Erin Morgenstern's debut novel is set in the late 19th to early 20th century and is about two dueling magicians who set up a contest unto death between their pupils. The ``Cirque des Rêves", the Night Circus, forms the arena of this contest where each pupil must outdo the other, but will never be told how they are faring. The book is full of prose art that spins words into visuals, much like le cirque's shape shifting contortionist. Although it is about magic, the book thankfully does not dwell into the specifics of the magicians tricks, for there are almost no tricks that can seem magical in the starkly lit 21st century! Instead it revolves around the relationships between the two main characters and their relationship with the characters that create their arena. There are elements of The Prestige, in this book, especially the hubris of the magicians. Why is it that fictional magicians seem to always be dueling or seeking immortality?
Posionwood bible is the story of a family of six Americans comprising of an over-zealous, Baptist missionary, his wife Orleana Price and their four daughters who arrive in Belgian Congo in 1959 with several preconceived notions of Africa, to "civilize" a "rough people". Nathan Price's literal mind is too loud to listen and consequently he never learns anything about the local culture. His stubbornness and inability to comprehend the potential irrelevance of himself and his message in a country like Congo makes him refuse his one chance at leaving the country with his family when the politics around him threatens to take over their lives. He is so sure of the simplicity of the people he has come to educate, that he does not realize that the reason they steadfastly refused to be baptized in the river may have more to do with the crocodiles in it and less to do with their assumed obtuseness! In fact, his insistence that "Tata Jesus is Bangala" does not inspire confidence in the people since his American accent converts his intended meaning (Jesus is precious) to Jesus is poisonwood!
Leah the paternal approval seeking one-half of a twin and the other, Adah, spouting lyrics and making palindrome nicknames, form the heart and the conscience of the novel. The eldest, a regular Mrs Malaprop, seems like a metaphor for the other half of the universe that vaguely recognizes that there is oppression and greed in the world, but believes that one needs one's "pink mohair twin set" to retain one's sanity. Orleana Price herself is a metaphor for Africa, "occupied by Nathan Price", just as Africa in general and Congo in particular, is occupied by an ill informed, arrogant West that is too loud to listen -- just like Nathan Price. We hear the children and the mother slowly making sense of each other as well as the world around them and learning from Africa and its people. It takes a tragedy to move them physically out of Africa, but they are each forever marked by her.
This book weaves the author's global politics neatly with the familial politics of the people in the novel, thus making the reader care. It is also about communication and how it can never be honest if there is no mutual respect between the communicating parties.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
It's been a while since I watched a movie, and ages since I watched one in the theatre. I broke that spell last Saturday with Zindagi na Milegi Dobara (ZNMD). It was a perfect movie for a weekend evening and a perfect way to break the theatre-free spell.
ZNMD is a buddy movie with three guys going on a pre-wedding bachelor trip for one of the guys (Kabir, played by Abhay Deol). It is directed by Zoya Akhtar, sister of Farhan Akhtar, who directed the other famous buddy movie, Dil Chahta Hai, which still is one of my all time favourites. Since I really liked Zoya Akhtar's Luck by Chance, I decided to give this a try. Of course, it didn't hurt that Hrithik Roshan was in it too!
The three friends (Kabir, Arjun (Hrithik Roshan) and Imran (Farhan Akhtar)) decide to take a trip to Spain and indulge in three adventure sports picked by the three of them and kept a surprise from the other two. The movie evolves in layers exploring their relationships with each other as well as other key relationships in their lives. The characters ring true as do their interactions with each other and Javed Akhtar's poetry narrated by Farhan Akhtar's character as a voice over in several scenes was a nice touch, I thought -- a good way to include refinement over a mostly comedic, buddy movie. It gave the movie an extra depth without weighing it down too much.
