The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood

Rating: 4 Stars

2000 Booker Prize

This isn’t a feel good book. Never mind; it has other things going for it.

For starters there is its technical virtuosity. Atwood has taken an outmoded literary device – the epistolary novel - and imbued it with a savage new life. While the novel is certainly open to feminist interpretations, the author’s approach is iconoclastic in its demolition of fondly-held notions of family, religion, and marriage. That makes for a prickly, uncomfortable read; but artistes’ integrity lies is in staying true to their vision, not in pandering to the fickle caprices of the audience.

The plot is like a matryoshka doll, apparently nesting several stories within the main frame. The narrative opens in the 1940s, ‘ten days after the war ended’. Iris Chase hears of the tragic death of her younger sister, Laura, in a car accident. We learn over the course of the novel that Laura has achieved posthumous fame with the publication of the scandalous (for its time) book, ‘The Blind Assassin’. Iris, several years later, though physically frail, is indomitable and clear-minded in her old age as she never was in her youth. Part of the story is her recollection of her life as she writes it down for an estranged grandchild.

Part of it are also excerpts from ‘The Blind Assassin’ - a story of a young society woman involved with a man on the wrong side of the law, though his crime is never made explicit. The couple meet in various different locations each having their own reasons for being very careful. The word ‘love’ is not mentioned in their trysts, and they are often cruel or callous; yet, their need for one another, even if not always tender, is genuine and palpable.

The third story is the science-fiction tale with which the young man entertains his lover – a fantasy world of oppressive social stratification, sexual deviancy, and a perverted religion based on sacrificial rituals. Even under these unconducive circumstances, there are two unlikely people who fall in love seeking a redemption from the sordid reality of their lives.

Each story is engrossing enough on its own. Atwood’s ingenuity lies in her one-woman enactment of the triple Moirai in spinning the narrative; keeping the skeins from unraveling; and, swiftly and ruthlessly tying the threads together for a truly brilliant yarn.

“…All she has left is the picture. Also the story of it.

The picture is of happiness, the story not. Happiness is a garden walled with glass: there’s no way in or out. In Paradise there are no stories, because there are no journeys. It’s loss and regret and misery and yearning that drive the story forward, along its twisted road.”

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

Rating: 3 Stars

The concept of Utopia has been around in Literature for quite a while. As far back as 400 BC, Plato described in his Republic an ideal society ruled by philosophers where women are communal property and children are bred by eugenics. All riffraff claiming artistic or literary ability are naturally banned. Brave New World, published in 1932, is the first modern novel to develop further the ideas expounded by Plato. The author leaves it to the readers to judge the virtue of such a society.

In the year AF 632, the World State governs on the doctrine of Community, Identity, and Stability. To ensure that there is no deviation from these guiding principles human beings are produced in labs to conform to the State’s requirement for uniformity. Viviparous birth has become tantamount to obscenity, and the bottle-bred infants are subject to social conditioning from birth that they may adhere to a strict caste system, and imbibe the commandment that ‘Happiness is the Sovereign good.’

Pursuant to that ideal, soma is distributed to all to dispel any negative emotions that may discombobulate the populace. As the saying goes, “Better a gramme than a damme.” To add to all this perfection, it’s a world where women are not only…’pneumatic’, but also have a delightfully laid-back attitude about getting groped, or being ‘had’ by every male in their social circle. The ‘F’ in AF 632, by the way, stands for Ford, and the crucifix has been supplanted by the symbol T.

This charming world of happy pills, free-range promiscuity, and unlicensed consumerism receives a titillating surprise when it encounters John Savage. Savage is of accidental viviparous birth, and has been raised on a Native American reservation. His brain befogged by Shakespeare, and nursing alien hang-ups about sex, Savage is an anomaly in the World State, but determined to claim his right to God, discomfort, inconvenience, and unhappiness.

