in the maze of her own emotional turmoil as she grapples with the fatal attraction she feels for her fellow traveller who is throughout the book mysteriously addressed as K. As she tours the country with him, Fuller learns firsthand of the extreme devastation and emotional scars that war can leave in its wake. Of course, the end is painful as she parts company with K, realising that they inhabit externally and internally two very different worlds.
Scribbling the Cat, Alexandra Fuller, Picador, price not stated.
IS this part-fiction or fantasy? Sci-fi or plain gibberish? To find out, one must delve through pages and pages of a non-story written without coherence or imagination. If it is science fiction then it's definitely not what one recognises as SF and if it is a flight of fantasy its more like a acid tripper's trip gone awry. A strange tale of golems, fighting men, a prostituted militia, a demented saviour, all of whom seem to work at cross purposes. Need one say more then?
Iron Council, China Miéville, Macmillan, price not stated.
SUCHITRA BEHAL
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