Christmas Reading
The End Of Innocence
Goodbye, Innocence?
Moni Mohsin’s debut novel “The End of Innocence,” set in Lahore in 1971 – the defining year that saw a brutal civil war culminating in the division of Pakistan and the creation of Bangladesh – is the story of innocence caught in adult entanglements. It’s also about dangerous love – “the kind of love that “tears you away from your family” – and what it means to cross the acceptable into the forbidden in a feudal culture.
The conflict is observed through the eyes of the nine-year-old Laila, a privileged girl who is spending her winter vacation at her family estate in rural Pakistan. Rani, the granddaughter of the family maid, keeps her company. Rani, the yearning dreamer, pursues a love affair with a stranger and such are the consequences that it provokes a full-blown crisis and brings to fore the contradictions of a fundamentally feudal society.
The book delves into the friendship of the two girls belonging to different social worlds and the subtle interplay of emotions and empathy that transcend class hierarchies. As the tight-knit community scavenges for information and any spark to fire the conflict, it is Laila who safe-keeps the secret for Rani.
In the novel, the tranquil countryside and its endearing inhabitants are always under threat, even though the political strife never overtly intrudes. Mohsin boldly parallels the personal and the historical by juxtaposing Laila’s story of coming of age with Pakistan’s internal conflicts and division. Mohsin, a columnist and a journalist, could have presented the historical tale of the existence of east and west Pakistan and their subsequent dissolution through the objective force of non-fiction; she, however, chooses to tell the story of her country through a young girl, who views adult events through the prism of childhood.
Mohsin also dissects the warped up psyche of an “honour” killer, and reveals spontaneous violence inherent in such an act. As Aamer Hussain writes in The Independent: “Moni Mohsin’s accomplished and moving first novel deals not only with the aftermath of a dangerous love, but with its effects on an entire community: retribution, revenge, and the terrible complicity of the heedless in the destruction of innocence.”
In the end, what resonates in the mind is the simple but sensuous prose of the first-time novelist which evokes the fantasy rich world of childhood and its crumbling away as it is exposed to corrupting reality.
Shantaram
by Gregory David Roberts
Freedom Song
A book that is still generating a buzz, this time because of its rebirth as a Hollywood movie, is Gregory David Roberts’s fictionalised autobiography Shantaram. Shantaram, published in 2004, chronicles Roberts’ life as an escaped convict from an Australian jail (one of Australia’s most wanted men) who comes to Bombay as a fugitive. Shantaram means a ‘man of peace’, and the book is Roberts’s physical and spiritual journey in around 900 pages.
The novel describes the author’s escape from Victoria’s maximum security prison in broad daylight and his consequent arrival in India, where he carves a new identity as Lin. In a new and unknown city with its own brand of original intrigue and cacophony, Lin tries to fit in. “The truth is, the man I am was born in those moments, as I stood near the flood sticks with my face lifted to the Christmas rain”.
On his first day he meets Prabhaker, a young tour guide and Karla, a Swiss-American woman, both of whom will change his life. With the help of the young and energetic Prabhaker he sets up a health clinic in the slums, ‘the home of Linbaba’, and simultaneously makes money by selling drugs to foreigners. On the other hand, Karla, Lin’s love interest, becomes his refuge as well as his entry into the Bombay underworld of corruption, prostitution and mafia. Gradually Lin rises in the underworld under an Afghani don and the book conjures up his escapades with home-grown philosophising that the narrator learned in his long stints in jail.
Shantaram or ‘man of God’s peace’ is Lin’s story; but more than a story of crime, it is what a critic has described as a three-in-one “a travelogue, a thriller and discourse on the nature of good and evil into one.” Shantaram is Lin’s and Roberts’s defining journey through the decadent enticements of Bombay and the dark materials of human psyche. An acclaimed debut, Shantaram is more than a story of crime; it is a rich reading experience and a thrilling adventure. Although it is audacious and wild, it is narrated with passion and humanity.
From an escaped felon to a smuggler and a soldier for the mafia to a full time-writer, Shantaram is Gregory Roberts’s treatise, his apology and his redemption.