As I’ve said earlier, sometimes a work of fiction is remembered not for having done something the best, but for having done it first. It’s probably this criterion that allows Brave New World to be labeled a ‘Modern Classic’. Without over-reaching for wisdom, Huxley settles for snippets of cleverness and long-winded, fatuous philosophy. In a hodgepodge of anthropological incoherence, residents of the World State guzzle down Indo Aryan soma; the boy raised on a Native American reservation has oddly Puritanical and sado-masochistic tendencies; and, the dark-skinned races are classified as having sub-par intellects. The novel is broadly derivative in its inspiration, and simplistic in its prognosis of all the possible moral and spiritual ailments that may beset society. It’s a trait unique to dystopia fiction that the writers will persist in their dismal glass-half empty perspective. As a depressing consequence, their reader is left to chase away the blues…and without even a gramme. Damme!

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

Fahrenheit 451 –

The temperature at which

book paper catches

fire and burns…

Eminent American writer, Ray Bradbury, died this summer. Over the course of his career, the versatile author wrote many short stories, novels, and works of nonfiction, and is considered one of the most influential writers of the Twentieth Century.

Fahrenheit 451 envisions an American dystopia where independent thought has virtually died out. The country, that has the menace of an imminent nuclear war looming over it, is ruled by a totalitarian government that sedates its population by beaming in mindless entertainment right onto the walls of their home. Those who have not yet become numbed by this process are given to venting their violence in drag races. In such a society, the ultimate enemy is the written word. To eradicate the threat represented by books, the state uses ‘Firemen’ to whom it assigns the duty of burning books – those dangerous harbingers of free thought and dissent.

The book’s protagonist, Guy Montag – a Fireman, has gone most of his life without questioning the status quo. That is, until the appearance and sudden disappearance of his young neighbor awakens a latent unease that leads him to distrust all that he has hitherto obediently accepted. The first step towards rebellion takes Guy inexorably down the path of insurgency. Change is inevitable.

Though some interpret this work as a rebuke of censorship, the author appears to place greater emphasis on the devaluation of books and scholarly pursuits. Published in 1953, at the time of television’s inception, Fahrenheit 451 seems more a warning against a future that disallows intellectual endeavor for the narcotizing effects of mass media entertainment – a message as relevant now as then.

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

Rating: 3 Stars

It’s been a while since I read a Young Adult book. I wasn’t planning on reading this one either despite the wave of publicity generated by the movie release; except that the young adults in my house attested to its overall excellence, advising me to read the first book and skip the other two in the trilogy. Word of mouth publicity from trusted sources; it still works.

‘The Hunger Games’ has the needful ingredients for a teen adventure – a dystopia where the brave child/quasi adult must battle oppressive forces, and in the process discover the hero within. In Collins’ version, a Post-Apocalyptic North America has been renamed Panem, and fragmented into twelve districts. These districts are required by law to provide two contestants each to participate in the annual Hunger Games. What ensues is a fight to the finish where the last one left standing is declared winner. The winner is then apparently set for life, and for one year his/her district will receive a generous largesse of much-needed food and other necessities. And oh yes, the whole thing will be telecast live. That’s a definite nod in the direction of a generation of readers fed a diet of reality game-shows and live war-coverage.

Panem is a totalitarian society and the Hunger Games are not so much diversion, but a brutal reminder to the people as to who sways the decision of life or death over its citizens. Our narrator, Katniss Everdeen, finds herself catapulted into the Games by a single act of valor. Katniss is an ambiguous heroine - bleakly self-sufficient one minute, vulnerable the next. This girl from District 12 is an experienced hunter, and girds her loins to the task at hand like any hairy-chested man of action. Except of course, she isn’t. To prove that point Collins devotes ample prose to the princessification of Katniss, who enjoys her spa treatments and coterie of personal stylists like any salon-deprived girl from the boondocks would.

I’ll say one thing for it – the book is a page-turner. The pace is edge-of-your-seat, and the action rarely slows. The premise is an archetype – part 1984, part Lord of the Flies, with older antecedents if you’re so inclined to look for it. The much hyped violence quotient is not hype after all. It’s fairly unsettling, and probably better suited for more mature readers, but don’t try telling that to your middle-school kids. It will probably be the surest way to have them scrambling to read it. On the other hand, talking about the book could lead to some great discussions about Darwinism vis-à-vis Human Civilization.