Skeletons at the Feast: Chris Bohjalian

Image Credit: jacketsandcovers

I read another World War II book after a long time. Chris Bohjalian’s “Skeletons at the Feast” had got rave reviews, which was another factor that prompted me to buy it. Here is the description from GoodReads, which best sums it up –

In January 1945, in the waning months of World War II, a small group of people begin the longest journey of their lives: an attempt to cross the remnants of the Third Reich, from Warsaw to the Rhine if necessary, to reach the British and American lines. Among the group is eighteen-year-old Anna Emmerich, the daughter of Prussian aristocrats. There is her lover, Callum Finella, a twenty-year-old Scottish prisoner of war who was brought from the stalag to her family’s farm as forced labor. And there is a twenty-six-year-old Wehrmacht corporal, who the pair knows as Manfred–who is, in reality, Uri Singer, a Jew from Germany who managed to escape a train bound for Auschwitz. As they work their way west, they encounter a countryside ravaged by war. Their flight will test both Anna’s and Callum’s love, as well as their friendship with Manfred–assuming any of them even survive.

Bohjalian’s novel has uniqueness written all over it. First of all, it’s told from the perspective of German refugees, whom history has kept hidden. We all read about the suffering of the Jews, which was profound, but from Bohjalian’s story we learn that war is indeed a great leveler and that there were innocent Germans who suffered equally. But Bohjalian does not focus just on this one angle. Uri aka Manfred provides the perspective of a Jew disguised as a German – a difficult transformation, which he adopts for survival. He puts it to good use and kills quite a few Germans as well as Russians when he witnesses them mistreating women. Then there are the Jewish prisoners themselves, a couple of women named Cecelia and Jeanne. All there stories find a point to cross towards the end and merge into the pain they are all put through by the war.

Skeletons in the Feast is an extremely well-crafted novel that makes some profound observations from all these perspectives. As I said, I was really riveted by Anna and her mother’s ignorance of what was happening at the labor camps. In fact, they did not even know that there were camps in, which there were prisoners and that they were being tortured. There are liberal descriptions of the brutalities that Russians commit towards the Germans here even as they liberate concentration camps, enough to make you shudder.

The only thing I found a bit funny was this particular sentence.

“Callum – the youngest of the group, the tallest of the group, and the only one from Scotland – had been born in India, where his father had been a colonial official, and had traveled extensively throughout Bengali and Burma and Madras as a little boy.”

I think Indian readers would immediately notice what is amiss in this passage. Firstly, Bengali is the language spoken in the state called Bengal in India. It’s a bit like saying someone traveled through English rather than England. Secondly, does Bohjalian intend Burma to be part of India? He places it in the middle of ‘Bengali’ and Madras, which is again an Indian state, and does not address it separately. If that is the case, Bohjalian has committed a geographical faux pas.

These blunders apart, Bohjalian’s writing is terse and rich at the same time and is wrought with keen psychological observations. Irony is a character in the novel. It’s not easy to write the Second World War from the German viewpoint but he does it with aplomb. And it is definitely not easy at all to show a Jew becoming attached to Germans at such a time. Yet, that is what happens to Uri. The Emmerichs become his family and he becomes close to them. Bohjalian’s subversions are a wonderful, insightful read, especially when you know that it's based on his friend's grandmother's diary containing her experiences.


Verdict: The Second World War seen through a unique lens

Rating: 3.5/5

Chowringhee: Sankar

Image Credit: The Guardian

Phew I just finished this long, tiresome book. Actually, it’s not at all tiresome according to most of the reviews I have seen but I just could not keep up my interest after a point. Sankar’s “Chowringhee” talks about the eponymously named street in 1950s Calcutta, the equivalent of Sunset Boulevard where all the glamorous beings congregate at sundown at the magnificent Shahjahan Hotel. Told from the viewpoint of Shankar, a new recruit at the hotel, Chowringhee chronicles different shades of human lives, heaves with emotions, humor and keen observations.

