Read, Read and Read...I tell myself

Heading Inland---Way to go inside human brain

2007-03-24T21:12:00.000-07:00

Heading Inland

Nicola Barker

[Published by Faber and Faber, ISBN 0571178081]

It is a collection of short-stories. The short-stories, included in this collection, are 1) Inside Information, 2) G-String, 3)The Three Button Trick, 4) Wesley: Blisters Braces, Mr. Lippy, 5) The Piazza Barberini, 6) Popping Corn, 7) Water Marks, 8) Back to Front, 9) Limptet, 10) Bendy-Linda, 11) Gifts, 12) Parker Swells.

All the stories are unique. It is a highly enjoyable collection, and to certain extent an unputdownable one. Nicola Barker is a very good story-teller. All the characters are well drawn and palpable. This book is about a funny, broody, saucy clutch of tales about the kind of people you sometimes meet but might prefer to ignore. She marries the mind-boggling plot with the aptest style. Her show of wit is remarkable. Another thing must be mentioned here---her ability to use le mot juste. She often uses the langue of the street, yet for stories are no way ordinary. The stores certainly will linger in your mind, Nicola Barker is a one-off. Her style is deceptively simple, just quirky enough and rounded off by a tangy aftertaste, leaving the reader puckish for more.

There’s Wesley, who drinks tea up his nostrils and is dominated by the need to free captive eels from London’s pie-and-mash shops; Ralph, whose giant erection becomes enmeshed in the antiquated wire mattress of a Roman Pensione; Gillion, who dates the intolerable Mr. Kip but saves the day with her G-String; and a small but voracious foetus who unwittingly discovers the dirt on eternal life.

With Heading Inland Nicola Barker proves two things. First, that she has the keen eyes and unflappable constitution of a city pigeon. Second, that she is one of the most versatile and original writers of her generation.

About Nicola Barker:

She was born in 1966. She lives and works in Hackney, London. She is the author of a collection of stories, Love Your Enemeis (winner of the David Higham Prize for fiction and joint winner of the Macmillan Silver Pen Award for Fiction), and two novels Reversed Forecast and Small Holidays.

Rendezvous with tomorrow

2006-07-28T10:27:00.000-07:00

Rendezvous with Rama

Arthur C. Clarke

[ Published by Orient Books]

It is a science fiction.

By the year 2130, a very large, almost like the Jupiter a metal cylindrical alien object is detected which is coming towards the Sun. it is spinning at its axis slowly. It was christened as 'Rama' by humans. A spacecraft, named 'Endeavour' is sent to it under the leadership of Captain Norton. After landing near its axis, Norton with his deputy goes on exploring it. They find three airlock system through which they may go inside it. After airlocking these locks they find three staircases going upward or downward as it is. But inside there is no light. Descending further through those staircases they find a cylindrical sea which is frozen. Moreover, they find five clusters of tall building like structures. But the buildings have no doors or windows or any system of entrance. Suddenly, six tube like things begin to act as brilliant sun. naturally, the interior of Rama begin to warm and air expands, so a cyclone is raised. Meanwhile the ice of the sea is melted and the waves are seen in the sea. The exploring party cannot go beyond the sea which they named South Pole. Another young crew solved that problem by going there alone on a sort of flying bike. On his return journey he is gripped by a strong electrical wind which causes the collapse of his flying bike. So he crashlands. There he is first encountered with the living thing. A crab like animal, indeed far larger which has no mouth and which chopped his flying machine and dropped in into the sea. Ultimately he is rescued with the help of a raft. Meanwhile, the whole Rama is burst with several types of creatures----which are later recognized , not the real creature but 'biot', programmed to execute some particular function.

On the other hand, inhabitants of Mercury send a missile towards Rama, fearing that it would come near their planet. Thinking that this is unlikely to happen, a certain crew defused the bomb taking a great risk. So far Norton and his crew do not meet any real 'Ramans'. And Rama is approaching the Sun very fast. Suddenly a change of atmosphere is felt inside Rama. Every biots jump into the sea and are decomposed as it appears. Therefore Norton and his crew have to leave it quickly. It increases its spin and changes its orbit and is seen approaching the Sun directly. Somedays later it is observed that it goes inside the Sun, takes its energy and mass and then goes to its destiny. It seems, it is using the Sun merely as a refuelling station.

So, what is inside Rama is known, but wherefrom does it come or what is its purpose is not known yet.

It is a very remarkable, mind-boggling science fiction. The most notable thing about it is its sense of suspense and the you-never-know-what-happen-next type of attitude. Once you set to read it you cannot put it down help finishing it. And the most remarkable thing about it is based very much on some scientific theory which gives it a surrealistic impression. You will always think that this type of thing can quite plausibly happen. This is a superb fiction in its finest term.

Brighton Rock By Graham Greene: A Thriller with a Difference

2006-07-26T09:47:00.000-07:00

Brighton Rock

Graham Greene

[ Published by Penguin (Fiction)

ISBN: 0 14 000 4424]

This book is set in the form of a thriller.

