The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter

Carson Mc Cullers was only 23 when she published The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter. The book went on to become a literary sensation, a tour de force that ranks alongside Dostoevsky or Nabokov, and was ranked as one of Time magazine's top 100 novels of all time. There is something about the title, isn't there - something so achingly familiar to all of us that it just settles in our midst? I was gripped by the title, it reminded me of a song I seemed to have heard long ago, and somehow it reminded me of all that is so painful in today's world.

All of us fighting, jostling, shoving, and screaming to be heard. To be understood. To be loved. A bare wound that burns from the time we were born - loneliness is an essential human condition, yet the condition creates an effect that is chillingly inhuman. Mick Kelly, the lost-in-her-inside world kid reminded me of myself. Then there is Jack Blount, the alcoholic and crusader against capitalism. Biff Brannon, owner of the New York Cafe. And finally, Doctor Copeland, the dreamer of African nationalism. To these four desperate lives, there is one hope - the deaf mute John Singer. And Singer himself aches for his Greek friend, who is lost to him, alone in an asylum. With touching clarity, Cullers invades the mental landscape of these characters, shrivels their falsehoods, and lays bare their "truth." What is the truth? It is that which we confront each day, but shove it aside for it is better to be content. The Heart Is indeed A Lonely Hunter. The loneliness in each of these characters gives their lives a violent color, yet Cullers touches it with tenderness.

In the end, all truly great literature will not despair, will not depress but touch us with the truth. And that truth nourishes us. The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter is not pessimistic or dark or gloomy as the title may suggest but it is a piece of your life. Not just mine. Or his. Or hers. But each one of us. Don't take my word for it. Richard Wright expressed it perfectly:

"In the conventional sense, this is not so much a novel as a projected mood, a state of mind poetically objectified in words, an attitude externalized in naturalistic detail. Whether you will want to read the book depends upon the extent to which you value the experience of discovering the stale and familiar terms of everyday life bathed in a rich and strange meaning, devoid of pettiness and sentimentality."

Verdict: Read it. And pass the word on.

Rating: 5/5

Measuring Time: Helon Habila

I was born a twin. My twin died barely a few days later. He has no significance to my life except in his absence. I have always wondered what it would have been to have a twin, and it seems a void in my life that seems absurd, yet I grieve for what might have been, forgetting that it might really never have been.

Halon Habila's Measuring Time is a Nigerian novel that parallels the lives of twin brothers, LaMamo and Mamo Lamang. Sickened by sickle-cell anemia, Mamo is not expected to live beyond twenty - and that sickness makes him turn inwards, absorbing books, and he forms the psychological insight for the novel. LeMamo, a soldier, is present in the novel mainly through his novels that he writes to his brother - these letters form a tense background to the story - encapsulating contemporary Nigeria's chaos. Habila's self-published first novel, Waiting For An Angel brimmed with promise, according to critics, and Measuring Time is no less searing. All at once it is a violent portrayal of Nigeria's politics, the bond between the twins, and an unlikely, frustrated love between two individuals (Mamo and Zara) who it seems in the novel can never be together, yet are more one than anyone else.

Measuring Time deals with several themes - including how real biographies are those that tell the stories of ordinary people - but for me, the most resonant theme was the underlying existential despair that drives it. Is there hope for Mamo? Or what is hope, after all? Is endurance of life, and survival of it, a relentless fight against death - is that what hope is? The book perhaps implies survival as the answer. Yet, it raises more questions than it answers, and for such an intelligent book, I can only say one thing : Please go and buy it.

Verdict: Brilliant.

Rating: 4.8/5

Superstar India - From Incredible to Unstoppable: Shobhaa De

‘This is a story about India. My India. It is a very personal story. You see, I’m exactly as old as India is.’

Shobhaa De's latest offering, Superstar India, is a non-fiction take on India with its vast complexities, profound absurdities, and mindless chaos descending into serenity. Through more than 400 pages, Shobhaa De takes us on an epic journey into the analytical heart of India - satirical, biting, and acerbic, the characteristic De candor is evident. I haven't read any of De's books but I am familiar with her columns that appear regularly in national newspapers. She is the author that everyone loves to hate - the one with a penchant for shocking us out of the stupor of comfortable existence.