The Innocent Man
By John Grisham
Justice in Kafkaland?
John Grisham is back in the limelight with his first non-fiction work The Innocent Man, which illustrates the vagaries of the justice system in a creepy small town in America. Grisham chronicles the true story of Ron Williamson who was convicted and tried of a crime he did not commit and paid the price for it. Williamson returned to his hometown of Ada, six years later, after saying goodbye to his dream of becoming a baseball player. Disappointed, he immersed himself in women, drugs and drinks. In 1982, a cocktail waitress was raped and murdered in his town. For five years, the police were clueless and baffled. In 1987, Williamson and his friend were arrested and charged with capital murder, without any proof.
Grisham delves into this true story of Williamson and dramatises a last-minute intervention by a group of lawyers through which Williamson was exonerated, but only after losing 12 precious years of his life.
In an interview, Grisham said that he chose the case of Rob Williamson as he found a similar likeness with him; both being from small towns and dreaming of being baseball players. Grisham invested 18 months interviewing his family, reading case transcripts, depositions, digging health records to form the correct image of the trial. The small town with its judges, dishonest law enforcement and inept legal system provides a picture of an appalling miscarriage of justice. Grisham’s novel is a treatise against the death penalty, demonstrating true events that might go unnoticed. His book is instructive and aims to prevent further such misgivings.
Grisham’s ‘contagious’ passion to show the truth behind the corrupt justice system is simultaneously enlightening and shocking. Informative and entertaining, Grisham displays his ability and show how truth can be deadly and gritty. “If you believe in the death penalty, this book will disturb you. If you believe the criminal justice system is fair, this book will infuriate you,” says Publishers Weekly’s sharp comment on the book that provokes you to think twice before believing in the legal system again.
Casanova’s Women
By Judith Summers
Demystifying the seducer
The myth and mystique of the legendary lady-killer Casanova has haunted generations of lovers and even inspired the libidinously inclined. In her new book, Casanova’s Women, Judith Summers turns the spotlight away from the eighteenth century Venetian adventurer Giacomo Casanova who became probably the world’s most successful seducer to the countless women he charmed and seduced.
Generous and attractive and ruthless and selfish by turns, Casanova was a sickly son of Venetian actors, a compulsive womaniser who cleverly manipulated his female friends to satisfy his innate narcissism and transcended social hierarchies to keep company with kings and beautiful women.
Summers excavates memoirs, letters, and correspondences of the philanderer in her research and gives a voice to those women who have never been adequately represented, some 200 odd women the famed philandered managed to bed.
What worked in Casanova’s favour was his grand idea of himself as God’s gift to womankind. “My currency was an unbridled self- esteem, which inexperience forbade me to doubt,” he wrote in his memoirs.
In this “exuberant and candidly erotic biography” of Casanova, Judith Summers moves through the veneer of pillow-talk and love letters to reveal the women that became the object of Casanova’s numerous sexual conquests. Casanova could be thoughtful and caring and he could be cruel and beguiling. Summers makes us look at the unjust treatment he inflicted on the other half, leaving them in the dead of night with either an unwanted child or an empty purse. Summers portrays these alleged ‘easy preys’ as being equal to Casanova. Prominent of the lot were Savorgnan sisters who like Casanova were promiscuous and eager, and assisted him to land the harder of his victims, including their own friend. Summers also describes his affair with a provincial noblewoman, glamorous Henriette with whom Casanova enjoyed conversations and companionship.
The novel ends with Casanova’s life, looks and sexual prowess spent. However, he describes his passion for women as “a kind of madness over which philosophy has no power at all.” “I will never admit that it is a trifle or a vanity,” wrote Casanova towards the end of his life, not repenting in the slightest about the life of uninhibited amorous pleasures he lived as a young man.
Lisey’s Story
By Stephen King
Blending the paranormal and the romantic
Stephen King, the master of the macabre, has a genius for surprising his readers with the extravagance of his imagination. But in Lisey’s Story, King has taken horror, supernatural and fantasy to their sublime heights and plumbed new depths of feeling in this poignant novel of love, loss and grief.