Yes, I know it sounds the right mix. But I frankly did not enjoy it as much as The Middleman, although this book came out later. It was Chowringhee that catapulted Sankar into the famed writers circle but it was Middleman that is unforgettable in my mind.

Since Chowringhee is about the goings on at a luxury hotel it automatically invites comparison with Arthur Hailey’s “Hotel,” which according to Wikipedia came out three years after Sankar’s epic. I had read Hotel way long back, I think when I was in school, and I remember thoroughly being entertained by its story. It was gripping and by the time I finished I had walked through the corridors in a hotel that are usually closed to the customers. To be fair, Sankar guides you through in a very similar manner. I got to know the privileges of hierarchy, the unbelievable whims of guests that the manager is expected to fulfil at any time of the day, their many secrets that a hotel guards close and just simply the way an entire hotel functions. It’s a totally different world altogether.

Sankar’s characters are vividly sketched and he has an entire medley. Each has his or her own story to tell and they range from plain strange to heartwarming to saddening. Perhaps it is some of these stories that got me yawning because some of them were long winded. The narrative lacked a certain undercurrent that holds your attention and at times it got a bit confusing.

Well, as I said I know I am right down there with the minority (if there is one even!) but that’s IMHO, truly. I wouldn’t discourage any of you from reading the book because it has its merits and passages that are worth reading. Am actually curious to know what you think if you, who are reading this, have read this book, so do leave comments.

Verdict: Personally found it boring, but please give it a try

Rating: 2.8/5

The C Words : Mark Mason

                                                Image Credit : MeetTheAuthor 

It's astonishing how years just rush by. If time was an ocean, then right now I feel that each wave is a year taken from my life...and I stand on the shifting sand, and marvel that horizons have never felt so different as they have now, and time never so fleeting as it does now. Why such deep thoughts on a Sunday, you may ask? There is a reason. I read the C Words by Mark Mason. No, the book does not inspire such profundity. Nay nay. What made me think about time was that I bought this book in July 2007, and now three years later, I turn to it. Finally, that book must have thought! "My purpose in life is about to be fulfilled!" What a sad little purpose though it served.

The C Words is a forgettable little book. And the C words here are : commitment, coupledom and children. So now you have a clear idea where Mark Mason is heading. We have Alex, young 30 something, who is on this quest to find love without the three Cs attached to it. Then we have his colleague and friend, Tony who you know is this wonderful bloke, but who sadly doesn't have the nerve or courage to speak to a woman and woo her over. They both fall for the beautiful American, Elisabeth while on a trip to New York with their boss Miles. The boss incidentally, is trying to sell his company to the Americans with a little bit of subterfuge thrown in. How do I describe the rest of this novel? It's a bit like yesterday's leftovers really. Take a little bit of humor, a little bit of love, thrown in some serious thoughts about life, sprinkle some slapstick comedy and layer well with trite melodrama and voila! You have the C Words!

It all gets too predictable. A bit like reading Home Alone instead of watching it. The jokes are not really that funny and the sentimentality wouldn't make even my Grandma cry. Mark Mason tries very hard with this book, but I felt like I had flat beer, stale pancakes and sour tamarind all at once.

Verdict: Avoid. 


Rating : 0/5

Astrid and Veronika : Linda Olsson

                                                          Image Credit : KDL
It's been a long torturous week for me. A blazing sun and a little tipple had me reaching out for the deep dark corners of the earth, somewhere cool to bury myself in and forget that my head comes with an ache. Ouch. You can see I am still not recovered when I type sentences like that. And adding to my misery was Astrid and Veronika by Linda Olsson.

