Middlemarch by George Eliot

4 Stars

It seems a little unfair that all other Victorians novelists are thrown into the gigantic shade cast by Charles Dickens. To most readers, and even non-readers, his writing captures the zeitgeist of the Victorian era like none other.

It’s interesting to note that Dickens was one of the few to instantly suspect that ‘George Eliot’ was in all probability the pseudonym of a female writer. He said as much in a fan letter to her in 1858:

“…I should have been strongly disposed, if I had been left to my own devices, to address the said writer as a woman. I have observed what seems to me to be such womanly touches, in those moving fictions, that the assurance on the title-page is insufficient to satisfy me, even now…You will not suppose that I have any vulgar wish to fathom your secret. I mention the point as one of great interest to me – not of mere curiosity.”

George Eliot did come forward later to reveal herself as Mary Ann Evans. Her initial reticence could perhaps be ascribed to many factors: her desire to shield her private life (she was co-habiting with a married man); she was already working as a journalist and editor under her own name; and, also, because apparently she wished to be judged on her own merit, not to be compared with other female writers of the age.

‘Middlemarch’ is far from being a feminist diatribe, but in its depiction of the ‘lot’ of women, Eliot’s mature understanding of gender inequality certainly has no predecessors. The protagonist, Dorothea Brooke, is no social rebel; at least not by her standards. She doesn’t defy social restrictions. Rather, she seems to be oblivious of them; choosing to live a life guided by her conscience rather than convention.

The book has intersecting plot lines and a vast cast of characters, many of them relatively important to the progress of the narrative. The title of the book refers to a fictional manufacturing town. Eliot sets the novel in the early 1830s - forty years prior to the date of its publication. Choosing that time period for the plot enables her to delve into political issues such as the passage of the Reform Act, the onset of the British railways, the death of one king and the succession of another, and the medical practices of a bygone age. Whether the book is improved by the long-winded digressions into obsolete medical procedures and petty politics; or if it even qualifies as an actual historical novel, is a subject open for debate.

She is the quintessential Victorian writer – circuitous, verbose, unable to arrive at any point without expanding on several other topics, all of which she seems to consider germane to the central issue. And, she does seem to go over-board in her anxiety that no one in the story should be ill-judged:

“Pray think no ill of Miss Noble…”

“For my part, I have some fellow-feeling with Dr. Sprague…”

“Think no evil of her (Rosamond), pray…”

Perhaps readers should be extended the courtesy of making up their own minds.

But there’s a genuine kindness that makes one excuse her fussy empathy. And of course, Eliot has many kinds of humor in her quiver – gentle, observational, ironic.

Though she spared no effort to be taken seriously, the real strength of her writing, the enduring value of her books lies in her perceptive, and yes, very feminine understanding of human nature, or as Dickens called it, the ‘womanly touches’.

“If we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary life, it would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel’s heart beat, and we should die of that roar which lies on the other side of silence. As it is, the quickest of us walk about well wadded with stupidity.”

Eliot was perhaps much less ‘wadded with stupidity’ than the vast majority of people. Her sensitive psychological insight and compassion makes her characters - every one of them - intensely real, intensely relevant for all ages.

Discussion Questions for this book at:

http://noa-betweenthelines.blogspot.com/2015/07/george-eliots-middlemarch-discussion.html

Raising Steam by Terry Pratchett

Rating: 3 & ½ Stars

Pratchett weaves a tangled web. Not only does each novel have interwoven plots, but each fresh book picks up the threads of ideas and characters from his preceding works. Like much of Discworld it is messy, chaotic, yet with an underlying unity of vision.

Moist Von Lipwig, former conman, who first made his appearance in ‘Going Postal’, has despite his reluctance had ever further eminence thrust upon him by the Patrician of Ankh Morpork – Lord Vetinari. Lipwig is now officially in charge of the Bank, the Post Office, and the Mint. It only stands to Vetinari’s reason that he should also take on the responsibility of Discworld’s latest invention – the Steam Engine.

Pratchett thereby continues the theme of the evolving history of Discworld, and Ankh Morpork, in particular. 

We’re now a long way from the investigations of the species-diverse Watch, and the eldrich antics of the Wizards and Witches. What he has in his sights is an economy in tumultuous growth, say, akin to the industrialization of Victorian England, but at hyper speed. The burgeoning of one industry inevitably leads to the mushrooming of several others.

If nothing is as unstoppable as an idea whose time has come, the world borne by the Giant Turtle is being engulfed by a tsunami of new ideas, bringing together people, species, and cultures as never before. No surprise then that there are those who fiercely resist the changing times. The Grags, the ‘deep down Dwarfs’ are the ultra-orthodox of Dwarfdom, many of whom strive to keep others chained to the same darkness in which they have imprisoned themselves. Peace on DW hinges on quelling the discontent metastasizing in the Dwarf community.

