Providence: Anita Brookner

Stroke of light

Image Credit: Birdy

It took me just about a day to finish Anita Brookner’s “Providence.” A slim volume at just about 180 pages, Providence is one of Brookner’s early novels, third to be precise. Here is a summary from The New York Times –

Like Anita Brookner's previous two novels, ''Providence'' recounts, with elegance and precision, the story of a timid woman's thwarted efforts to create a new life for herself. A lecturer in ''the Romantic Tradition'' at a small English university, Kitty Maule is one of those well-bred, perfectly mannered women who is always perfectly dressed, perhaps a little too perfectly dressed - a woman who might be called pretty, were it not for the perpetual look of disappointment she wears on her face.

This is my first Brookner novel so I didn’t know that she had a tradition of spotlighting single, lonely women in many of her works. Brookner, no doubt, writes brilliantly. Kitty spends long, languid hours in her domicile preparing for lectures and enclosed in a cloud of thought fueled by cups of coffee. These sessions are punctuated by appearances of her neighbor Caroline or the mercurial Maurice. But the sharp pinpricks of an aching loneliness are all too palpable. At one point, Kitty even consents to visit a crystal ball gazer with Caroline. Her first visit to the clairvoyant injects some resolve into her.

“As she sat in the garden of her grandparents’ house, she was aware that the time had come to say goodbye to those who had been with her on the first half of her journey, and that she must now to prepare to live a different sort of life… From now on she would be more definite, more admirable, she thought… She was saying goodbye to her very pliancy, the quality that had kept her, like her mother, a girl for far too long. And I am thirty she said to herself. I am already thirty. It is time.”



Her resolve though prompts her to go to Paris, weakens each time she comes in contact with Maurice. For inexplicable reasons she is besotted by him while he maintains a cold, detached distance. Brookner’s language splendidly shows Kitty’s longing to be accepted by Maurice as she tries to do everything possible to please him.

Brookner herself was a lonely child as she says in an old interview and a lot of her early work is based on her own feelings and experiences. Her books are known to be deterministic in character and I could see this feature in Providence too. And does Kitty get Maurice? Do read the book and find out, it’s worth it.


Verdict: A short glimpse into loneliness

Rating: 3.7/5

Into Thin Air: Jon Krakauer

On the edge

Images Credit: Birdy

I absolutely love trekking and hiking and for a long time have been nourishing a thought of making it to Mount Everest base camp. I know I will not climb the mountain per se because I know my limits. And after reading Jon Krakauer’s “Into Thin Air” my conviction has only deepened. Krakauer’s hair raising and harrowing account of his Everest summit in 1996 kept me riveted till the very end. A brief summary from the book jacket –

Jon Krakauer, an accomplished climber, joined a commercial expedition run by guides for paying clients, many of whom had little or no climbing experience. In Into Thin Air he gives a thorough and chilling account of the ill-fated climb and reveals the complex web of decisions and circumstances that left a group of amateurs fighting for their lives in the thin air and sub-zero cold above 26,000 feet – a place climbers call ‘The Death Zone.’

Krakauer describes everything with plenty of details right from the time he reached Namche Bazaar in Nepal before the climb. I realized how expensive a commercial expedition can be – some of them cost as much as $65,000! Most importantly, I realized how commercialized Everest had become even 14 years back at the time this book was written. Anyone and everyone were attempting the most treacherous mountain in the world. Krakauer introduces a few colorful characters who were brave enough to make this dangerous attempt. My favorite among them was Sandy Pittman a quirky socialite from New York albeit a somewhat experienced climber. I couldn’t help but chuckle to myself at the contents of her luggage while climbing Everest. She commissioned Sherpas to bring her the latest issues of Vogue, Vanity Fair and other magazines. Her Sherpas, the porters who help carry equipment during expeditions, were doubled over under the weight of “two IBM laptops, a video camera, three 35mm cameras, one Kodak digital camera, two tape recorders, a CD ROM player, a printer … supply of Dean & Deluca’s Near East blend and my espresso maker.”

The expedition started off well enough, but soon after there were a lot of hitches. People fell ill with gastro troubles, some could not get acclimatized well enough and some had vision problems with the thinning air. But it was the test of endurance and pain that had me reading the book open-mouthed many a time. There were climbers who had summited Everest without the use of oxygen at all, a rare feat. But Rob Hall, the expedition leader, constantly urged his team members to breathe oxygen consciously, even while resting or sleeping in tents, from the cylinders they carried.

“Every minute you remain at this altitude and above,” he cautioned, “your minds and bodies are deteriorating.” Brain cells were dying. Our blood was growing dangerously thick and sludgelike... Even at rest our hearts beat at a furious rate.”



I cringed at points where Krakauer describes horrific frostbites and felt truly sad when tragedy struck and some of his team mates perished. Krakauer strongly believed that he could have played a bigger role when the entire tragedy was unfolding and could have perhaps saved a life or two. And the fact that he failed to do so due to some unthinking actions, remains heavily weighted on his mind and his survivor guilt and pain echo through the book.

Into Thin Air is an excellent read even for those not much inflicted by the travel bug. Scaling this behemoth of a mountain is a completely life-changing experience. In Krakauer’s case, it was not as much positive. I could almost visualize the crevasses and the icy chasms that lay all along the way and I involuntarily shuddered even in the heat of my room. Perhaps, Krakauer could have avoided a lot of repetitions in the book and it could have been edited a bit more tightly. These are but small observations that do not hinder the experience of reading this chilling story.