A book about friendship is one that I certainly think I would like. It was on that premise that both Astrid and Veronika came into my life. But strangely, I didn't like either of them much. Or rather, 'like' is the wrong word to use. I didn't warm to them much. Didn't feel for them. Here was a book I really felt I should have liked EVEN as I was reading it, but somehow the lush descriptive prose left me feeling barren and empty, and the deep sadness in both the main characters was never magnified down to the reader, and in the end, I was just waiting, just waiting to reach the end of this little story.

And the story is simple : Veronika comes to a little village in Sweden, hoping to escape the memories of her past relationship. Across her house stays Astrid - an old woman who the village has shunned as a 'witch.' An unusual friendship develops between these two women from different generations. Together, they learn to bury their past ghosts and attempt to reconcile with the present. And the way they do that is to share the secrets in their past - recollections come tumbling forth and shards of memories are tremblingly laid at each others feet. All of it comes through some exquisite prose, but my mind kept wandering through it. I am just such a bad reader when I am not totally with the story, breathing through the story and feeling the story. I become just a shell within a carcass within a coffin if I don't like the story. As Danielle Torres says in her review here, I guess I am in the minority in not liking this book.

Verdict : Slow. Boring. Redeems itself a little in the end, but the end was not worth the 200 pages before it.


Rating: 2/5

The Good Thief: Hannah Tinti

Image Credit: The Guardian

I was watching a cricket match on TV tonight, part of the IPL that is going on, so first of all apologies if my review is a bit warped. For those of you outside India, this is equivalent to the American Super Bowl, where the entire nation is glued to the TV set to watch cricket matches for the next one month. Well, despite being the ardent fan that I am, I couldn’t resist finishing up the last few pages of Hannah Tinti’s “The Good Thief,” while the advertisements came on. And the nature of the book added to my warped state.

What a bizarre book. The story is just too wild to be encapsulated in brevity but I will try. Ren is an orphan at St Anthony’s Orphanage, where he was abandoned when he was a baby. But he is soon adopted by a fine looking young man one day who takes him on a journey that tests Ren’s physical as well as mental powers.

Tinti’s first novel received much acclaim for its picaresque twists and turns through 19th century New England, in America. The story is packed with escapades, macabre descriptions that include severed hands and broken feet, a strange doctor who pays for corpses to be brought to him stealthily and a quirky woman with a dwarf for a brother. In fact, all of Tinti’s characters are just a bit off on a trip of their own. The Good Thief is quite a page turner and entertains with its humor, albeit dark.

“A few moments passed before he had the courage to look. When he did, he found nothing but the empty road. To his right the cemetery gate stood open. To his left was the town common, the grass bending to the wind. I’m not afraid, Ren thought. Then he glanced at the back of the wagon. One of the bags was sitting up.”

Such incidents, that cause you to hold your breath momentarily with a slight shiver and then release it in a laugh later, abound in the book. We get a glimpse of the murky side of New England in all its autumnal and winter beauty and the characters are well drawn in all their strangeness.

My one grouse is that towards the end it seemed a bit too contrived and I felt as if Tinti desperately wanted a good and happy ending. There were too many things falling into place too perfectly and too many explanations coming out in a rush from unlikely sources. As Caribousmom rightly says, Tinti ‘redeems’ some of her characters in the end but it doesn’t serve much to convince an imagination already stretched thin by then. However, if all of this is taken in the novel’s stride, its wacky concoctions, peopled with charming presences like Ren and Benjamin, are drunk holding your nose then The Good Thief is highly amusing in its own peculiar way.

Verdict: Take your mind off boring realities and let yourself go in the fantastic phantasms of this novel

Rating: 3.2/5

Thelma : Marie Corelli

                                  Image Credit: Publicbookshelf

I spent the whole of yesterday not wanting to have breakfast or lunch or dinner, not even a shower despite the sticky heat. I spent the whole of yesterday captivated by Marie Corelli's wonderfully fast-paced, engrossing and dramatic novel, Thelma.