The protagonist of this novel is Pinkie, a boy gangster in the pre-war Brighton underworld., a Catholic, dedicated to evil and damnation. He is often referred to in the book as the Boy. He inherited the gang from Kite after his death. Spicer, Cubbit and Dallow are some of his close friends. They first got suspicious about a reporter, Hale, who was then at Brighton on a promotional activity for his newspaper. From the very first moment Hale also got the intuition that he was going to be murdered. In order to save his life he badly wanted company. At last Ida Arnold, a lady with big bosom agreed to give him company. But Hale's sense of self-respect hold him to reveal the real cause for being panicked to Ida. The boys followed him everywhere. At a moment, when Ida went to ladies' room he was led to some place and ultimately became dead out of terror. The police thought his death natural. But Ida did not take this for granted. She in the process realized that Pinkie was the real cause of Hale's death. She was prepared to do anything to avenge her friend's death. She began her own investigation. The only witness were Rose, innocent Catholic girl of sixteen, working as waitress in a restaurant and Spicer. Pinkie got panicked by this investigation. He pushed Spicer from the staircase and made him dead. He determined to marry the young girl Rose because a wife, cannot give evidence against her husband. On the other hand Pinkie was losing ground Collonec, another Don, who is rich and also powerful. Ida was also closing in. He married Rose. She was devoted to him to the extreme. Cubbit left him and told in detail about the murder of Hale to Ida. Pinkie became desperate. He even planned to murder Rose. He went far away from the town with Rose. He made her write a suicide note and thrust a revolver into her hands for this purpose. At the last moment Ida intervened. Rose was saved. But Pinkie put Vitriol into his face to die. This ends the process of avenging Hale's death. But Rose did not repent for marrying him, she rather wished to be damned as well. At last she left with hope of bearing Pinkie's child who would eventually pray for the sin of his father.

The sense of suspense prevents us from leaving the book unread for long. Greene's portryal of the Brighton scene made us see the scene. He left no detail. This blending of suspense with Virginia Woolf like minute detail made it a classic work.

Journey to Spirituality

2006-05-10T10:11:00.000-07:00

Journey to Ithaca

By Anita Desai

Published By Mandarin Paperbacks as ‘Minerva Edition’

First Published in Great Britain By William Heinemann Ltd.

Way back in October, 1996, when I was still unemployed I used to visit almost regularly British Council Library, Kolkata. At one fine noon I borrowed Anita Desai’s book from the library. From the very first page it captured my attention.

Matteo was a rich Italian who was reared up in a materialistic atmosphere where his parents did not, care for the mental and spiritual development. First, he realized that there is another world of imagination with the help of his British tutor, Fabian. This increased his sense of emptiness which always clings to his heart. He eventually married Sophie, daughter of a banker. She also did not care much about her parents’ sophistication. In stead they both come to India in order to discover the mystery of India, about which Matteo was well aware due to a book Journey to East by Herman Hesse which he read earlier. First he went from Gurus to Gurus in order to realize the mystery of the religion. It appeared to him that his land is a land of Mystery. But he did not find peace in his mind. At last he came to Mother’s ashram. Here he felt that he got spiritual enlightenment at the feet of the Mother.

But Sophie, who was more down-to-earth, now mother of two children---a girl and a boy---Isabel and Guacoma, refused to believe Mother’s identity as a spiritual enlighter. She decides to trace the Mother’s own story. The Mother was originally a Turkish girl called Laila who had fascinated over the art of dancing. She once met a dance troupe from India whose leader was ‘Krishna’. Laila thought that the spiritual fervour in their dance was what she wanted. She joined the dance troupe and towed through Milan and America. At last she came to India, her land of dream where she spiritually belonged. Gradually, she realized that “Krishna’s actual love is dancing”. So she left the troupe and went to attend pilgrimage to Himalyas. She, in the midst of nature, experienced the Eternal Devine Truth and came in contact with his spiritual Master. Gradually she became the Mother.

All these were found by Sophie and she also found a diary of the Mother, which belonged so far to the old ‘Krishna’. Now she returned to the Mother’s ashram to meet Mother and reveal her findings. But she came to know that the Mother was dead a short while ago and Matteo also left the ashram to go to Himalaya where the Mother received her enlightenment. Sophie also decided to go for a pilgrimage.

This novel is cunningly structured, beautifully evocative, rich with sounds, smell and sights of Italy and India, and it draws the reader into the heart of the most untranslatable of human experience.

Anita Desai writes well, lucidly and convincingly, when she describes the outside world. When she describes the pilgrimage that Matteo and Sophie join months after their coming to India, when she describes the beaches of Goa hazy with the clouds of drug that is being smoked there, I felt like a witness. The passage in which Desai describes the meeting between Sophie and the Mother is one of the most beautiful ones in the book. It is in such passages rich with symbols that I could finally glimpse Desai's craft.