In Lisey’s Story, King blends his brand of the paranormal with the romantic and tells the story of Lisey Landon who loses her husband Scott after twenty five years in marriage. However, she feels his intimate and threatening presence all around her. From some clues she finds from his childhood possessions, she travels into the twilight zone space of ‘Boo’ya Moon’, fashioned by her husband that is both terrifying and rejuvenating, having the power to destroy and to create. Besides dealing with her heart-wrenching grief, Lisey has to come to terms with her troubled husband’s past as well. The novel is Scott’s story more than Lisey’s and there are some stunning similarities between Scott and King – both of whom have won a Pulitzer and the National Book Award. The novel stands as a metaphor for surpassing grief and becomes an exploration into the mysteries of creativity. Lisey’s Story is King’s most personal and powerful work, dealing with defining experiences of love, madness and creativity.
Nora Roberts, who also writes under the pseudonym of J.D. Robb and is the author of many best-selling novels like Angels Fall, being a long time fan of King, asserts that “Lisey’s Story is, at its core, a love story — heart-wrenching, passionate, terrifying and tender. It is the multi-layered and expertly crafted tale of a twenty-five year marriage, and a widow’s journey through grief, through discovery and — this is King, after all–through a nightmare scape of the ordinary and extraordinary.”
The New York Times calls Lisey’s Story ‘tender and intimate,’ while Library Journal declares Lisey’s Story to be “a roller coaster ride through the artefacts of marriage.” Publisher’s Weekly is glowing in his praise of King the ‘master of supernatural suspense in this minimally bloody but disturbing and sorrowful love story’.
If you have ignored King’s works like The Shining, Carrie, The Dark Tower series, The Green Mile, The Cell and many other bloodcurdling novels, branding him sensationalist or ‘bloody’, take a good look at Lisey’s Story.
Chicken With Plums
By Marjane Satrapi
When music dies…
Iranian novelist-artist Marjane Satrapi’s fourth graphic memoirs explores the intertwined themes of death, love and pleasure and revolves around the last eight days in the life of the author’s great uncle, one of Iran’s most revered musicians, whose favourite food is chicken with plums.
Here are bare bones of the story: Nasser Ali Khan, a musician in the 50s Iran, is shattered when he finds that that he can never restore his beloved broken musical instrument, the tar (which is akin to Indian sitar). He tries to replace it, but fails. Broken-hearted and full of despair, he falls ill and loses all pleasure in life. In his last days he is haunted by memories and hallucinations and fantastic visions of the fate of his offspring after his death. In one of dream scenes, he is even visited by Hollywood stunner Sophia Loren. He shuts himself up from his family and ends up living more and more inside his mind. Eight days later, he dies.
Satrapi distils personal and familial histories into memorable vignettes in her novel. Chicken with Plums is ultimately about love, life and music and blends bits of classical Persian poetry, folk tales and history into a celebration of life’s mysteries and pleasures.
Satrapi shot into literary limelight through her autobiographical novels, Persepolis and Persepolis 2, which narrate her exile and return to Iran and describes the impact the Iranian revolution had on her liberal-minded cosmopolitan family.
Istanbul: Memories And The City
By Orhan Pamuk
Melancholy in Istanbul
Part memoir, part history and part brilliance, as a critic has described it, Orhan Pamuk’s Istanbul is a powerful evocation of the eponymous city, that was once at the heart of a powerful empire, in all its mystery and manifold idiosyncrasies.
But more than anything else, Istanbul is a direct glimpse into the mind of the author as he struggles with the snobberies of his well-born parents and finds refuge in ‘consoling streets’ of the city that is simultaneously dark and sinister as well. Above all, it’s a portrait of the writer in the making and records his moment of conversion when he decides to become a writer. ‘I don’t want to be an artist. . . . I’m going to be a writer,’ these are the last words spoken by the author narrator to his mother as he declares his calling toward the end of this memoirs.
