Pigeon English : Stephen Kelman

Image Credit: List.Co.Uk

Wow. I cannot recollect the last time I finished reading a book in 3 days. Umm. No. That doesn't mean that Pigeon English was this racy thriller that had me gripped. No. While Stephen Kelman writes a wonderful book,  Pigeon English is a book that flows easily, not in a 'what happened next' way but in a 'what moved me next' way. I find that I need books like that every now and then. Too often, I end up picking books that move at a pace that would make a snail appear like Usain Bolt in comparison. It's often because the story sounds so wonderfully depressing that I pick it up - and then I find I can't get through. "Why can't you read normal books?" Birdy, one of the reviewers on this blog, asked me once.

Hmm, what is a normal book, I wonder? Pigeon English is not one. Would the current NYT Books bestseller - the EL James trilogy be considered normal? Let's not venture into that one. Stephen Kelman's debut novel was apparently lying in a literary agent's slush pile before around 10 publishers decided they wanted it. Sigh. The stuff that dreams are made of. And even as I drool in envy, I can also drool my praise. Pigeon English is a worthy debut. 11-year-old Harrison (aka "Harri") Opoku is newly arrived from Ghana, and lives in what appears to be a 'bad' neighborhood with his mother and sister, Lydia. As the narrator, Harri is inevitably funny - there is dry humor, naivety and innocence to his voice. And his thoughts and indeed, his English is like none other.

The book opens with a murder - one of Opoku's - classmates is killed, and both Harri and his friend Dean want to play detective. It lends an air of tragedy through the book - and evokes memories of the kind of gang wars that plague the U.K. But don't be fooled into thinking that this is a whodunit. There is simply no such solution. In fact, I was left a bit perplexed about some of the writer's motives. The pigeon, for instance, I just couldn't understand. There was not much of a connection, and it didn't add anything but fluff to the story. Pigeon English though should not be read for the attempt to inject a murder, or fantasy through a talking pigeon - no. It should be read for the wonderfully inventive thoughts of a 11-year old. Thoughts that are hilarious, and yet touching. It should be read for the little things that we sometimes forget after we decide we are grown up enough - the things we do in class, the teachers we love to hate, the wars we fought, the crushes we outgrew, and the sweet things that often come with just being young and free before we chained ourselves. Asweh! I mean it! This book is hutious.

Trivia : Shortlisted for the Man Booker prize 2011

Verdict : A wonderful debut novel that pulsates with promise, and is very very readable.

Rating : 3/5

The Housekeeper + The Professor : Yoko Ogawa

Image Credit: And The Plot Thickens

I watched a Japanese movie last week - I Wish - which was dreamy, poetic and kind of sleepily relaxing. The Housekeeper + The Professor by Yoko Ogawa was pretty much the same. There was the feeling of a distant world, recreated in memories and lost in the same memory 80 minutes later. I am sure you think that this time I have truly knocked my head against the wall, but that's how it is. It's on an intriguing premise that Ogawa weaves her gentle story on.

The Professor is our protagonist for this novel - who having suffered a horrific brain injury in a car accident in 1975 is left with just memories that last all of 80 minutes. He is never named in the novel, but that just adds to the poignancy. Brilliant in mathematics, the Professor inhabits a world in which the beauty of existence is revealed through numbers. My head gets all muddled up when it comes to numbers, and there were certain equations and formulas that I didn't even try to understand, although I do know now that 28 is a perfect number. :-). But the book is not be read for its math. No. I enjoyed the book because Ogawa handles each of the characters with a subtle touch, and lends them a warmth that reaches out through the book. The housekeeper (none of the characters really have a name, except for the housekeeper's son, Root, who is so called because his head resembles a square too) arrives to find the Professor in his little cottage, smelling of a different era, and wearing a faded old suit that has many notes clipped on, including one that reminds him that his memory lasts only 80 minutes. What kind of a relationship could you hope to form with someone who doesn't remember you 2 hours later? It sounds impossible, but that's the art that Ogawa masters.