Where she fails in this novel is in characterisation. One never understands how Matteo ticks, why he is ready to accept anyone and everyone as his saviour. Why he accepts that living in filth is essential to spiritual quest. The part dealing with Laila is the least convincing in the entire book. That this girl is yet another rebel is fine, but that she is so utterly uncaring towards the needs of all but her own is portrayed a bit too thinly. That she becomes the leading dancer of an Indian dance troupe within two months of starting to learn the dance is as unconvincing as her later incarnation as the Mother. The one character who has some spirit, one person who comes across as being a real person instead of being a two dimensional caricature is Sophie, but unfortunately her part is not sketched to the full. Just when I thought that this is a good book (the part where Sophie sees the Mother), the novel loses all the tension that was built up till then. It suddenly becomes too filmy, too unreal to be credible. If this journey is a journey to Ithaca, it is one that does not fulfill, that does not satisfy.

Excerpt of Review by other reviewers:

"A daring, colorful novel almost impossible to absorb in one reading... Anita Desai is a fluent artist, working from one vivid salience to the next. She knows the different lights of India, and she sees everything under the sun."

-- Paul West, The New York Times Book Review

"A triumph... What distinguishes the voice of Anita Desai is the physical intensity of her prose, the range of her capacious intelligence, her unsentimental compassion... Her work is an illumination and a blessing."

-- Pearl K. Bell, The New Republic

"A rich tapestry of the contemporary human condition in an alien environment ... Desai creates images rooted in the external environment that leave indelible imprints on our internal landscapes."

-- Mandira Sen, San Francisco Chronicle

"Powerful...a wonder of exquisitely crafted prose. As she piles detail upon detail, the intensity of India is seamlessly conjured up."

-- Judith Weinraub, Washington Post Book World

"A marvelous writer ... The book is exhilaratingly alive."

-- Esther Harriott, New York Newsday

My virtual first blog

2006-05-08T07:58:00.000-07:00

Read, read and read……..I tell myself

Like any history of the world, history of literature is full of anecdotes which might not have any or little significance in the mainstream. But these anecdotes are lively, more interesting and captures the true spirit which perhaps is beyond the capacity of dry leaves of history. For professional reasons I have to take care of endless dates and incidents and works of English literature. Sometimes, it appears to be very boring. It’s like studying a skeleton. Anecdotes and legends about any author appears to me a draft of fresh wind. I today recall the legendary friendship and endless stories that revolved around this friendship between Samuel Taylor Coleridge, the avant-garde exponent of Romantic literature and the prince of English essays, Charles Lamb. Charles Lamb in of his many refreshing essays opined that the populace of the human being can be divided into two categories:-(a) people who buy books but never or very little read it, (b) people who seldom buy book but always read innumerable number of books. Then Lamb goes on illustrating his point by sitting an example from his own life. He said that Coleridge was a very good friend of his. But for sometimes, he was noticing that whenever Coleridge calls on him, he was very eager to taste Lamb’s cooking ability. So he made conscious attempts to make Lamb disappear for a considerable time into the kitchen. When finally Coleridge left his house sometimes, it was discovered that some books were missing in the book shelf. But Lamb could not be sure of the correlation between the vanishing act of the books and Coleridge’s visit. Though this thought gnawed, he was never bothered about it. So soon, he forgot all about it and continued to welcome Coleridge warmly to his abode. One day, however Lamb pays back a visit to Coleridge’s little hut. When Coleridge was making tea for his guest Lamb was browsing through Coleridge’s impressive collection of books. Suddenly, Lamb put his hand on a book which bore his own name on the title page. It was a handwriting easily recognizable because it belonged to Charles Lamb himself. Without telling anything Lamb put the book in his pocket. He returned to his own place and opened the pages. A surprise was waiting for him. In the margins of the book, Lamb, to his surprise and joy, could locate handwritten notes by his friend, i.e. Coleridge which is the product of unfathomable scholarship. At the end of the essay, Lamb advises the readers that if they have such a friend, like that of Coleridge, they should give him ample opportunity to steal the books. And after some times, if possible, those books should be rescued after being enriched by the scholarship of those ‘thieves’. Charles Lamb told that he belonged to the first category people, the people who buy books but seldom read them. While Coleridge belonged to the second category, people who read books but seldom buy it. And naturally the second category is superior than the first one.
I too belonged to the first category. I love to buy books. I am a kind of bibliomaniac. The printed pages within the covers appeal me most. I could not resist the temptation to buy those books. But in queer incidents it happened that I bought two copies of same book after a long interval completely forgetting that the first copy was bought long ago. I could not keep track of the books which are already in my collection. So it is not only very distressing mentally but also it causes immense financial loss. I can safely say that I have not read a little more than fifty percent of collection of books yet.
However, this blog is not about my book collection or my habit of not reading sufficient books. This blog is intended to review of books. I wish to write articles about how a particular book impresses me or disappoints me.
I also request my beloved readers to contribute their opinions about the articles. Moreover I would be glad if they write articles about other books. Please, please enrich my blog with your well-thought articles. Wish you all very good and happy reading life.