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Phosphorus and Stone
Susan Visvanathan,
Zubaan-Penguin,
Rs. 195
Surprisingly good reading, considering that the narrative is not only complex and many-stranded, but also has to contend with overarching themes, such as faith and love, and to accommodate characters from different time frames, including one from bef
ore the Year of Our Lord – Jesus himself!
NGOs and social work - in fiction and otherwise - tend to get a bit sticky about the business of saving the world, but Visvanathan handles it with a lightness that also goes into the characterisation of Yesu, the do-gooder, 20-year old who marries the novel’s central character, Mary Magdalena.
Unfortunately, as happens so often with stories that have a lot happening, the author appears to run out of steam towards the end and the storytelling loses its sharpness; the ending may disappoint some readers as it doesn’t really do anything, exiting mid-telling, almost.
However, despite all of that, it’s an interesting read. And you wouldn’t be wasting your money to buy a copy.
The Ugliness of the Indian Male
Mukul Kesavan,
Black Kite,
Rs. 395
Interesting reading. This collection of essays on a large variety of topics, gives the reader plenty to think about. Kesavan’s writing is more serious than it appears (as those familiar with his columns and books will know) and you’ll qui
ckly find yourself absorbed in the author’s reflections, ideas and theses on many topics from the “ugliness of the Indian male” to the “pseudo-secularism” of the Indian.
To get a broad notion of what’s in the book, some lines from the author’s introduction: “Every English-speaking Indian man between twenty-five and sixty has written about the Hindi movies he has seen, the English books he has read, the foreign places he has travelled to and the curse of communalism. …Why did a bunch of grown men in the late-twentieth and early-twenty-first centuries write about the same movies, novels, journeys and riots? ….these regularities in the behaviour of Anglophone Indians are odd enough to be interesting”
The Gathering,
Anne Enright,
Vintage Books,
3.75 pounds
Anne Enright’s Booker-winning novel is the story of an intense, highly-wrought family that loses one of its members, when he dies, not with the drink that he has been exceedingly generous with, but because of ‘what happened to him as a bo
y in his grandmother’s house in 1968’ !
I imagine many readers would enjoy The Gathering, but Enright’s writing puts me off with its rather aggressive way of packing in so much into every sentence, every thought, and every character as if to ensure that the reader will be so swept up by the sheer physical force that s/he will not have the pausing to jump off.
Enright’s storytelling appears to me to depend on keeping the attention scampering in several directions all the time; look at the opening paragraph : “ I would like to write down what happened in my grandmother’s house the summer I was eight or nine, but I am not sure if it really did happen. I need to bear witness to an uncertain event.
I feel it roaring inside me – this thing that may not have taken place. I don’t even know what name to put on it. I think you might call it a crime of the flesh, but the flesh is long fallen away and I am not sure what hurt may linger in the bones.”
But each to her own, you might like it, give it a try.
Almost Single,
Advaita Kala,
Harpercollins,
Rs. 195
This story of Alisha Bhatia, 29, single and a Guest relations Manager at the Grand Orchid, is as clichéd, self-important and ploddy as the description of its author Advaita Kala: “rebellious (a result of years spent at Welham’s), con
fused (after four years of a liberal arts education at Berry college, Georgia, USA) and multi-faceted (having held jobs that range for being a librarian to a Tepanyaki chef)
I’m afraid I couldn’t read much of it, I kept feeling that I had stepped into one of those saans-bahu serials with the most boring, unreally dressed people, whose lines sounded as false as their eye-lashes looked.
KALA KRISHNAN RAMESH
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