The book slowly grows on you as you watch the tender friendship between the Professor and Root, as well the housekeeper. From keeping track of baseball games, where the Professor still believes that his beloved pitcher Enatsu is still playing, to celebrating Root's birthday, they form a bond that is moving and poignant at the same time. There is nothing much that 'happens' in this novel - but then, you could say the same of life too. Yet when you start counting 1, 2, 3....there is so much more to count and it's that infinity that Ogawa explores. I haven't read any of Ogawa's other books (she is the author of more than 20 fiction and non-fiction books), but I would be looking forward to reading her again.

Verdict: A slow, insightful read; the book is almost meditation


Rating: 3.5/5

French Lover : Taslima Nasrin

Image Credit: Shadows Galore

Is there anything better than a lazy Sunday under cloudy drizzling skies, spent with a book, a can of Diet Coke and popcorn? And yes, a movie too. It makes me wonder why all days can't be Sundays. Our life is such that we can only squeeze Sundays out of it. The other 6 days? Forget about it. Well, Saturdays are good as well, so let's make it five.

But I digress as I always do. Let's talk books. And let's talk about Taslima Nasrin's French Lover. Nasrin is perhaps one of the most controversial Muslim authors out there, and although perhaps not in the same league as a Salman Rushdie, she still lives and writes despite death threats against her. I am always fascinated by courage - as a trait, it is so rarely found, much like common sense - and Nasrin if nothing must be courageous. I have not read the more famous Lajja, but in French Lover, Nasrin chooses no conventional path either. She is a known feminist - and the portrayal of Nila, or Nilanjana stems from such a perspective. Married to an insensitive and domineering husband, Nila finds herself reduced to being a cook and housekeeper in Paris. Stung by the cages and handcuffs her husband gives her, she leaves him, has a brief liaison with a woman at the factory she works with, and then falls in love with Benoir, a Frenchman in a tumultuous relationship that eventually leads to a traumatic realization of her self.

Marriage is not a happy institution in this book - almost everyone seem to be suffering in the traps they have laid themselves - and that's where the book seems so cliche-ridden. Contrary to what many think, I have nothing against marriage, and if chosen well, it can be a truly sustaining and meaningful part of your life. But here in the French Lover, there is no such joy and no such meaning attached to it. All the men are universally bad - something that is told by Nila herself:

"Danielle, time is never wasted. This time was spent in acquiring wisdom and I needed it.  Or I would have spent my life under a misconception. I feel men, of whichever country, whatever society, are all the same."

And very often Nila's thoughts contradict her own actions. She muses once:

"Love wasn't the only joy in life. There was so much more: listening to the sound of falling leaves, floating with a transient cloud, reading an entire book of verses in one long evening, so many ways of fulfilling life."

Yet, throughout the novel, love is what she searches for. Does she find it? Yes. Does she keep it? That's for us the readers to find out. But would I recommend it? Yes, indeed. This is an offbeat book, not one that made the best-sellers read, but just like with movies, and in life, I like the underdogs, the ones that don't get sold, the gems that lie hidden beneath the bling. There is more to Nila's life and journey than what I have written here. And it's a fascinating journey, no matter the cliches.

Verdict : An interesting and very readable book from an author who deserves to be read.

Rating: 3.5/5

The Stranger : Albert Camus

Image Credit: reidsreadings

There was a time a few years ago when I would read 2 or 3 books at a time. A friend of mine had asked me at that time if that wasn't difficult...to juggle through genres, stories and characters? I didn't find it difficult. I was so impatient that every time a story bored me, I would move to another book, and then return to the other one, my boredom forgotten.

These days though it's not boredom that compels me to read more than one book at a time - a combination of a library membership, a constantly shuffling life where I stay in one place on weekdays and at home on weekends has made it easy for me to fall back on this old habit. And that is how I finished the classic Albert Camus absurdist novel - The Stranger. I confess that I had held myself back from reading this - Camus is not easy to read, other friends warned, and certainly not to be read if you are ferreting in the burrows of despair as I am occasionally known to do. But there is a time for all - and this was the time to tune myself into Meursault's often indifferent yet never anything less than powerful narrative.

Is there any point in giving a review of a book that would take a book to review? The depth of meaning that Camus invests in this novel is often lost such is the dry mundane tone that Meursault invests his story with. Indifference is often the most absurd of all emotions, pretending to be an emotion that doesn't feel. Yet how can it not? It's the most scathing of all emotions.