Verdict: Know the speciousness of Everest up close and personal

Rating: 4.5/5

Versedays: Silver by Walter de la Mare

Image Credit - Birdy

The oppressive heat in my room made me walk out on to the terrace for a walk. The moment I stepped out I was bathed in the soft glow of an almost-full moon. It was almost like a switch has been flipped in the heavens and a light came on. It was beautiful. I have always loved gazing at the sky, the stars and the moon. And today too, I stood captivated by that magnetic silver face. My mood and the stillness around me is perfectly expressed by my choice for Versedays this week, which is Silver by Walter de la Mare. Although more known for his adventure novels like Ivanhoe, de la Mare also spun some dulcet lines, and Silver is one of his most well-loved works. Enjoy this smooth, evocative poem, which just brought the moonlit night alive for me through its imagery.

Silver

by

Walter de la Mare


Slowly, silently, now the moon
Walks the night in her silver shoon;
This way, and that, she peers, and sees
Silver fruit upon silver trees;
One by one the casements catch
Her beams beneath the silvery thatch;
Couched in his kennel, like a log,
With paws of silver sleeps the dog;
From their shadowy cote the white breasts peep
Of doves in silver feathered sleep
A harvest mouse goes scampering by,
With silver claws, and silver eye;
And moveless fish in the water gleam,
By silver reeds in a silver stream.

Endal : Allen & Sandra Parton

                                                  Image Credit : British Legion
This is the third 'doggie' book I have read in the past few years. Marley & Me is my all-time favorite in that category, but I picked up Endal by Allen and Sandra Parton because my love for Labradors is well-known.

From the start let it be known that Endal, who passed away last year, was a very special dog. Endowed with such uncanny insight and remarkable patience, Endal was not just the most decorated dog of the millennium, but also one of the most loved. If there were doggie saints, Endal would surely be the first! Having said that, the book is a disappointment. After a car accident left Navy man Allen Parton severely injured, losing his memory and eventually the use of his legs, Endal comes into his life as an assistance dog. Allen's life is transformed - he regains a lot of the independence he had lost, and Endal provides him with an emotional outlet that his accident-scrambled brain had taken away. Slowly, Allen begins to recover his lost life, and reunite with his wife, Sandra, and their kids. That's the story. But a great story does not a great book make.

Having struggled through a small injury last year, I fully understand the sort of confusion that Allen must have been thrown into after his accident. I admire his and Sandra's tenacity to overcome the odds and bridge their life together. Having said that, for a book named after a dog, the dog is introduced almost 150 pages into the book. And the entire book is less than 300 pages! That is a bit too much background and context to me. No reader should wait so long before being introduced to the dog after which the book is named!

Both Allen and Sandra take turns to narrate the story - the objective being to offer different perspectives, I guess. But while both of them talk a great deal about themselves and each other, they kind of forget to talk much about Endal. I mean, here is one of the most famous dogs in the world, the only dog which knew how to operate a cash point machine, and a lot of the book is stuffed with references to how many TV shows Allen and Endal attended! I remember crying at one point while reading Marley & Me, but Endal didn't quite evoke the same emotions. It was all cut and dry, and that is the pity. For much as I would like to know about Allen and Sandra, I really would have loved to have known Endal more.

Verdict: Disappointing

Rating: 2/5

The God of Animals: Aryn Kyle

Images Credit: Birdy

Taking a week’s break from the gym is so beneficial. I get to read as soon as I come home from work and there is nothing more relaxing than sitting with a bit of coffee or just enjoying the strong breeze with your nose buried in a book. Thus I finished “The God of Animals” by Aryn Kyle. There is 12-year old Alice Winston who helps her father with his chores at the ranch. Theirs is a horse farm where they breed and raise horses as well train riders for shows. Alice is burdened with more than just physical labor as she copes with a mother who hardly ever talks and sits alone in her room and a father who has not come to terms with the fact that his older daughter ran away with a rodeo cowboy. The summer after her sister disappears, is a long one, of discoveries for Alice. And then everything comes to a head at the end of that long, dusty summer.

Ok, before I go forward with my thoughts on this book, I have a curious question. Why is it that ‘things happen’ in summer? Is it the heat? Does it muddle people so much? Count the number of books that have been set in summer. There are two books already reviewed in Lifewordsmith – The Summer of Katya and Love and Summer. There are two on my TBR shelf – Summer by Edith Wharton and Summer Will Show by Sylvia Townsend Warner. If I run a random search am sure I will find tons more. Perhaps I should also run a search for winter books.

Anyway, it was one such magical summer where things did happen for Alice. She outgrew her clothes, she saw her father almost fall in love with another woman and she discovered she had a crush. But there was one thing that eluded her – herself. Alice covers up her loneliness through a few white lies and pursuing a telephonic friendship with her school teacher, Mr. Delmar, who she is convinced is her true love. Alice is so stirred up by the stillness around her that she yearns for danger and excitement along the way to figuring herself out.




Kyle writes with a hand that perfectly projects the assured confidence of an adolescent that sheaths myriad self-doubts inside. It’s not an easy task to voice the churning, conflicting thoughts of that age. Above all the people in the novel though, it’s the horses that stand out. Kyle was brought up in Colorado, the land of horses, and it shows in every sentence. That sometimes becomes the drawback of the novel. There is too much of horses all over and the middle of the book sags with the heaviness of the animals. In the periphery, lie the stories of Alice’s heartwarming yet distanced relationship with her father, her wary closeness with Patty Jo one of the rich clients of the ranch and her friendship with Sheila. These form the tight fence around the horses who rear, gallop, birth and get trained in the middle.