It hinges therefore on men and women of good will and intention who are even more single-mindedly undeterred from their purpose than their adversaries. Thankfully they’re never in short supply in Pratchett’s books.

Just Enough Jeeves by P.G. Wodehouse

Rating: 3 & ½ Stars

Wodehouse’s name is synonymous with a certain kind of British humor – the one that’s as light and airy as a soufflé. In a literary career that spanned nearly seventy years, much of his writing is set in the Edwardian era. His countrymen have him to thank for the persistent stereotypes of Englishmen who sport monocles, knickerbockers, and say things like ‘pip pip’, ‘Cheerio’, and ‘toodles’. The rest of us are bemused and charmed by a people in the thrall of harmless if eccentric notions of fealty, royalty, and afternoon tea.

Wodehouse’s most enduring creation is the pairing of that feather-headed man-about-town, Bertram Wooster, and his brilliant valet, Jeeves. ‘Just Enough Jeeves’ is a collection of two novels – Joy in the Morning and Right Ho, Jeeves and an anthology of short stories – Very Good, Jeeves!

Those who are familiar with the Jeeves series know that Bertie is less the silly nincompoop that his friends and family take him for and more the innocent scapegoat who keeps landing in the wrong place at the wrong time. Kind and chivalrous to a fault, he invariably finds himself fending off over-bearing aunts and girls with the predatory glint of matrimonial intentions in their eyes. The latter convince themselves that he’s languishing in love of them when nothing could be further from the truth, but Wooster is too much of a gentleman to set them straight. When he’s not trying to disentangle himself from their clutches, he’s either complicating or endeavoring to smooth out the love life of his various humorously named friends – Bingo Little, Boko Fittleworth, Tuppy Glossop, or Gussie Fink-Nottle.

Deftly steering him through these difficulties to the guaranteed happy endings is his gentleman’s gentleman – Jeeves. A prodigious reader and insightful student of human nature, Jeeves plies his perspicacity in the aid of ‘the young master’. It is not all in the feudal spirit however. Bertie frequently pays the price for these services in the form of various small sacrifices – whether it’s in the reluctant relinquishing of some sartorial whim, or last minute change of plans, or having his eyes abruptly opened to the unsuitability of someone he has a crush on. Jeeves always has the last say.

Sweet Tooth by Ian McEwan

Rating: 3 Stars

The literary novelist labors under certain constraints. Like his less ambitious colleagues, he too has to hook his readers and reel them in. Unlike them however, he has self-imposed standards regarding plot, style, and technique. It’s easy to give in to authorial conceit and undermine the story’s integrity by trying too hard to be a clever boy.

 

Speaking of clever, the heroine of ‘Sweet Tooth’, Serena Frome is presented as a very bright young woman of the 70s. Having enjoyed an idyllic childhood and seen as being gifted in Math and Language, she is propelled by her mother to abandon her true love, English, to pursue the higher study of Math. At the university, she discovers herself to be relatively mediocre at the subject, but enjoys student life otherwise – dabbling in a little writing on the side, trying on various intellectual fashions for size, and, meandering through many desultory affairs. Thanks to the mentoring of an older lover she finds herself recruited by MI5 at the height of the Cold War.

Having stumbled into an accidental career, this inexperienced novice manages to give an impression of competence to supervisors who should have known better. Serena is assigned to a project code-named ‘Sweet Tooth’ and starts running her own agent – Tom Haley, an up and coming writer. Her relationship with him proves to be disastrous, but for whom exactly is a question answered only at the end, and I do mean the very end.

Electing to make the protagonist female is not a good option when there’s a strong strain of misogyny underlying the novel. For someone who is allegedly intelligent, Serena evinces no signs of curiosity, insight, or independent thought. By her own admission she is no rebel, being obedient and submissive; especially when there’s a man in her life that she’s eager to please, which is almost a constant. Moving on beyond the hollow characterization, descriptions of the British Secret Service’s intricate workings are less than riveting. They read like inner office memos. As for the pace, I had to get half way through the book before I realized gloomily that the author was still fussing with the stage decorations – the story was yet to start.

Having got that off my chest, let me just add that Ian McEwan successfully had me hooked. The slow pace was irritating, but I still kept reading. Yes, partly it may have been sheer bloody-mindedness about never quitting on a book as long as there were signs of life, but I also wanted to find out what happened to this silly girl at the end. It didn’t hurt that McEwan’s prose is crisp, precise, and elegant. Perhaps, it also had something to do with the weirdly compelling short stories of the Tom Haley character. A good writer has a lot of the magician in him. I suppose I simply enjoyed what McEwan pulled out of his hat for the finale. Clever boy.