Yet Superstar India did not offer anything new - simply because almost all her observations on India were an echo of commonly-held beliefs. "Indian men are lechy," she states. Which woman in India would not agree? Yet at times, De seems to be almost prescient - she mentions the possibility of a recession in America, and well, we all know that dreaded word is in our midst and is as inevitable as night follows day; she says that China might well stage the most spectacular Olympics ever, and we know now that it most certainly did. Mayawati, that champion of the masses, might well become Prime Minister, she says. And well, next year Mayawati might well be. There is one dominant note throughout the book - the free-spending wealth of India's new elite. She worries about the new plastic generation, of those who are reared to believe in a future income. And I share that worry - I see more and more young couples loaning their lives away to buy that exclusive apartment or that trendy car. And I think to myself, surely why? Why are we going the American way?

I found Superstar India to be mildly amusing. I don't believe in an Indian Dream as Mrs De seems to. And nor do I believe in the India she portrays - oddly contradictory through the pages, I am not sure De herself knows what is the Superstardom that India is aspiring to. Yet, only because the author calls this book a 'personal journey', I am willing to let that be - if this is her India, so be it. But please stick to India, Madame De. Her observations on China, for instance, were so appalling that I cringed. De goes on an escorted tour of China - Beijing, Shanghai and Xian - the usual tourist spots, with a tour guide in tow, and finds it quite chic to lambast the Chinese. "Poor, suffering souls with no freedom," is the general tone. I beg to differ.

Only those who live in a country can truly lay claim to understanding a part of its complexity. De asks her tour guide in Xian if she is allowed to date. "There was no question of dating or going out on weekends, as "her parents...didn't encourage her to meet men." Here De is aghast "But look at life in our metros! Which thirty-year-old woman waits for her parents' permission to go on a date?" Which? You can't be serious, Mrs De. I, for one, my friends for another - one of who has NEVER been on a date! We live in a metro - and are very much independent and selfish in all other ways. But we don't belong to the Armani-clad high-society that you refer to. And I don't know about tour guides - but most of my Chinese students from even less glamorous backgrounds had boyfriends, and their parents didn't seem to care at all. "Books, magazines, movies...nearly every known form of modern entertainment/communication is banned," flows another description of China. Laughable. Heard about the Internet? Ever visited Xinhua bookstores? There was nothing, I repeat, nothing that I could not obtain in China. Magazines were in abundance, and there was no news you cannot get, no matter how hard the government tries. And it is sheer lunacy that well-read authors like this propagate falsehoods. I don't care much about China's policies - true, they are repressive, and everyone hates communists - but let us not think that we are superior only because we are democratic, and that all Chinese are suffering under tyrants.

Glorious India? I am afraid I am a lot more pessimistic. Maybe we, of this generation, are too obsessed with making money...give me more of that, and less of words, please.

Verdict: Readable but perilous with truth

Rating: 2.4/5

Among Warriors: A Woman Martial Artist in Tibet - Pamela Logan

This is travel writing at its best. Among Warriors: A Woman Martial Artist in Tibet by Pamela Logan is pure joy for the traveler, for the journeyer within us. Inspiring, insightful, and exhilarating Pamela took me on a road that few have traveled in Tibet. Weaved into the vast desolate and beautiful landscape of Tibet is Pamela's personal quest as a martial artist for the famed warriors called the Khams.

I haven't read too many travel books - simply because the few that I have read seem either awfully too self-centered or a personal guide book. Among Warriors is neither - it is a personal journey, true, but nowhere does Pamela come across as self-centered, nor does she lace her words with long, painful descriptions that detract from the story. If I need to know how Tibet is, I need not read a travel book,Lonely Planet, the Internet, and Rough Guides would do - but if I need to feel Tibet, move through its people, and engage with its splendor, then I need a travel book, and Among Warriors fills that need. Anyone who is a traveler, please don't think twice - just read this book. If I have to gripe, it is about the ending - a bit too long drawn out for me, and it is only in the last few pages that Pamela forgets to weave the story, and instead becomes a travel guide. But that is small crime indeed for one of the best travel books I have ever read.

Verdict: Beautiful.

Rating: 4.3/5

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

ISBN: 9781585675470

Publisher: Overlook Press

Subject: Martial Arts & Self-Defense, Essays & Travelogues, Asia - Tibet

Grade Level: General/trade

Pages: 298

----------------------------------------------------------------------------