The God of Animals holds your attention enough not to put it down with boredom. There is a strange sense of disquiet that reigns the atmosphere of the book from start to finish, which has you clasped to itself. And Kyle’s fluid, evocative writing helps. It brought the shimmering summer right at my doorstep. Yet, I wish Kyle had made the plot a bit more closely knit and torn off a few pages from the book. That would have made it slicker. But am not complaining that much. Now I am going to get myself some water to quench my thirst after surviving yet another spellbinding summer.


Verdict: Get lost in the dust of the ranch with the horses and Alice.

Rating: 3.2/5

The Fountainhead: Ayn Rand

Images Credit: Birdy

After years of avoiding it I finally had to read this book, since Thoughts lent it to me saying its one of her favorites. I am talking of “The Fountainhead” by Ayn Rand, the much revered classic. I had attempted reading this when I was in school or college, found it immensely boring and thrown it away.

And now? Well, sadly my opinion has not changed drastically. I did enjoy the book to a great extent mostly in the first half. But after around 250 pages or so, it starts going through highly philosophical corridors where I lost my way. I am guessing I am the last person to read this book but still here goes. To put it briefly, The Fountainhead follows the life of architects Howard Roark and Peter Keating. Enmeshed with their stories are the lives of newspaper critic Ellsworth Toohey and their love interest Dominique Francon.

It is through Roark that Rand propounds her theory of objectivism, the following of individualistic pursuits as against collectivism. And I did find the beginning extremely interesting. I was fascinated by Roark, a seemingly cold, emotionless and terse figure who refuses to design buildings which conformed to popular designs. Roark worships creativity and individualism and he struggles to maintain his values in an age that blindly follows the past. Erecting buildings based on past classics such as the Parthenon or decorating a building with superfluous trimmings like angel figures imitating Renaissance structures, is something he abhors. Keating too, is passionate about his work, to the point of being callous. He meets Ellsworth Toohey and the critic is impressed enough to write a column on him. However, just after he informs Keating of this news, he is shot at. Keating’s immediate reaction, “If he’s dead, does that mean they won’t publish his column tomorrow?”


But while Peter Keating gives his clients what they want, Roark tells his clients that if he has to work on a design it cannot be altered in any way later. He lives life on his own terms and because of his almost inhuman demeanor he has few friends and fewer clients.

Into his life comes Dominique, his mirror personality and they fall passionately in love. But for reasons that I only vaguely understood Dominique marries Keating with the full mutual understanding of Roark. The confession of his love, one of the rare and fleeting glimpses of humaneness in Roark’s manner, is in fact touching to read. “We never need to say anything to each other when we’re together. This is – for the time when we won’t be together. I love you Dominique…. To say ‘I love you’ one must first know how to say the ‘I’.”

Frankly, after this Rand lost me. I never fully comprehended Dominique’s character. She goes on to marry Gail Wynand too after she divorces Keating and by then I was groping around for meanings. At the end of the book, Roark remained my favorite. He remains pretty much unchanged and I absolutely loved some of his ideals. One of his thoughts that instantly was burnt into me,

“To sell your soul is the easiest thing in the world. That’s what everybody does every hour of his life. If I asked you to keep your soul – would you understand why that’s much harder?”

The essence of the book is in Roark’s long speech in the court right at the end of the book, which says we shouldn’t blindly copy the past and fail to utilize the energy of the zeitgeist. I was reminded of T S Eliot’s essay Tradition and the Individual Talent, written around the time Rand’s book is set, in the 1920s. Eliot says the poet must take traditions and ideals from the past and express it in his own way thus making it unique. But here Rand overrides that completely, going one step further saying the past should not be followed at all, through Roark’s voice.

I know I haven’t done justice to the book in the review mostly because long parts of it simply zinged by. And thus, Rand has not changed my life in a radical manner as she has done for many people who have been recommending this book to me. I agree with most of the points that reader Navin Quadros says in his review and I have to leave it at that. And yes, like Roark, I stick to my opinion/ideas about the book, though contrary to the majority. At least, Rand taught me that much.


Verdict: Interesting and mind sifting

Rating: 3/5

The Hour I First Believed : Wally Lamb

                                          Image Credit : Madison Public Library
It's a Sunday morning, and I just spent Saturday night finishing Wally Lamb's The Hour I First Believed. Based in large part on the Columbine high school massacre, the book offers a vivid look into the immediate aftermath of the Columbine tragedy, and the spiraling consequences that Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold set into motion that fateful April day years ago.

Caelum Quirk is not your typical narrator. He has no heroic traits about him, in fact, at times you find yourself intensely disliking him. But that is what makes him human. Caelum's faults were the kind that I could identify with. Two failed marriages, and a third failing one. (Err, not that I have had two failed marriages, but well, you get the idea). A high school teacher with little or promise for the future. A could-have-been-writer whose book never gets published. And then his wife, Maureen, gets caught in the school library on the day that Eric and Dylan let loose their violence, and though she survives, she will never be the same again. Lamb tackles several themes here - one favorite one of his is chaos theory. The idea that something somewhere can set in motion a chain of events that can completely alter your life. A butterfly may flap its wings in South Africa, and somehow that small motion can trickle down to a catastrophic impact on your life in Sri Lanka.