Diana - Story of a Princess by Tim Clayton and Phil Craig

The Brits put on a nice show at the Olympics, didn’t they, synthesizing all the elements that make this island nation so unique – at once both a bastion of European tradition, and at the avant-garde of the arts and social trends. The segment where the Queen parachutes in with the redoubtable 007 was especially appreciated for its co-mingling of royalty and cheeky humor. For after all, what could be more English than the Queen of England?

Though as intrigued as the rest of the world might plausibly be about a lifestyle that includes tiaras, gracious hand-waving, and ribbon-cutting, I’ve always been a little skeptical about books that purport to tell us about the Royals as they ‘really are’, more so when they are penned by British writers. Those have always seemed to be either fawning tributes, or bitchy exposés. The best biographies are extensively researched; unsparing in recounting the pertinent details of the subject’s life; impartial in their analysis; neutral in tone, yet insightful; offering readers a perspective that would have otherwise eluded them. Judging by these standards, Clayton and Craig’s chronicle of the late Princess Diana’s life is a decent read, though its sympathy seems slanted more toward the Royals than Diana.

As you might know if you have ever read about the battling Windsors, the press always chose a side when describing the tensions between Diana and her then-husband – Charles, Prince of Wales. Most of the time, Diana appeared to have won the war for the public’s support. The beautiful, well-coiffed Princess with her global do-gooder image, and mega-watt charisma just made better copy than the noticeably stiff and reserved Prince. As to the truth of their marriage, who really knows? If you believed Diana’s version, she was a loving, vulnerable woman whose heart was broken by her insensitive, philandering cad of a husband. The Prince’s vociferous supporters might say that she was a bottomless pit of insecurity whose incessant demands for attention would wear down the patience of a saint. What is evident to the reader is that the union was perforce doomed from the start with the pair’s uncompromising personalities, and their readiness to seek solace outside their marriage.

But apparently, it wasn’t just Charles with whom Diana had a falling-out. Clayton and Craig charge that Diana opened hostilities on the entire Royal family over their perceived lack of support, and their belittling of all that she strove to do. It was a family feud that played out before a captivated world audience, and when one side proceeded to spill the beans, the other didn’t want to be left behind. The paparazzi, sensing a free-for-all gleefully jumped into the fray, at which point nothing was sacred, least of all notions of privacy or personal dignity.

Diana, had very early on, started a dangerous flirtation with the Press, smitten with the idea of her own celebrity. Like a woman not understanding the consequences of encouraging an obsessive suitor, she showed particularly poor judgment in her dealings with the paparazzi. When the fracas got out of control, and Diana felt herself being hounded on all sides, she attempted a retreat from public life, which didn’t last too long. The last years of the Princess’s life and her tragic death make a sad story; but as to who was to bear the blame for that is left to the readers’ discernment.

So, who was Diana? Was she a self-promoting Princess of ‘Wails’, a drama queen in search of an audience, a loose cannon barreling down the corridors of power? Or was she the angel of mercy that many thought her to be, an instinctive humanitarian with a near magical ability to channel compassion, and an intuitive empathy for those in pain? In the course of her turbulent, all too short life, she played many roles. No doubt people will believe what they want to believe.

Lord of the Flies by William Golding

Lord of the Flies by William Golding

Rating: 4 Stars

William Golding was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1983

Some books are a rite of passage. We trudge through them cursing the educators who deemed that they should be ‘required reading’; that our academic experience would somehow be incomplete without them. Under this duress, the book inspires fear and loathing, rather than instilling a love of the best there is in literature. It’s with great relief that we turn the final page, submit that last essay, and vow to never pick up that wretched thing ever again. Yet years later, the book continues to haunt, etched forever in our memory. Lord of the Flies is beautiful, ugly, and deeply disturbing; or as my thirteen-year old opined, “There was something seriously wrong with this guy.”

In the aftermath of a nuclear war, a plane transporting an unnamed number of English school-boys crashes on an uninhabited island in the Pacific. The boys range in ages from adolescents to kindergartners. They make tentative plans for their immediate survival while awaiting a rescue. Their ill-formed attempts at establishing a functioning society crumbles in the tug of war between the conflicting impulses of civilization versus savagery.

One reading makes clear why this book is beloved of English teachers everywhere – the abundance of themes, the simple yet sophisticated language, and characters that are universal archetypes. It’s a book that tantalizes with symbolism, and tempts the reader to assay imaginative interpretations.

