Ringside view
SHREEKUMAR VARMA
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Paulo Coelho departs from his normal path but still turns out an easy read.
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The Winner Stands Alone; Paulo Coelho, Trans. Margaret Jull Costa, Harper Collins, Rs. 325.
“This is not a thriller, but a stark portrait of where we are now.” That’s Paulo Coelho’s disclaimer in the preface. It’s interesting that he finds it necessary to add such a caution. Coelho is a celebrity writer with a huge fan following that expects him to write as he normally does — and this book departs from that path. It strays into territory patented by Sidney Sheldon and Irving Wallace.
Setting
The scene is set in Cannes, during one of those glitzy annual film festivals. The protagonist is Igor, a cold-blooded Russian ex-soldier, whose inner voice goads him to take lives in order to prove a point to his former wife and possibly win her back. In the bargain, he snuffs out several innocent lives that have barely begun to float their dreams towards the crimson Cannes sky. Each murder is a message; when he finds no reply, he takes another life.
That’s the plot, but Coelho is in Cannes, and it isn’t an opportunity to be missed. We get a ringside view of modelling, movies and superstardom. We learn the difference between the lonely rich with their dull lives, the dreamers trying to break in and get noticed, and the “Superclass”, the ones with wealth and power who remain at the apex of an “imaginary triangle”. The Winner Stands Alone is an educational experience, with extensive lessons on the mechanics of fashion shows and cinema, guns and poisons, etiquette and protocol, serial killers and forensics, market trends and ecology and a lot more. And Coelho does it in leisurely fashion just as he takes time to paint his character portraits.
The story emerges even as he paints these portraits and gives us richly descriptive background details of virtually everything he touches. He stands up each character and tackles them, revealing in the process their history, the scope and background of their respective careers, and how they fit into the jigsaw of the Cannes killings. In fact, it’s a multi-layered jigsaw: fiction, fact, and the sheet-glass of morality through which everything is viewed.
There are times we feel that a thriller should be made of sterner stuff. But Coelho says he hasn’t written a thriller. His brief is something else: how dreams can be manipulated, and the price you pay for dreaming in today’s polluted world. Where, then, do you find fulfilment? There’s probably a hint in Coelho’s resolution to the Jasmine story.
Chilling agenda
When the dreams of Igor and Ewa come true, it’s payback time. Igor is a polite, distinguished gentleman who hides the devil within him. Ewa leaves him but cannot escape her destiny, the pull of her ex-husband. He’s convinced at first that she’s on an ill-advised path from which he must rescue her, but soon succumbs to his inner voice. Olivia, his first Cannes victim, an innocent curio vendor whose “spirit” gradually becomes his guiding angel, drawing him deeper into his chilling agenda.
Gabriela, Jasmine, Javits, Hamid, Maureen. Actress, Model, Distributor (with a Mafia link), Celebrity Designer, Director. Each with their own yearning and their reasons for coming to Cannes, hurtling to their own destruction. It’s Russian roulette, no one knows who’ll survive. On the other side of the fence, trying to climb over, are cop and ex-cop Savoy and Morris, puzzling over a serial killer who, they’re convinced, is Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde, remodelled for Cannes. And yes, Igor is all set to join the ranks of greats like Jack the Ripper and the Boston Strangler.
The Winner Stands Alone is a leisurely, easy read that informs and thrills. And Sheldon, trying to muscle his way in, is kept firmly in check as Coelho skims over psychological profiles and pathological tendencies, rues our loss of innocence and applies a stern yardstick of morality; though, finally, he seems to leave the adjudication to a higher authority.
E-mail: varma@shreevarma.com
The Winner Stands Alone; Paulo Coelho, Trans. Margaret Jull Costa, Harper Collins, Rs. 325.
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