The book is a work of fiction, but Lamb does not meddle around much with the Columbine facts - Eric and Dylan as well those killed in that massacre are presented as they were. Maureen Quirk's disintegration was superbly handled by Lamb, I thought, although I was a bit disappointed by the redemption offered to her in the end. The one character I liked the most was Velvet Hoon - a difficult and troubled teen at school, she develops an attachment to Maureen, calls her Mom, and somehow despite Caelum's desperate attempts to shun her, I found myself drawn more to her. It's a pity that we mostly get to know about Velvet through Caelum for here was a character who really was intriguing. All this reads very well, and I was finding the pace of the book riveting. Till I came towards the latter half - Caelum returns to his family farmhouse, abandoning his job in Columbine, and what follows is a long, tedious narrative into his family history, especially letters written by his great grandmother as she tried to build a more humane prison system in the late 19th century.

From here on, we sort of descend into the bizarre - old family skeletons are unearthed, literally. Two of them are found in a suitcase hidden in an attic. One of them is a mummified baby. And frankly, I wasn't sure what it all was meant to convey. Why spoil a book that till then was superb in its psychological portrayal of two troubled characters? Prison reform? Yeah, Columbine massacres and prison reforms may seem like they go together, but it just offered a historical twist, nothing more. This criticism though does not make the book unreadable. Rather, The Hour I First Believed is a pacy read. Gripping. Taut. Loose in parts towards the end. But worth it just the same.

Verdict : Hmm, I would recommend the book, but with a disclaimer that Great-Grandma Lizzie is a bit boring. 


Rating : 3/5

Versedays: Dreams by Langston Hughes

Image Credit: Future Focused Coaching

We all have dreams. Mine is to become a good photographer. Live by the sea. Build up an extensive library of books. And I dream of achieving these dreams. Someday perhaps. For many of us, this dream behind the dream is what keeps us going. In this week’s Versedays I am putting up a poem named “Dreams” by the black poet Langston Hughes. I am sure many of you are familiar with this famous poem but I had to post it in Lifewordsmith for the sheer joy of it. This is such a simple and short poem that it can be memorized within a few minutes. But the power it packs in that space is immeasurable. I am sure his poem would have inspired innumerous people and will continue to do so. At least for me, it holds a special place among my favorite poems.

Dreams


by


Langston Hughes


Hold fast to dreams
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird
That cannot fly.
Hold fast to dreams
For when dreams go
Life is a barren field
Frozen with snow.

Kidnapped: Robert Louis Stevenson

I took a picture of the cover myself because I found this pocket sized second hand copy extremely cute! And this cover is unique too...

                                                Image Credit : Birdy

Classics have this habit of being wordy and theme-heavy, weighing you down with their profound thoughts. But not “Kidnapped” by Robert Louis Stevenson. Ah, such a delightful book! It starts off with David Balfour, an 18 year old lad, discovering that he might be the probable heir to a fortune. He goes to meet his parsimonious uncle who turns out quite wily too. He orchestrates David’s kidnapping and the boy finds himself on a ship, full of some fairly off characters. But this is where he meets his faithful friend Alan Breck and from then on David’s adventures truly begin.

Told in a charming mix of Scottish English (Stevenson was Scottish), this out and out boys’ adventure tale holds your attention without letting go for even a second till the end. David’s portrait is wonderfully drawn showing both the inexperience as well as the canniness that is particular to youth. Alan Breck is perfectly sketched as the fearless outlaw with a soft heart for his friends and who will stand by them no matter what.

Kidnapped might seem like a potboiler with all the necessary ingredients for a successful adventure – robbers, scheming uncles, exotic sounding isles, war, the sea and the couple of heroes who obviously will achieve what they set out for in the end. What saves Kidnapped from slipping into being a mere template is its power of narration and some honest depictions of friendship. Alan and David share such an open and true friendship that I was quite touched at a few points. One of them is when the two of them have a fine disagreement, the most serious they have had. After a lot of verbal sparring they come around as David falls sick and suddenly realizes that he had been behaving badly towards Alan.

“If I die, ye’ll can forgive me, Alan? In my heart, I like ye fine – even when I was the angriest.”

Alan is completely melted and he begins to sob as all the pent up sadness and frustration loosens,

“Davie,” said he, “I’m no a right man at all; I have neither sense nor kindness; I couldnae remember ye were just a bairn, I couldnae see ye were dying on your feet; Davie, ye’ll have to try and forgive me.”


In today’s times, it’s not such an easy task to find a steadfast friend. Alan and David are a heartwarming pair, hard to draw parallels to.

Perhaps, their romp over the Scottish moors gets a tad long but I loved it. This book should be taken purely as an adventure to be enjoyed to the hilt without looking too deep into the rationalities of some of the incidents. Things just happen and that’s what makes it so much fun!


Rating: 5/5

Verdict: If you like romping adventure, then this should be on your list!

Dreams in a Time of War : Ngugi Wa Thiongo

                                                     Image Credit : Amazon
It's been a while since I read a memoir. There was a time in 2006 and 2007 when my reading list consisted almost entirely of memoirs. I was fascinated with the lives that authors chose to reveal - ordinary lives turned into extraordinary tales of courage and inspiration. Ngugi Wa Thiongo's critically acclaimed Dreams in a Time of War was on my wish list for a while, but the prohibitive price put me off till I obtained a discount coupon from Flipkart that allowed me the luxury of buying a +$10 book.

As I write this I learn that Dreams in a Time of War has also been longlisted for the BBC Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction, considered to be one of the UK’s most prestigious literary prizes. As a memoir, I feel that it deserves to be there on that list. Ngugi Wa Thiongo had a difficult childhood - but he had a dream - the pursuit of education. The possession of knowledge even when the world you know is crumbling around you. The desire for learning even when you wonder if you will have enough to eat the next day. And a promise he made to his mother that he would give his best. Always. And that was all his mother asked for.