Marie Corelli is one of the lesser known novelists, and Thelma is not the classic that everyone has heard of. But Thelma surprised me. It surprised me on a personal level because I don't think I have ever read a book that both my Mom and Dad have read. My Mom has read a few books in her lifetime, but my Dad? I have never seen him with anything more than a newspaper. So when my Mom fondly recalled reading Thelma, I wasn't that surprised. But when my Dad said that this was the first and last book he has ever read, I knew I was on to something!

Thelma begins in Norway, amidst the raw beauty of its fjords. The tempestous beginning never flounders - right from Philip Errington's surreal meeting with the beautiful Thelma, and later his quest for her that leads him and friend Lorimer to Thelma's home, which she shares with Britta, her loyal servant, Sigurd, a dwarf, and her brilliantly portrayed father, Olaf Guldmar. The action never slackens. I was taken on a whirlwind tour of possibly some of the most spectacular scenery ever described in words, and the courtship and eventual marriage between Philip and Thelma. At the heart of it, Thelma is a passionate love story. I was reminded of Wuthering Heights in many ways. It is also a scathing critique of English aristocracy and London manners of the time, seething as it was in hypocrisy and subterfuge. Does Thelma's beautiful, unsullied, innocent and trusting nature eventually get sullied by London's mores? Will her marriage to Philip survive the tests that schemers in London put it through? And what of Lorimer who loves Thelma perhaps more than Philip, but whose unrequited love is doomed to be just that?

Marie Corelli was a popular author with readers, but not with critics. Her style of writing has been criticized as being overtly exotic romantic fantasy. I agree. But I am a reader first. And I can understand why Thelma was so popular. There is a bit of adventure, a lot of drama, a few enduring friendships and an extremely passionate, all-consuming love story. In between, Corelli also uses her sarcastic pen to attack writers like Zola, and questions why, if ever, was Walt Whitman considered a poet? I love Whitman, but I also enjoyed Corelli's sweeping attack on him. :-). In fact, there is little I did not enjoy about this book except the last page where I felt that Lorimer could have been left alone as a tragic figure instead of trying to provide him with some late succor in life.

I wish I can go back and reread this one, but then, let me go and have my breakfast. It's been a while since I have had anything but words. ;-)

Verdict: Pick this one up. My one grouse : the ridiculously error-filled copy I had, thanks to Wilco Publishing House. Ugh. Don't they have an editor?


Rating : 5/5

The Women's Room: Marilyn French

Image Credit: Wikipedia

It was March 8th, Women’s Day. So I thought it would be appropriate to read “The Women’s Room,” by Marilyn French, a book that I had bought because it was apparently a landmark in women’s writing. Oh and there began the maudlin saga of Mira and Val and the rest of her friends. I have lost track of some of them, meandering through this 650 page tome.

The Women’s Room interweaves the stories of the aforesaid characters, their marriages, affairs, divorces and children. In short, this is a book about women by a woman. It started off promisingly, with Mira’s marriage to Norm, the two children that followed and her barren married life. These pages were the redeeming ones in the book. But as Mira’s life dwindled so did the rest of the book. It does gives a sketch of women’s lives in 1960s America, though, which was not exactly a happy world for women according to the book. Women were expected to cook, clean, wash, look after the babies and do every other menial chore related to the house as possible. Just like a “maidservant” as Mira calls herself. Mira’s scenario in the beginning and towards the end when she sticks by her principles is some of the points that give the book some nice contours. The book is partly an autobiographical take on French’s own life and Mira is modeled on her.

The inhabitants of The Women’s Room are drawn like stick figures with very limited scope and variety, with Val being a slight exception. The men, especially, are routinely maddening, indifferent, brutal, condescending or plain boring. Due to this, the entire book reads like one big scream against men and against a life that has to be led with men in it. Yes, men are insensitive, they can be emotionally draining and they can be dangerous for a woman. But surely not all of them? And surely women too can be insensitive and emotionally taxing?