However, I confess that this book appeals to me at its most basic level – as a riveting tale that has the blood pounding in your veins, and your nails chewed to shreds as you try to guess what’s coming next. As a story-teller, Golding ranks with the best. Where one may find room for argument is perhaps, in his seemingly dark take on human nature. As one of the book’s characters is prone to exclaim, “What’s grown-ups going to say?” The more painful question is, what would adults do that would be any different?

This is the crux of the intertwining themes. Golding was a school-master with a visceral understanding of the school-boys’ mentality. Though the clinical detachment of his tone is chilling, it is not so much misanthropy, as a potent warning of mankind’s proclivity for degeneracy. As he said in his Nobel Prize acceptance speech,

“…We need more humanity, more care, more love. There are those who expect a political system to produce that; and others who expect the love to produce the system. My own faith is that the truth of the future lies between the two and we shall behave humanly and a bit humanely, stumbling along, haphazardly generous and gallant, foolishly and meanly wise until the rape of our planet is seen to be the preposterous folly that it is.”

Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier

Rating: 3 & ½ Stars

Published in 1938, ‘Rebecca’ has been hailed as a classic work of suspense. It also seemed like the longest book I’ve read in a while. I’ll get to that later.

The book’s un-named narrator falls hopelessly in love with recent widower Maxim de Winter when they meet in Monte Carlo. She accepts his proposal and moves to Manderley, de Winter’s ancestral manor. The very young and painfully diffident bride soon becomes obsessed with her predecessor – Rebecca, who may be gone, but is certainly not forgotten. She compares herself with the earlier Mrs. de Winter, and finds herself falling short every time. Her predicament is exacerbated by her increasingly remote husband, and the housekeeper, Mrs. Danvers, whose tangible antipathy threatens to shatter her fragile sense of self-esteem.

The book’s greatest triumph is that it’s most vibrant, dynamic character is the one whom we never see except through the words of others, and the narrator’s tortured imagination. In the fine web that the author weaves, the reader too becomes entangled by the lure of a woman so ravishingly beautiful, accomplished, and mysterious that mere mortals can but quake at her memory. Rebecca not only haunts the Manderley she conceived; her presence imbues the skein of the narrative.

As is usual in the English Manor Mystery genre, there is a brooding atmosphere that gets denser as the story progresses. The tone is set by the eerie beginning, evoking a house whose beauty is offset by a pervading sense of menace.

As for the novel seeming one of the longest that I’ve read – the fault may at least partially be my own. I approached it with every good intention, but just found myself unable to lose myself in it. Perhaps it’s because I saw the movie before I read the book [Hint: the book is better], and therefore I couldn’t enjoy the element of surprise, so crucial to any work of suspense. That wasn’t the only reason however; while the Lilith-Eve angle has a certain literary appeal, the book’s one-dimensional characterization has rendered an archetype into a stereotype. That aside, quite simply - glaciers move faster than the pace of this story.

At the risk of offending its many fans, this is one book that didn’t quite live up to its reputation.

Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons

Rating: 3 Stars

Published in 1932, Gibbons’ Cold Comfort Farm is one of those farces that run rife with quirky characters and madcap antics. It’s an undemanding read for a rainy afternoon; once you look past the tortured metaphors, and the overly bright, brittle humor that characterizes so many British books of that period.

Flora Poste is a recently (nearly) impoverished young woman, who, scorning advice to support herself by earning her way through life, decides instead to accept the hospitality of relations with whom she’s barely acquainted. Brimming with good intentions, good taste, and good sense, she descends on Cold Comfort Farm and immediately sets to matchmaking, meddling, and reforming her socially maladjusted kin – the Starkadders.

The Starkadders, each equipped with their unique set of eccentricities, are securely under the thumb of Flora’s Great Aunt Ada Doom, who has been wallowing in her own private psychosis for the past several decades. How will Auntie’s forbidding yet fragile mental condition endure the onslaught of Flora’s relentless charm and feminine insight?

If the plot sounds vaguely familiar to some of you, it should; Gibbons is patently channeling Jane Austen’s Emma. While her literary influences are quite evident, it’s not a good idea to try to combine the style and sensibility of both Austen and Emily Brontë in a single book – simply put, the twain shall never meet. However it’s not just that.

The comedy and deft characterization in Emma stem partly from the fact that the heroine consistently misreads people and situations, and embroils herself in one mortifying scenario after another. The Emma we see at the book’s end has had her ‘she-woman and mistress of the universe’ self-image slightly deflated. In the process, she has grown in both self-awareness and humility, thereby becoming much more likeable. Flora, on the other hand, undergoes no such enlightening experiences. None of her plans go awry, and she’s very clearly a superior being conferring her favors on lesser mortals. That makes a huge difference to the tone of a book.