I would always try my best whatever the hardship, whatever the barrier.

I admired Thiongo as a kid. As an author I admired him even more for the deft voice he lends to the narration. There is no self-pity here - only a remarkable understanding of the circumstances of his childhood and the memories that shape him into an adult. His love for Kenya is all too apparent, and he paints a touching portrayal of a family that has many roots but one abiding bond - that of love. And nowhere is this love more apparent than in the promise made to his mother that Ngugi steadfastly keeps.

Ngugi's scope is vast - he takes through a rapidly transitioning Kenya, yoked under British oppression, a country in turmoil and confusion yet brimming with hope for a future that it knows one day will be. And Ngugi never stops dreaming that education and learning would empower him to achieve more than has ever been imagined in the small Kenyan town of Limuru. Remarkably, for someone who endures what seems to an outsider, a life of turbulence, Ngugi shows us a rich tapestry of African life - he recounts fondly the oral tradition of storytelling, of the large family that he was born into, considering that his father had four wives, the shared communal life, and the joys found in learning. The Mau Mau rebellion, which threatens to turn Kenya into a bloody swamp of chaos also looms large in the memoir. I had a problem here - after around 150 pages, there were too many names introduced that left me confused. And the deep depths into Kenyan history left my mind aching. But this is not about Kenya. Not about the historical twists and turns of a country's eventual journey into independence. No. This is about a child. His journey into adulthood. And above all, that child's willingness to believe in a dream.

And I wish there were more dreams to go around in this beleaguered world of ours that has perchance lost faith in that most human of all illusions.

Verdict : Revealing memoir into an inspiring author's childhood. 


Rating : 3/5

The Girl of the Sea of Cortez: Peter Bencheley

Image Credit: The Library Thing

The Girl of the Sea of Cortez by Peter Benchley is a strange book. The kind of book which makes you want to sit on the fence and not decide whether you completely hate it or love it.

Here's why: The Girl is Paloma who at 16 is in love with the sea and all creatures that live in it. If God appeared before her and said he would grant only one wish to her - then that wish, without doubt, would be "gills" so that she can stay inside the sea as long as she wants, watching an ecosystem as yet undiscovered by anyone on the island on which she lives. For Paloma, watching this fantastic well balanced ecosystem on her "father's" sea-mount is a very special secret, a secret to be shared only between her, the sea and her dead father.

Her father, when alive also a lover of the sea and its inhabitants, made sure to well equip Paloma with all the necessary tools - a pirogue (a type of boat), a snorkel mask, breathing techniques which helped her stay under water for long periods and most importantly to read "signs'. Signs both from within her body signaling her when it was time to go up and out of the water for fresh breath and also signs within the sea as to when it was safe to linger beneath the sea and when to get away as quickly as possible. When this special secret is discovered and threatened to absolute destruction by her lets-make-money-real-quick fisherman-brother Jo, she gets help from unexpected quarters - her "best friend" from the sea.

The Girl also has these very vivid descriptions of sea-life (a whole world going on down there in the sea) which is almost like watching one of those nature channel shows on TV - a show where, what happens in one second is drawn out and showed over several minutes - except you are watching it in your mind's eye here, not on TV. Paloma when alone in middle of the sea on her father's sea-mount is very alive and happiest, but when she is back home with her mother and other women of the island doing "womenly chores" she becomes a different person, a persecuted self, faking interest in what she is doing. This contrast is what touched me most personally. For I too have had to listen to useless and to me torturous gossip of women when getting chores done. And I too am happiest when left alone with my 'sea' of books.

One thing I must warn about The Girl is that large parts of this book is either told in flashback style with little to no conversations or has long paragraphs describing the vibrant sea-life which can make for pretty boring or drab read. However, Peter Benchley very cleverly and beautifully weaves in Paloma's personal life story. The story about her mother, brother, grandfather and her deceased father into what is essentially a sea-description book. That said would I recommend this book to a friend to read? Honestly, I don't know.

Peter Benchley also wrote Jaws based on which a blockbuster movie was made with the same name.

Verdict: Form your own opinion

Rating: 2.5/5

The Missing Rose : Serdar Ozkan

                                                 Image Credit : Peaceintheworld
It's funny the books that come into our hands at just the right time in our lives. Almost as if they were waiting all along, and then when they feel they can wait no longer, gently drop into our lives, and urge us to turn their pages, and partake of the wisdom within. I chanced upon Serdar Ozkan's The Missing Rose while waiting for an optician to fit my eyeglasses. The cover said that if you loved the Alchemist or The Little Prince, you would love The Missing Rose too. Intriguing, I thought to myself, because I really did love those two classics.

Serdar Ozkan takes us on a vast journey of finding something very simple - happiness. The other day I was telling someone 'happiness takes such a lot of hard work.' And it does. Being happy is not easy even though it is really what the soul is meant for, what gets it singing. We contrive to lose sight of happiness when we believe that our life is not going in the direction we want it to - and that is the key, isn't it? Sometimes we think if we have what we want, it will make us happy - but as I have found out, obtaining this or that in life has not given happiness. Rather, happiness seems to lie like a forgotten rag cloth in my memory's dusty attic - and I find that it requires as simple an act as picking up that rag cloth and dusting your mind to make one happy. For a while. Before you forget, and that rag cloth gets consigned again to some forgotten corner.