Neither overly understated nor over stated, the acting was just perfect. The comedic timing of all three lead actors was great and there were enough laughs to keep one interested throughout the movie. The only thing that did not ring true was when Hrithik's character does his "sell it!" act in his so called financial institution in the earlier part of the film. Oh and the sky-diving! I don't know of any place that will let novice sky divers go solo on their first flight and there is no way you don't pull the parachute chord for that long! The La Tomatina festival was a little overlong and could have been trimmed and better edited without so that Katrina Kaif's outfit didn't alternate between being dry and clean and then all tomato splattered! But these things are easily forgiven in a movie that's otherwise good.
But, what's with all the male buddy movies these days: Dil Chahta hai, Yuva, Rang de Basanti, 3 Idiots doing so well at the box office? We need some more women centric themes soon, what say? But be that as it may, I think Zoya Akhtar is going to be on my must-watch list of directors from now on.
My husband bought me a copy of Paalangal (Bridges: translation in English, not sure if the author translated this herself) this time from India. Paalangal is a novel spanning three generations of women, some of whom lived in pre-independence India, written by one of my favourite Tamil authors, Sivasankari. So, this book seemed like a good way to get an insight into women of that period. It is strange that while so much has been written about the independence movement and the main events of those years leading up to independence, I have not found much that describes the attitudes and daily goings on of the ordinary people of those times. Especially people from southern India. Somehow I think a lot of the more human aspects of pre-independence history is being lost as that generation is slowly vanishing. I am trying to fill in the blanks in my mind about that part of India's history. Hope to discover more books in the process.
Besides, my Tamil reading skills, such as it was, has taken a nose dive. It's time to attempt a revival. It is so bad currently that I have managed to complete all of 47 pages (in 6 months!) of a most engrossing 2400 page Ponniyin Selvan (the son of Ponni) by the famous Tamil novelist, Kalki.
So does anyone out there know of any more books that talk about people in that time period in India, written by someone who was actually around at that time? Preferably in Tamil, English, Hindi or on the off chance, Sanskrit.
I know several people for whom a novel is just a story -- something to be distilled to its barest essentials and then ingested summarily. To me, though, a novel is much more than the sum of all its parts -- the plot, the characters, the language, the ambience. A novel is something that you need to savor at leisure, rolling the words around in your tongue until you get all the last nuances of the prose, while still enjoying the storyline and empathizing with the characters.
Glen Duncan's The Bloodstone Papers offers all of the above.
The novel is written in the first person and we hear the voice of the protagonist, a lecturer moonlighting as a porn novel writer and a bartender, in his late thirties who makes incisive observations on everything about life, including death. The Bloodstone Papers follows the story of two main characters, Owen, an Anglo-Indian in contemporary London who struggles with his identity, his one true love and his search for a direction in life and his father whose beginnings trace back to pre-independence and newly independent India/Pakistan. The novel switches back and forth between Owen and his novel about his father as it tracks the loneliness of Owen and the bloodstone ring that his father lost to a con-artist in India. The contemporary part of the novel is the most resonating as that is where the author is in his elements. Witness his commentary on aging and the tortured relationship that some children have with this fact about their parents
I shoulder my bag and begin to walk away, carrying the guilt of every grown-up son from the beginning of time, the guilt of knowing it's my world, now, not theirs. If they'd been younger when they had me, there would have been a period - me in my twenties, say, them in their mid-forties -- when the world was ours, together.
He distinguishes the voices of the past from the voices in the present with a single entity - God. While everything the principal characters in the past do is in some way related to their intense relationship with God, everything that the principal characters in the present do is influenced by their ambivalence towards, or denial of the existence of God.
Although there is the underlying plot of finding the bloodstone ring and confronting the con-artist, the novel is much more than a whodunit. It is about the fragmented lives of the protagonist and his family and friends. It lingers on their feelings as much as it lingers on their actions. Identity is a big issue across the generations in The Bloodstone Papers. Ross Monroe in India is often cautioned by Anglo-Indians as well as some Englishmen that once the English up and leave, they (Anglo-Indians) will be in grave danger. Owen in contemporary London denies ever wanting to be tagged as an Anglo-Indian
I don't know what it means to be Anglo-Indian. I don't care what it means to be an Anglo-Indian.
He insists. But he does care. He cares that they are too small a race to matter. He cares that no one will believe them. He cares enough to mention it as part of his personal ad in the Guardian.