The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins

Rating: 4 Stars

Wilkie Collins is considered by many to be the first author of detective fiction. Trained in the law, the sleuthing techniques used in his work paved the way for Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes. Collins’s 1859 novel, ‘The Woman in White’ is written in the epistolary style reflecting multiple viewpoints, with some portions seeming like outright witness statements.

Walter Hartright, a young art teacher is employed at Limmeridge House by Mr. Fairlie to restore his art-work and to teach his niece Laura Fairlie, and her half-sister Marian Halcombe. In no time at all, Walter falls in love with Laura, but takes the honorable recourse of removing his impecunious self from the scene, so that she may marry her titled fiancé. Alas, much tragedy lies in wait for Laura, a young woman exasperatingly incapable of taking any decisions on her own behalf. She leaves that to the intrepid Marian.

Danger hems in the sisters from all sides, and the key to the mystery lies with an eerie young woman whom Walter had met by chance. Damsels in distress; a noble-minded hero guided by the highest principles; unscrupulous villains; and, a plot with many twists and turns - the book is a true Victorian pot-boiler.

It is not free of the maudlin sentimentality that hounds even the best works of this period, and at times betrays an overwrought imagination that could have been dispensed with. But to the question does it work – the answer is yes. Collins keeps the threads of the narrative firmly in his possession, and the work has a contemporary charm in its sudden quirks of humor, and astute characterization, except in the case of Laura Fairlie who is presumably the Victorian ideal of a delicate-minded lady. It has the watermark of the successful mystery – it keeps you engrossed till the last page.

Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte

Rating: 3 & ½ Stars

Romance is dead. I don’t mean in real life; here it manages to be as robust as ever. It can be evidenced in the scampering of squirrels as they chase each other in a dizzying roundel of playful courtship, and little old octogenarians who still hold hands. As far as the literary genre goes however, it pretty much died out more than a hundred years ago. Nowadays when a Romance isn’t self-consciously and verbosely ‘literate’, it’s running the gamut from forgettable to abysmal. It has diversified to accommodate the different tastes of an overwhelmingly female audience, and one might infer that readers’ preferences range from barons and buccaneers to firemen and Amish farmers. Of late, the list has come to include vampires, werewolves, and whatnot, to cater to those whose fond notion of eternal love is to snuggle with the undead. Even the classics have not been spared a revisionist take in this regard. Hence, we have ‘Pride and Prejudice and Zombies’ and ‘Wuthering Bites’.

‘Pride and Prejudice’ at least can be safely absolved of the current obsession for books featuring the heart-aches of pasty-faced ghouls. Let’s lay the blame for that where it belongs – ‘Wuthering Heights’ with its tempestuous wild-child heroine, Catherine Earnshaw, a woman who must have her cake and eat it too. Catherine’s soul-mate is Heathcliff, the original bad boy of romance fiction. The unholy pair wreaks havoc in each other’s lives and the lives of all around them in their demented pursuit of a love that will know no satisfaction. That is Emily Bronte’s great contribution to Literature – the demon-lover, the woman who haunts him relentlessly, and a relationship that scorns every social convention.

Do I sense anyone rolling their eyes? If you’ve read the book and either merely raised your eyebrows, or even succumbed to rapturous sighs, then the credit goes to Bronte, who pulls off a nifty feat in making an improbable relationship seem plausible. Partly, it is in her characterization: we each love in accordance with our nature, and the author leaves us in no doubt that our protagonists are two very uncommon individuals. The psyches of the main characters and the others are left open to interpretation, with the author sprinkling subtle hints to guide our inference. This, along with Bronte's canny use of Gothic elements, and the wild moors of 18th. Century Yorkshire as the background impart a weirdly compelling quality to the narrative -

"I perceive that people in these regions...live more in earnest, more in themselves and less in surface change, and frivolous external things. I could fancy a love for life here almost possible; and I was a fixed unbeliever in any love of a year's standing..."

Perhaps the time has passed for Romance in Literature, and it has simply gone the way of the Epistolary or Picaresque novel, no longer relevant or viable in the twenty-first century. The common factor for all the great Romance novels of the past were one or more of the following – nobility, restraint, or, anguish at an irreplaceable loss. But the times, they’re a-changin’. Our age of instant gratification, disposable relationships, expedited divorce and laissez-faire values seduces us with the idea that there are plenty of other fish in the sea.

Romance, on the other hand, is based on the ideal that we have one fragile chance at happiness. Like Cathy and Heathcliff find out too late, if we let that slip through our fingers, we live but a shadow of the life that we could have had. Those of us who have a distaste for hyperbole, or wildly irrational exhibitions of passion, or behavior that defies common sense should probably steer clear of this book. Those of us who believe that love is truly a magnificent obsession will find it an irresistible treat.