Leave my petty wanderings though - The Missing Rose is "the story of Diana, a young woman whose desire for the approval and praise of others has made her let go of her own dreams and values." Following her mother's death, Diana learns that she has a twin sister named Maria. It is her search for Maria, who is revealed to her in a series of 4 letters written by Maria to her mother, that takes Diana on a search all the way to Istanbul. Her search is not just for Maria - but also to learn the secret of conversing with roses. Yes, you read it right. To understand the language of roses, to talk, to listen to them. And through that to learn a lot more about herself.

In this allegorical fable Serdar Ozkan packs in timeless truths about time. The folly of not listening to one's dreams or roses. Finding the light within. And learning to live without worrying what Others are saying or doing or watching. Difficult as it sounds, it makes sense. And as a book, The Missing Rose is eminently readable. It may take an hour or two of your time, and then you feel like going back and trying to understand it all over again.


Verdict : Do read it if you liked The Alchemist or The Little Prince. 


Rating : 4/5

Still Life: A S Byatt

Image Credit: biblio

Literature, art, poetry, paintings and the travails of human life. Doesn’t this sound like a heady mix for a book? This is precisely what A S Byatt’s “Still Life” is comprised of. The second in a tetralogy, Still Life follows the lives of the Potter family in 1950s England. The focus is mainly on the siblings, Stephanie, Frederica and Marcus. Stephanie was once a brilliant student of English but now leads a life of domesticity with her curate husband Daniel. Frederica is the more adventurous, the one who dares to go a bit further. She goes to Cambridge for an academic life. Marcus is the slightly off brother who is still recovering from a breakdown and stays with his sister Stephanie.

After having read the extremely riveting and well paced Possession, Still Life comes to mean what its title says. Progression in the novel is limited and it is more like a montage of incidents and fringe characters. I truly enjoyed the character studies though as Byatt has devoted much space to the three siblings. My particular favorite was Stephanie, a woman caught between the vague bliss of married life and the happiness found in the literary world. Byatt raises part of the famous Woman Question through Stephanie – can a woman continue her passion while being a homemaker? Stephanie tries to. But she doesn’t realize that her identity has already dissolved until the perceptive Gideon asks her a question –

“But you must allow me some curiosity about you – not Daniel’s wife, William’s mother, Marcus’s sister, not yet the helpful spouse of the curate of this parish. All those are roles.”

The conversation stirs up uncomfortable, long forgotten feelings. Later, she goes to the library to read, something which she hadn’t done for long. But now she discovers how difficult the task is –

“One had to peel one’s mind from its run of preoccupations; coffee to buy, am I in love, the yellow dress needs cleaning, Tim is unhappy, what is wrong with Marcus, how shall I live my life? … It was hard. She was tired. She yawned. Time moved on.”

This brilliant passage highlights the disconnect between Stephanie’s past and present life.

What weighs down the book heavily is the erudition. Many readers might draw a blank at the many names that Byatt drops and texts that she weaves in. To top it all, she mixes Van Gogh’s art too along with excerpts from his letters to his brother Theo. She does it all to highlight Frederica’s academic life at Cambridge as well as to draw parallels to the occurrences in the lives of other characters. Even the subtle humor in the book is related to literature! While undergoing severe labor pain Stephanie frantically asks around for the one thing that is closest to her – her book of Wordsworth poems.

After a point, though, the vast swathes of literary genius lie heavily indigested in the mind. And yet, the places where the focus is on Stephanie are spots of clarity like the sun bursting through the clouds. And Marcus too. I enjoyed a lot of the novel because of these two people. I also skipped a number of pages where the writing was too laden with references I was not aware of. I know comparison is not fair, but I couldn’t help recollecting the raciness of Possession both in terms of plot as well as the content although that work too had a lot of literary references. Bottom line – read it for Stephanie and Marcus as I did.

Verdict: Well, give it a shot

Rating: 3.5/5

Human Traces : Sebastian Faulks

                                                       Image Credit : Golivewire

Human Traces was my first Sebastian Faulks book. And going by reviews on the net, apparently Faulks has written better ones, notably Birdsong. As is my luck, I just had to pick the wrong one, eh? Human Traces takes us through the lives of Jacques Rebiere and Thomas Midwinter who dream of being pioneering psychiatrists in their quest to find out what really makes us human.

And it does begin promisingly enough - a young Rebiere resolves to become an alienist after watching the painful deterioration of his beloved brother, Olivier. Faulks then takes us on a revealing journey into the mental asylums of the Victorian times as Thomas Midwinter deviates from a love for literature to a love for understanding the human mind or brain...call it what you may. These were for me the best passages of the book - there was immense promise - united in their love for understanding the brain's neurological processes, Midwinter and Rebiere form an unique friendship - a bond, which also brings Midwinter's sister, Sonia, into their partnership eventually as Rebiere's wife. Together, these two doctors open their own sanatorium for the sick. But do they succeed? Yes, the sanatorium is wildly successful.

But Faulks hangs the dagger of desperation and futility over both Rebiere and Midwinter. They agonize that despite their best efforts they really did not 'cure' their patients. Did they really find out what it is to be human? Where does madness end and being human begin? Are they one and the same? Interesting as the premise is, Faulks overdoes it. Neither Midwinter or Rebiere were fully-realized characters that I felt for. Midwinter perhaps, towards the end, did arouse a little bit of sympathy though. There was one astounding stream-of-consciousness passage when we are given a glimpse into poor Olivier's distorted mind that tells me that Faulks must really be a fantastic writer. Fantastic when he is not giving 20 pages of medical research, that is.