Perhaps the quote that throws this spear of indifference the most was this:

As if that blind rage had washed me clean, rid me of hope; for the first time, in that night alive with signs and stars, I opened myself to the benign indifference of the world. Finding it so much like myself—so like a brother, really—I felt that I had been happy and that I was happy again. For everything to be consummated, for me to feel less alone, I had only to wish that there be a large crowd of spectators the day of my execution and that they greet me with howls of execration."

The canons of absurdist literature are vast and deep - and there is nothing more than I can say of the 'story' behind The Stranger apart from that Meursault kills an Arab, for no reason (well, it was too hot that day), and the series of events that lead to his conviction. Is there a meaning to the book? Camus may well be asking is there a meaning to life? Is it worth pursuing even the sense of absurdity? Meursault was frustrating - I often felt like throwing my dumbbells at him, willing him to show some emotion, but then I thought isn't he a beautiful representation of what we all do at some point of time or the other? We wear our indifferent masks...but Meursault is more than that - his is not a mask, it is the truth. And that is the horror of it all.

Verdict: A classic that deserves to be read.

Rating: 4.5/5

Moths: Karl Manders

Image Credit: Amazon

Bangalore skies these days have been stupendous. Cloudy with a tinge of sun in the afternoon. Just the right temperature where you don’t need a cardigan but at the same time you can’t wear shorts. Oh and the wind. It’s been blustery; that lovely wind that plays with your hair each time you look out the window or walk on the street. Perfectly conducive weather for curling up with a book and a coffee don’t you think? That’s exactly how I finished Moths by Karl Manders, a quasi magical tale about a boy who runs and his father who ends up in the gulag. A short summary from the book jacket first:

From rural Holland in World War II to the Soviet labour camps by way of a curious jazz band in Minks and Moscow, Moths tells the parallel stories of a father and son who live through interesting times. A self-indulgent Dutch businessman finds himself caught up in the liberation of Auschwitz by the Russian army, and playing piano for an unusual band at a time when jazz is a risky business in Stalinist Russia. Meanwhile, the boy, who has barely known his father, is brought up by his doting, childless aunt in the flat farmlands of eat Holland. Wherever Dolboy goes, he runs. One day he comes upon an old moated castle with a summerhouse full of moths, and meets the curious young girl who breeds and keeps the creatures captive there.

Quite a strong summary, strong enough to make me buy the book. It starts with Cornelius, the businessman traveling to another country on business, meeting a lace maker and having a relationship with her. Dolboy is born soon after but the lace maker plunges into despair in the belief that his father is not going to return. When Cornelius does return, he is greeted with a scene of misery –

She sat like an anthropoid survival from a brutish era, barefoot in the mud, her demented eyes twitching behind a ragged skein of hair. They regarded each other for a long time, she trying to recall what she had been, he remembering…Dolboy tottered to her side, his naked legs caked with mud, his bare belly blown big from the raw things which he gnawed.

So Cornelius makes arrangements for the mother for a comfortable life but takes Dolboy with him. Dolboy is brought up by his aunt and he leads a comfortable life, tucked away in a palatial house in the woods of Holland. He discovers that he likes to run wherever he goes and on one such jaunt while he explores the landscape near his house, he discovers a little shed. Peeping inside he discovers a variety of moths belonging to Miriam, a budding lepidopterist. Thus begins his long friendship with Miriam and her brothers. But even as Dolboy spends luminous summer days running and spending time with his friends, his father’s life veers away into a totally unexpected direction.

What I liked about Moths is the way the stories of the 2 individuals symbolically run parallel. While Dolboy runs for fun, his father is running to save his life. While Dolboy and his friends go to the forest for a picnic, Cornelius is in the forest making friends and trying not to get killed. While Dolboy goes to a party with his friends to have fun, Cornelius attends a party commissioned as a jazz pianist by the ruling military forces. What I also liked about Moths is the setting, which changes along with the stories. Not only do we know what is happening with Dolboy and Cornelius, but through them we see the unnervingly disparate situations they are in even though they both live in a time of war. Dolboy’s life is sheltered, decadent and rich with not a word of war-related information tainting his idyllic existence. On the other hand, Cornelius lives a frugal life that is increasingly at risk, especially after his capture.

So, read Moths for these beautiful stories. The writing definitely will not disappoint.

Verdict: Lush and delightful reading

Rating: 3.5/5