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

Rating: 4 Stars

“It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.”

Rarely has any other opening line to a book been as synecdochic as Jane Austen’s commencement of Pride and Prejudice. Those few words succinctly capture the essence of the work – elegance, wit, satire, matrimony, and mercenary concerns. Austen merely reiterates a general cliché – which is, that a fat bank balance is to female fantasy as a bountiful bosom is to male fantasy. Either scenario unleashes the human imagination and lets it run amok with possibilities for gratification.

The world of romance fiction diverges greatly from the real world where attraction has been known to spark between the unlikeliest couples. Elizabeth Bennet and Fitzwilliam Darcy are a very likely couple, at least to those who have read romances. Their chemistry is akin to the immoveable object coming face to face with the irresistible force. Though she tries to laugh it off, Elizabeth’s nose is set out of joint when Darcy snubs her at their initial meeting. He soon regrets the inauspicious start of their relationship, but being gifted with abundant self-confidence doesn’t let it deter him. This soon leads to the most famously insulting proposal in Literature, guaranteed to have the recipient’s heart boiling over with indignation.

There is nothing out of the ordinary about the plot – romantic complications, family entanglements, and social considerations. These are narrated without either melodrama or dour realism. Confining itself materially to the domestic life of young women of a marriageable age, yet it is written with such verve and incandescent humor that each reading is at least as enjoyable as the first. The society depicted is a hot-house – gentlemen of leisure who seem to have nothing better to do than attend balls, pay court to gaggles of young ladies, read, shoot, and give parties. Likewise, the women have a scandalous amount of free time to devote to clothes, gaiety, and thoughts of marriage. When all else fails to entertain, there is that perennial favorite of small-minded people living in in a small world –discussing the deficiencies of their acquaintances. On the plus side, this gives free rein to Austen’s skillful characterization and the ironic observations that make this book almost as much a comedy of manners as it is a romance.

There are many reasons why Pride and Prejudice will still be left standing, when so many other books have been consigned to the recycling bins, but it has its flaws. Keeping in mind that the book was published in 1813, the conversational language between the characters still strikes one as brittle and artificial. Surely, no one talked this way. While Mr. Darcy is perhaps the best example of a hero in Romantic fiction, Elizabeth is admirable for her lively intelligence and independent mind; but you could say that she loved wisely rather than too well. Though the pair is the epitome of civilized attraction, what is romance without passion? But no, that won’t do; in the universe of Austen, that might be…imprudent. Where then do we go for a literary classic that shows love in its more unruly aspects? That, my friends, will be another book, another post, another day.

Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome

Rating: 3 Stars

This 19^th century book is still considered a classic of English humor. If the lists are to be believed, according to many Brits, it is among the funniest books of all time.

It’s a fictionalized version of a boat-trip honeymoon down the Thames that the author had made with his wife. In the book, the Narrator, ‘J’, given to chronic hypochondria and his two friends – William Harris and George - decide that that a vacation is just what they need to offset their ennui. Packing what they consider the bare essentials, along with a rambunctious fox terrier, they head off for a fortnight of sight-seeing, roughing it, and mild adventure.

The humor of the book is gentle, free of hard edges – which would perhaps explain its appeal. Jerome’s whimsical observations on human foibles ring true and funny even to this day, as for example, when he wryly remarks about his friend,

“That’s Harris all over – so ready to take the burden of everything himself, and put it on the backs of other people.”

One of my favorites was the amusing chapter on fish(y) tales. It just goes to show that the ‘whoppers’ the anglers bragged about landing, are nowhere as big as the whoppers they told.

The book also reads as a breezy English travelogue of the age with enough asides to interest the amateur historian. Jerome’s tone is conversational, and he frequently goes off tangent, taking the scenic route before he gets to a point, but then that’s part of its charm.



A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens

Rating: 4 Stars

‘It's the most wonderful time of the year…that very special time when a certain segment of the population takes offense to the well-intended ‘Happy Holidays!’, and fumes about putting the Christ back in Christmas. The rest of us are too busy to quibble about such matters being occupied with revving up the shopping carts. After all, economists are on anxious stand-by to measure the pulse of our moribund economy, which rises and falls with consumers’ willingness to max out their credit cards. Isn’t it our patriotic duty to throw frugality to the wind, and dance our way to debt in tune to the marketers’ pied piping?

‘Bah! Humbug!’ as my favorite miser would say.

Sometimes, I think this great nation could do with a dash of the original spirit of Ebenezer Scrooge, who was not such a bad old sort after all, except maybe his priorities were a bit misplaced. But then, I’m rather partial to Literature’s most beloved penny-pincher. To call Scooge thrifty would be a euphemism; he is a tight-fisted man of business, whose true failing is being miserly in spirit, and not merely in spending habits. He neither enjoys the fruit of his labor, nor can he brook the humble joys or infirmities of another. He is, in short, a man badly in need of miraculous redemption.