Too many pages in this book detail a lot more of medical science, Darwinism and psychiatry than I really care about. The women here - Kitty, Midwinter's wife, and Sonia, are just props to their husbands and nothing else. And there were certain elements that baffled me - each time the story builds up into something, it inevitably seemed to fall apart. Rebiere and Midwinter have a major fight - what happens? Nothing much. Rebiere has an affair. What happens? The wife doesn't seem to mind and the other woman disappears! Midwinter goes to Africa on some Darwinistic inspiration - what happens? Apart from slicing a dead Masai tribesman's head out to examine his brain, Midwinter doesn't seem to suffer any long-lasting consequence of his (mis)adventure. And so I could go on. I am a bit disappointed as you can see.

Having said that, Human Traces is not unreadable, provided you skip the lectures and speeches. And you can also skip a lot more nonsense in between too...but should you really do all this skipping and hopping? I suggest no. Better to not read the book at all.

Verdict : Unsatisfying. 

Rating :2/5

Versedays: Solitude by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Solitude

by

Ella Wheeler Wilcox


LAUGH, and the world laughs with you;
Weep, and you weep alone.
For the sad old earth must borrow it's mirth,
But has trouble enough of it's own.
Sing, and the hills will answer;
Sigh, it is lost on the air.
The echoes bound to a joyful sound,
But shrink from voicing care.

Rejoice, and men will seek you;
Grieve, and they turn and go.
They want full measure of all your pleasure,
But they do not need your woe.
Be glad, and your friends are many;
Be sad, and you lose them all.
There are none to decline your nectared wine,
But alone you must drink life's gall.

Feast, and your halls are crowded;
Fast, and the world goes by.
Succeed and give, and it helps you live,
But no man can help you die.
There is room in the halls of pleasure
For a long and lordly train,
But one by one we must all file on
Through the narrow aisles of pain.

Image Credit: Gutenberg

How many times have we used the saying, “Laugh and the world laughs with you, weep, and you weep alone?” But how many of us knew that this is not a proverb but the first two lines of a poem? Well, I didn’t for sure. Ella Wheeler Wilcox’s poem “Solitude” was first published in 1883 along with a few other unlikely verse companions in a compilation named “Poems of Passion.” Her poetry became famous but that did not deter another poet from blatantly duplicating her poem word to word. The interesting turns that followed is an amusing bit of trivia that can be read here. And if you want an enjoyable read in the form of a slideshow with some apt music here is a video of the poem.

Versedays: Camomile Tea by Katherine Mansfield

A warm cup of chamomile tea with the flowers from which it is made. Image Credit: Sciencedaily

Every morning, for breakfast, I have a cup of green tea along with whatever I eat. A particular favorite of mine among all the different flavors of green tea is chamomile. It has such a distinct yet mild fragrance that it lingers in your senses long after you have drunk it. Plus, chamomile is reported to have relaxing properties. Perhaps Katherine Mansfield recognizes this in her poem “Camomile Tea.”

Camomile Tea

by

Katherine Mansfield

Outside the sky is light with stars;
There's a hollow roaring from the sea.
And, alas! for the little almond flowers,
The wind is shaking the almond tree.

How little I thought, a year ago,
In the horrible cottage upon the Lee
That he and I should be sitting so
And sipping a cup of camomile tea.

Light as feathers the witches fly,
The horn of the moon is plain to see;
By a firefly under a jonquil flower
A goblin toasts a bumble-bee.

We might be fifty, we might be five,
So snug, so compact, so wise are we!
Under the kitchen-table leg
My knee is pressing against his knee.

Our shutters are shut, the fire is low,
The tap is dripping peacefully;
The saucepan shadows on the wall
Are black and round and plain to see.

Mansfield paints a lazy, dulcet night where she sips on chamomile tea while she unwinds by the kitchen table. The imagery is deliciously charming and the scene, enchanting. I couldn’t find any reviews for this poem but I caught a line somewhere by someone, which said that the poem hints at domestic bliss. Indeed, it might be so, as Mansfield relishes the feeling of being “so snug, so compact…” To less discerning beings like me, the poem exudes a sense of peace and quiet. It is like a painting of a cottage by the sea, with fireflies for company and the stars for light. Oh, and don’t forget the tea.

Giovanni's Room: James Baldwin

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“I stand at the window of this great house in the south of France as night falls, the night which is leading me to the most terrible morning of my life.” Thus begins this riveting tale of David and Giovanni and Hella. “Giovanni’s Room” by James Baldwin swept me off from the very first line and I couldn’t keep the book down until I finished it. Here’s the summary from the book jacket –

“David, a young American in 1950s Paris, is waiting for his fiancée to return from vacation in Spain. But when he meets Giovanni, a handsome Italian barman, the two men are drawn into an intense affair. After three months David’s fiancée returns, and, denying his true nature, David rejects Giovanni for a ‘safe’ future as a married man. His decision eventually brings tragedy.”

Now let me tell you at the outset that this book cannot be seen from a reductionist approach, which relegates the story as a ‘gay romance.’ It is anything but. It takes brilliance and a gifted hand to write about love for another human being without debasing it with societal labels. This is exactly what Baldwin achieves. He sketches his characters in all their human glory. David is perhaps the protagonist but he gains color from the supporting cast of Giovanni and Hella.

Baldwin’s deep and uncanny understanding of a man who is fearful of his own sexual orientation is displayed through some very lyrical prose. David’s conflicting emotions, denials and guilt are extremely touching and yet frustrating. But my heart went out to Giovanni, an intense man yet a lost puppy who craves David’s attention. His life is painful before and after he meets David and sadly it does not improve for him in the future either. Hella too, is much in love with David, as much as Giovanni, and wants a life with him. David seeks her out as his escape route, to avoid facing his true feelings, thus building a veneer of happiness in a ‘normal’ life of marriage and kids.