I am not taking sides. I absolutely love reading women's literature and in fact, it was one of my chosen subjects in my postgraduation. My point is, French’s book could have been more delicate in getting the point across instead of being pushy and dividing the world into a black and white world made up of bad men and the poor, suffering women. Even if it was set in the 1960s; there were good people back then too!

Perhaps my view is one extreme. This book has received mixed reviews, with the majority elevating it to “an experience not to be missed!” as the San Francisco Chronicle described on the book’s jacket. And perhaps many of you who have read the book might have an opinion otherwise and agree with the Chronicle and there is something I am missing here. And at the time that this book came out, in the 1970s, maybe it made a lot of sense and that's why it has become a bestseller. But this blog is about personal opinions and for me, this was one huge tedious read that I couldn’t wait to get over with. Yes, it was an experience indeed.

Verdict: A few scenes here and there that just about redeem the book

Rating: 2/5

A Year in Provence: Peter Mayle

Image Credits: Book cover from fantasticfiction; below left Peter Mayle from The Telegraph

People were giving me weird looks. No, I hadn’t slipped on the sly banana peel landing on my butt nor did I have whipped cream from my frappe on my nose. I was just reading Peter Mayle’s “A Year in Provence” in a corner in a coffee shop and chuckling to myself all the while. This slice of autobiography, which the British Book Awards proclaimed the Best Travel Book of the Year 1989, is one laugh riot from page one.


Peter Mayle and his wife chucked a city life to move into rural Provence in France, into a country house complete with acreage filled with vines and cherry trees. A Year in Provence is just that, describing their very first year getting acquainted with the eccentricities and quirks of the place. And there are quite a few of them. Just like their life in Provence, this book has never a dull moment, keeping me in quiet splits from beginning to end.

Mayle’s keen observation regales us with the complicated processes that sheath even the simplest of tasks like repairing a broken wall. He makes food one of the most important characters in the book, showing how much the people of Provence love their food. Descriptions of different kinds of bread soaked in olive oil, garnished with roasted garlic and served with cold roasted peppers and parsley run throughout the book, which made me perpetually hungry.

The similarities between Provence and my country, India, surprised me. Mayle describes a French housewife at the market:

“Unlike us, she is not content merely to look at the produce before buying. She gets to grips with it – squeezing aubergines, sniffing tomatoes, snapping the matchstick-thin haricots verts between her fingers, poking suspiciously into the damp green hearts of lettuces, tasting cheeses and olives…”

This can be very well set in an Indian supermarket too, where my mom goes to buy her week’s worth of vegetables, moving around among the shelves testing, squeezing and peeling to see the freshness. Or take this instance:

“Any car parked near a market for longer than five minutes became a target for roving Provencal media executives, who swooped from windscreen to windscreen stuffing small, excitable posters under the wipers.”

I think most of us in India can relate to that; coming back to our bikes or cars to find small billets toasting in the sun announcing the opening of a new beauty salon or a new restaurant or a ‘mega sale.’

My only point of criticism is that Mayle uses too many French words and phrases, which can leave someone with no knowledge of the language, completely irritated. Of course, one can gauge the meaning from the rest of the sentence, but it’s not the same. Perhaps my enjoyment of the book was enhanced because I possess a basic smattering of French, which was rusting somewhere at the back of my head.

That minor (perhaps major depending on how you take it) flaw apart, A Year in Provence is written with wry humor, witty observations and terrific descriptions that make you feel like you have seen Provence.

Verdict: If you haven’t laughed in a long while, go for this remedy.

Rating: 4/5

Warning: Reviewer is not responsible for stares caused by constant smiles and chuckles that give you a demented air.