That’s precisely what he gets: first, in the form of an unwelcome visit from the spirit of his deceased partner, Jacob Marley, who gives him dire warning of the consequences of continuing his present course; and then, in succession, visits from the ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Future.

This was a tale that was highly popular even during Dickens’ time, when he would read it aloud at well-attended public gatherings. (Dr. Seuss, took a page from his book, and delivered his own kiddie classic, ‘How the Grinch Stole Christmas!’) A Christmas Carol’s perennial charm lies in that belief so unshakeable in every die-hard optimist – the basic goodness of man. Smart, funny, feisty Scrooge shouldn’t be consigned to eternal hellfire and damnation; not when a gentle reminder, a long-overdue awakening, and, a timely caution are all that it takes for him to re-examine his life.

Ultimately, this book successfully gets through what religious authorities don’t always convey: that the afterlife is no great cause for concern as long as we’re living our best life, right here, right now. On that note - to those of you who celebrate this season, Merry Christmas!  And to all, peace and joy. May you love truly, spend wisely, and live well.



The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes



Rating : 4 Stars

2011 Booker Prize

Julian Barnes’ latest book is a slender one, a little over a 150 pages. Don’t let its size fool you; it has all the density of a black hole.

The narrator, Tony Webster, is edging slightly past the point that can still be truthfully called middle age. Still, he is at peace with that, more or less; because as he says in his defense, he’s a ‘peaceable’ man. He’s experienced friendship, love, loss, marriage, fatherhood, divorce, career, retirement – the whole kit and caboodle. Whatever uneasy thoughts he might have about death are eclipsed by a recurring fear of Alzheimer’s – that great erosion of the mind.

The problem of memory is one seared into our consciousness when a series of events force Tony to re-evaluate everything he thought he knew, about himself and his loved ones. As one exasperated ex-girlfriend tells him over and over again – ‘you don’t get it and you never will’. I would like to say there’s a twist at the end, but it would be more accurate to state that the story’s arc is as sinuous as memory can be, when it is at its most capricious and self-inventing.

“…what you end up remembering isn’t always the same as what you have witnessed.”

Barnes style is lovely…and refreshing. Just as we accustom ourselves to his elegant, cerebral manner of expression, he jabs us into alertness with needle-sharp humor, and efficiently placed profanity. When we think we’ve got to know a character fairly well, we’re shocked that the same person had it in them to lash out viciously, albeit in hurt and rage, spilling words that splash like hot acid. Yet, why should we be surprised at all; the book vividly brings home the impossibility of knowing another, when we do not know ourselves. That makes it all the more gratifying when our narrator, defying his ex's opinion of his cognitive abilities, finally ‘gets it’.

Once Barnes received the Booker, which some felt was long overdue, there was the inevitable gossip about the book's merit. I came across two others that were also on the 2011 shortlist – ‘The Sisters Brothers’, which I really enjoyed; and, ‘Jamrach’s Menagerie’ which I tossed aside in boredom after having got partway through the book (if imitation is indeed the highest form of flattery, Yann Martel must be quite flattered). Not every Booker winner of the past has had my unqualified enthusiasm, but this time, I would say that the honor given to Barnes was richly deserved.

My Family and Other Animals by Gerald Durrell


Rating: 4 Stars

Book Club November 2011 Pick

The literary universe offers endless possibilities for those of us with a critical bent of mind; predisposed to entertain ourselves with the analysis, assessment, and evaluation of books. There are however times when we have to admit defeat. There are some books that we have read too often, loved too well, and enjoyed too much to the extent that our perspective is hopelessly compromised. Those are the times when we shut the door on that opinionated little inner voice, and surrender ourselves to the enchantment of being transported to another world, where plot conventions have no more meaning than stylistic devices. Thank God for those occasions, and how I wish there were more of them.

Published in 1956, ‘My Family and Other Animals’ is an affectionate chronicle of the adolescent years that Durrell spent on the Greek island of Corfu with his eccentric and always entertaining family. The venturesome Durrells emigrate to Greece in the 1930’s in search of some balmy weather, and literary inspiration. The move is instigated by Larry, the eldest in the family. Lawrence Durrell (who later gained literary fame with works like his Alexandria quartet) is portrayed as a provocative gadfly of a personality – brilliant, caustic, and witty. Rounding off the rest of the family is the widowed Mrs. Durrell, and Gerald Durrell’s two other siblings – Leslie and Margo. Each character is endowed with their own peculiarities that are depicted with great relish. Fans of Gerald Durrell’s style of humor will savor this unconventional family’s quirks, and their assortment of equally colorful friends.