What is absolutely dazzling about this book is that it imbricates issues of sexuality with that of race and morality. Baldwin was a black writer but he took the twin bold steps of writing about a subject largely tabooed even today and built his book with not a single black character in it. As expected, Giovanni’s Room created quite a stir when it came out. Baldwin’s first publisher, in fact, was reluctant to publish the book saying that he replace the white characters with blacks. Baldwin refused and went to a smaller publisher.

I also got a walking tour of 1950s Paris in all its sordidness, its alleyways filled with drunks early in the morning, its pavements littered with rotting vegetables and main roads with trundling trams. As David walks along these roads, he is constantly contemplating the road that he must take, both emotionally as well as physically. Should he acknowledge his feelings? Should he go back to Giovanni’s Room rather than to Hella’s hotel suite? Both roads stretch before him, beckoning. He must decide. But do not vacillate whether to read the book and find out where David ends up. It will not disappoint. This I promise.

Verdict: Truly a masterpiece

Rating: 5/5

Main Street : Sinclair Lewis

I

                                                     Image Credit : Amazon

A friend of mine once read Jack Kerouac's On the Road, and said with unbridled awe, "This. This is the sort of book that makes me shiver to the core of my being, and say, this, this is what life is all about." After reading Sinclair Lewis' Main Street, I feel much the same. This is what writing is all about. Reading is all about. And life is all about.

Main Street may not be the greatest American novel. Heavens no! It is far from it. It was certainly one of the most popular of its time though. Lewis' satirical portrayal of small-town American society has no plot to speak of, but there is much here in this novel to enjoy, to understand and to empathize. And Main Street showed just how universal human traditions, conservatism and pettiness can be. I felt Carol Kennicott's despair at living in that small village called Gopher Prairie as mine, finding parallels in it to the aching emptiness I sometimes  feel living here in India, bound by tradition and yoked by convention. But Carol is not entirely a pathetic figure - Sinclair Lewis admitted that he was fond of Carol, her husband Will and some of the other type characters in Gopher Prairie. That is what elevates her character, I feel, from being the object of satire to being a sociological and psychological study of a woman who ceaselessly questions, and does not submit to the discontent in her soul as the fate of all women.

And there is the masterful portrayal of a marriage - Carol and Will are not the romantic, happily-married-ever-after couple. They are married. That's it. Sinclair Lewis draws his satirical pen through the flimsy web of their married life, shreds the pretense and give us in the process a love that is at once frustrating yet touching, unfathomable yet realistic and as tiresome as it is uplifting. Carol herself is shown at once to be a rebel yet a wimp - scared at times to go against the town, and yet wallowing in the misery of not being able to be 'free.' She tries to run away, she tries to stay. She tries to love, she tries to detest. She is all that I feel I am yet better than I because there is a wider spirit in her as evident in this quote towards the end:

"But I have won in this: I've never excused my failures by sneering at my aspirations, by pretending to have gone beyond them. I do not admit that Main Street is as beautiful as it should be! I do not admit that Gopher Prairie is greater or more generous than Europe! I do not admit that dish-washing is enough to satisfy all women! I may not have fought the good fight, but I have kept the faith."

And Carol keeps the faith. As for me, I only wish I can do the same. For now, reading this book was faith enough.

Verdict : Satirical work of genius. 
Rating : 6/5

Letters to a Young Poet: Rainer Maria Rilke

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I must thank Soul for lending me this book, which I would like to read again and again. Especially during the special moments in your life or when you are about to embark on something new. “Letters to a Young Poet” by Rainer Maria Rilke is not just inspirational but quite uplifting. It is a collection of ten letters that Rilke wrote to an aspiring poet, providing him encouragement and support.

Perhaps Rilke’s humble yet penetrating insights were born out of his own experiences. Rilke was always a gentle personality, shy and reserved. His father sent him to a military school to toughen him up, an experience, which was traumatizing for Rilke. After five years of enduring humiliation and bullying, Rilke returned home to continue his studies. During this time he indulged in his passion of writing poetry.

Around 12 years later, when 19 year old Franz Kappus wrote to him from the same military school, asking him to critique his poetry, it struck a deep chord in Rilke. It is this outpouring of thoughts that is recorded in these ten letters. Unlike a lot of motivational books that loudly breathe into your ear to do this or do that, Rilke’s letters speak in a quiet, steady voice that imparts strength and urges you to look within more often. I loved the tone and the gems of thought that Rilke brings forth. At times it concerns the greater good of the world,

“Perhaps the great renewal of the world will consist of this, that man and woman, freed of all confused feelings and desires, shall no longer seek each other as opposites, but simply as members of a family and neighbors, and will unite as human beings…”

Most often it is for individual betterment,

“But he who has a pact with aloneness can even now prepare the way for all of this that in the future may well be possible for many, and can build with hands less apt to err. Therefore, dear friend, embrace your solitude and love it.”

Other musings have their root in, perhaps, his past. These quotes below are two of my most favorite out of the book,

"To love is also good, for love is difficult. For one human being to love another is perhaps the most difficult task of all, the epitome, the ultimate test."

“Live awhile within these books. Learn of them, whatever seems worth the learning, but above all, love them. For this love you shall be requited a thousand and thousand times over, no matter what turn your life will take.”

And I cannot agree more with that. Rilke’s book is one of them. Do read. You will only be the richer for it.

Soul, thanks for lending this amazing work.


Verdict: Beautiful. Thoughtful. Profound.

Rating: 5/5