Istanbul is the preferred fictional habitat of Pamuk, Nobel Prize-winner for Literature this year. A constant undertone of pessimism and hopelessness is palpable throughout the book. Pamuk evokes through Istanbul the concept of huzun or melancholy, as the city around him, is living as much as dying; the city is nostalgic and yet tries to maintain its vigour. Adapting the essay genre to the demands of story-telling, Pamuk, the author of Snow and My Name is Red, re-visits the nooks, streets and locales, rich villas and neglected monuments of Istanbul and brings out the city’s singularity and angularities in his nuanced prose.
Elegant illustrations from the archives of Ara Guler imbues the book, translated from the Turkish by Maureen Freely, with a certain visual appeal. Elif Shafak, scientist and author of ”The Saint of Incipient Insanities’ is unstinting in her praise of “insightful, eclectic, whimsical, and didactic” memoirs of the author.
For One More Day
By Mitch Albom
Power of Love
Mitch Albom, author of the best-selling novels ‘the Five People You Meet In Heaven’ and ‘tuesdays with Morrie’ presents us with a heart-wrenching and mesmerizing tale about family and loved ones lost. A nationally syndicated columnist and a sports reporter, Albom’s inspiring characters and emotional storytelling find their way in his latest creation, For One More Day, which promises to give an insight into life’s important lessons.
The book tells the story of Charlie “Chick” Benetto, a grief-stricken alcoholic. As a child, Charlie chose his father as his idol, leaving his mother unaided, only to see him disappear soon enough. Now broken, he’s at the end of his tether as an unsuccessful father, without a job or money, alone, and decides to take his own life; only to encounter his mother’s ghost. He obtains one last chance to accompany her on the day he wish he always had. He acquires a chance to make peace with a dead parent, to know family secrets, share unforgettable moments and to seek forgiveness. This is Charlie’s last chance to redeem himself and to deal with the death of a loved one. A moral tale of forgiveness and love, Albom highlights the unrequited mother’s love and sacrifice and pays homage to mother’s love that can transcend time and death.
The Boston Globe captures the raw emotional power of Albom’s book, saying it has the ‘ability to make you cry in spite of yourself.’ However, James McBride, the author of The Colour of Water, declares that Albom is just a “fearless explorer of the wishful and the magical–a devout believer in the power of love.” Albom’s novel is an emotional journey for each child to reflect on his or her past and start making amends..
Thirteen Moons
by Charles Frazier
Moon is the limit!
After his National Book Award-winning debut with Cold Mountain, Charles Frazier returns almost a decade later with Thirteen Moons. Random House announced the book to be “the epic story of one man’s remarkable journey through life, set in nineteenth century America.” The story is set in the times of civil unrest, through which Frazier shows the betrayals of the native people and captures the life before the fall. Frazier, who had appeared to be a one-hit-wonder with his Cold Mountain, stuns the readers with Thirteen Moons as it measures up to the reader’s high expectations.
An orphan named Will Cooper travels into his past as he is sent alone into the Cherokee lands, the unexplored white land, of North Carolina to manage a trading post. The backdrop of the novel is the history of Cherokee natives who receive their independence through a revolution, only to lose it again. As the story progresses, Will bonds with a Cherokee chief and develops a lasting relationships, and ends up, surprisingly as the chief of the clan. At 12, in a game at cards he wins the enigmatic Claire. He fights for the rights of the Cherokees to preserve their past and variegated heritage. Frazier admits that the character of Charlie is loosely based on the life of William Holland Thomas, a white man who was adopted by the tribe of Cherokees, only to become a self taught lawyer and a state senator.
Thirteen Moons is a picaresque historical epic that unravels linked themes of patriotism, adventure and love and counterpoints them with the malignancy of slavery and war. In this novel, described by St. Louis Post Dispatch as “a fitting successor to Cold Mountain,” Frazier shows what it means to bring history to life and the presence of the past in our lives.
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Book ReviewsJanuary 10, 2013Christmas Reading: Shantaram- Book ReviewsJanuary 10, 2013Christmas Reading: The End Of Innocence
- Book ReviewsJanuary 10, 2013The Lively Adventures Of An Indian Diplomat