The Book of Negroes : Lawrence Hill

                                       Image Credit : Waterstones
 Wow. This book just had me spellbound. Commonwealth Literature at its finest. Or just a marvelous artist in Lawrence Hill creating a wondrous fictional historic landscape that reverberates with the story of one woman's struggle, passion and ultimate redemption and survival. Freedom. In a word, that is what the Book of Negroes boils down to. Tempestuous and stormy, Hill takes us on a journey from Bayo in Africa, across the stench-ridden slave ships that transport young Aminata Diallo to North America where she is sold as a slave, "a wench," to nasty Appleby, and her subsequent fall into Solomon Lindo's hands and there on to New York, and then Nova Scotia all the way back to Africa. Was she a traveler!

I was just wrapped in this book. I have a special love for Commonwealth Lit as it is and this book deserves the accolades it has won, including the 2008 Commonwealth Writers' Prize. Some may point out the book's obvious similarities to Alex Hailey's Roots, but while Roots traced generations, the Book of Negroes focuses on just Aminata and her search for freedom. Sometimes, when I read books based on history as this one is, I wonder how mankind could have been so unjust, cruel and at the heart of it, act as devilish marauders flaunting strength over weakness as a sign of superiority that lands one the right to ceaselessly abuse another. Imagine being torn from your parents at the age of 11 or 8, made to walk chained to each other's necks, thrust into a cabin that has space for 100 but crams in 1000. Imagine being branded on your chest, marking you forever. Imagine the singeing pain. But imagine more the madness that can seize you when all that you know and cherished is lost forever as you sail across the 'big river' and enter captivity to serve someone's trade.

Is Aminata ever free? No. Till the end, I feel Aminata is not really free the way we know it. True, she is no longer tied to some white owner, but her fortunes and her life still depends on them. (And this is no spoiler, don't worry). Yet, she has the freedom to voice her thoughts, and that she does wonderfully eloquently and beautifully. Read this one. Please. It makes its way to my Top 100 Books To Live For list.

Note: The Book of Negroes was an actual historical document. In the U.S., however the book is marketed under the title of Someone Knows My Name.

Verdict : Superbly Outstanding!


Rating: 6/5

Love and Summer: William Trevor

Image Credit: The Telegraph

I had wanted to read William Trevor’s “Love and Summer” for some time now. I picked it up finally and finished it in a couple of days. A book just crossing 200 pages but packed with beautiful descriptions of a fictional Irish town named Rathmoye, set in the late 1950s. “Nothing happened in Rathmoye, its people said,” but the appearance of Florian Kilderry changes that. First seen photographing a funeral Kilderry cycles around town, prompting curious looks. But it’s Ellie Dillahan who notices him more than anyone else and soon there is tender love growing between them that summer. Their glances and exchanges do not escape the eye of Miss Connulty who decides that this is going the dangerous way and that something needs to be done to save poor Ellie.

Languid prose and rich descriptions make this novel a delightful read. The language is lush and the town appears sketched as a bright painting. The love between Ellie and Florian is like the summer itself – as tender as the fruits that are everywhere on the trees, as warm as the summer sun and yet as brief as the season itself. For their love is jeopardized by the fact that Kilderry is leaving Ireland soon for other prospects.

Love and Summer goes beyond just a shimmering summer romance or a beach read. Trevor gives voice to the frustrations of a woman dominated by her mother until her death in Miss Connulty as well as her newfound freedom in her mother’s absence. Ellie is the orphan who has not known another life apart from housekeeping and being a farmer’s life. Her joy in finding love for the first time is strengthening as well as calming. Kilderry can appear callow, but Trevor brings out the multiple tugs he experiences as he decides, painfully, to leave Ellie and Ireland.

None of Trevor’s characters, however, express their emotions through loud proclamations. Instead, there is a quiet way about each one of them that edge out an undercurrent of feelings and expressions.

Love and Summer is a quiet read, like its characters. Serene even when its people are going through turmoil, I found to be a delicate exploration of what actually lies within us. A discovery of the heart through lush poetry, certainly, but lacks the tour de force that would make it deserve a Booker for, which it was nominated last year. But in matters of the heart do prizes matter?


Verdict: A wonderful distraction of a book

Rating: 3.5/5