Of all the identities that Owen Monroe takes on, his role as a porn writer seems to have the most influence on the entire narrative. For this reason, the book may not be for everyone. However, there is something about his prose that makes even the more hard-to-take parts of the novel less repulsive.
If there is anything that strikes a discordant note in the work it is that Glen Duncan's pre-independence India simply does not ring true. It is rife with western generalizations about India, and anachronistically, it is rife with contemporary western generalizations about India. This is a bit of a let down, especially when you consider the level of understanding of, and empathy for, the human condition that you get to see throughout the book. That said, it does not detract significantly from the experience that is this book. India after all is not easy, even sometimes for Indians.
The Bloodstone Papers is definitely something I would recommend -- for the prose, for its compassion towards people who are not exactly society's idea of success and for, strangely, its sadness! However, this is probably not a book for the easily offended.
So after what seemed like ages, I read a book that had nothing to do with work. It was Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni (CBD)'s Palace of Illusions. Given that I had grown up on a steady diet of stories, especially from The Mahabharata and related works, this was indeed something to look forward to. What piqued my interest further was that it was a retelling of the Mahabharata from Draupadi's viewpoint. For someone who gave themselves a pen name (Agnija ) derived from Draupadi's birth story, I really couldn't wait to get my hands on it.
The Palace of Illusions unfolds from the birth of Draupadi, who, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni avers, would have preferred to be called Panchali (thank you very much!). Retelling an epic like the Mahabharata from a single person's perspective must definitely present some challenges. One of which is being able to touch all the important points in the story, that the narrator could not have witnessed. Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni circumvents this problem using several plot devices. Mainly conversations between other characters.
To tag this book as a retelling of the Mahabharatha, though, would be an injustice to the novel. It is more than a mere retelling. It deals with the emotions of the people involved, especially, Panchali. Something that is lacking in works like Rajagopalachari's Mahabharata. If CBD is a painter, she is really painting the mind-scape of the characters over the familiar landscape formed by the crux of the Mahabharatha. It is also a coming of age story of Panchali as she grows out of her petulant, tempestuous childhood into a woman who has learnt to bridle her fire, albeit a little imperfectly. Imperfection -- I think that is the most charming quality of the Mahabharatha itself and that comes through very well in CBD's Palace of Illusions.
I recently watched the movie Babel which was nominated for a slew of Oscars including the best supporting actress for two people in the movie as well as the best picture. I think it won for music. I cannot say that I noticed the music much, but the technique and the story was really good as was the acting all round. The story involved people in four countries and three continents. In the way it was interwoven, it seemed a lot like Crash, the winner of 2006 Oscar for the best picture.
A two and a half hour long film, that I did not realize was this long! The story is original and all deal with a breakdown of communication between people -- for some reason or the other. The tag line of the movie says it all: "If You Want to be Understood...Listen". The movie is not so much about any one person per se and so no one is a star of this movie. The only thing that we wish when the movie ends, is that the some of the loose ends had been tied up better. The Japanese angle in the story was not very well developed, I thought. It was only loosely connected with everything else. Still, a very well directed, acted, thought out movie.
Recently I read Nick Hornby's "A long way down" upon recommendations from my sisters. They refused to tell me what the subject of the book was and no amount of prodding and/or pleading would induce them to reveal the subject of the book. I thank them for that. I think the book packs more of a punch because of that. So, I have a tough job ahead of me: to write a non-trivial review of a book without divulging its central theme. Let's see if I can do that.
Perhaps this exercise would be a good tribute to the book itself, since the author himself has not chosen an easy subject to write about. Not by a long shot. The subject is at once too private and at the same time something that society needs to think about. A subject that is too weighty that any levity must be carefully weighed before committing to paper lest it antagonizes the reader by giving the impression that the author was trivializing something so important. And yet, levity is needed since the topic is too grim without it. Nick Hornby has masterfully interwoven levity with introspection and social comment in this novel about one of the most current and yet ancient topic in society. All this, without in the least sounding very planned. Kudos!