“…It was originally intended to be a mildly nostalgic account of the natural history of the island, but I made a grave mistake by introducing my family into the book in the first few chapters…by exercising considerable cunning…I managed to retain a few pages here and there which I could devote exclusively to animals.”

Gerald Durrell went on to become both a popular writer, and a renowned zoologist and conservationist. This book gives us a glimpse into the early propensities that made these dual careers as natural as they were inevitable.

Whether the animals are more or less diverting than the humans populating the narrative is a moot point. What colors the humor of the memoir, and lends it its irrepressible joie de vivre is the appreciation of individuality wherever it is found; and apparently it is found everywhere. What is also found in abundance is that other precious commodity – beauty. When Durrell is not delighting with his exuberant, over-the-top humor, he beguiles with writing that never fails to drown me in its loveliness, no matter how often I read this book. Whether it’s the breathtaking verve in his tale of an encounter between a gecko and a mantis that is recounted as a battle of epic proportions; or, descriptions of sumptuous family picnics and get-togethers, the details are rendered in stunningly exquisite prose.

The memoir, as I’ve said elsewhere in this blog is the most slippery of nonfiction genres. The successful memoirist engages his audience’s interest by playing a wily game of revelation and concealment, as enticing and illusive as any fan dance. This book is no different in that respect. Ultimately, the reasons I love My Family and Other Animals are complicated and deeply personal. Suffice it to say that, every time I lose myself between its covers, I rediscover with a sense of wonder and grateful relief, that what delighted once delights still. The dearest books have this in common with the dearest friends…we outgrow neither.

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy by John Le Carre



Rating: 3 & ½ Stars

The last Le Carre novel that I read was ‘The Constant Gardener’. Much as I admired the deep intelligence and wounded conscience that pervaded the book, I remember feeling a little at a disadvantage in the first few chapters; a sensation of having to hop, skip, and jump in an attempt to keep pace with a plot that seemed to assume that the reader was already clued in on key events and characters. To the author’s credit, he filled in the details in due time. With Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy I felt the same initial mystification, but despite his elusive opening acts Le Carre is a reliable guide in the shadowy world of international espionage.

George Smiley defeats the Hollywood concept of what a spy should be. Mild-mannered, unfailingly courteous, and cuckolded in his personal life, Smiley suffers no delusions of machismo. His career suffered collateral damage from a botched operation instigated by his former boss, and he has been put out to pasture by the British Intelligence service. That changes when former colleagues come calling on him for assistance. Apparently, his maligned ex-boss was on to something after all. Ricki Tarr, an agent once recruited by Smiley turns up compelling evidence that the highest levels of the Intelligence Service has been infiltrated by a spy, code-named 'Gerald', working for the Soviet Union. Smiley is assigned the job of ferreting out the mole, and cleaning house.

The Cold War which dominated so many decades of the past century already seems far away, so one might wonder if this book, published in 1974, qualifies as historical fiction. Le Carre seems to prefer the term ‘informed fantasy’, and certainly he should know. He was recruited by the British Intelligence Service fresh out of university, and worked for both MI5 and then, MI6 till 1964, where like George Smiley, he ran agents and conducted interrogations, among other things. The mole of the novel, ‘Gerald’ is based on real-life British agent, ‘Kim’ Philby who passed secrets to the Russians, before officially defecting to the Soviet Union in 1963.

Not only is this is a book shorn of glamor, Le Carre shows a tangible ambiguity about the moral assertions of the Cold War players. The world of the spies on either side is a grubby one, based on duplicity and treachery. If the ‘hero’ is a quietly methodical man focused on the job at hand, the ‘bad guys’ on the other side are not noticeably more flamboyant.

 What I’m trying to say is, those readers who look forward to jet-setting spies scoring non-stop action either in the form of bodacious babes or cartoonish super-villains might find this a slow read. What appealed to me about the book is the tensile intelligence that seems to be such a marked characteristic of Le Carre’s writing, but the spies’ world he portrays is a humdrum one; ambition, political maneuvering, greed, gossip, backstabbing…are things much better where you work? The one small difference being, of course, that here, the backstabbing can be quite literal.

Dracula by Bram Stoker

Rating: 4 Stars

Pity the Vampire. He’s been sadly diminished in the ranks of mythical monsters. Whereas once he was a demonic menace to be thwarted with holy relics and garlands of garlic; now he’s the love-object of moony-eyed women in frothy fantasies. In movies he’s portrayed by preternaturally pale pretty boys who engage in soulful romances. It’s enough to make any self-respecting vampire gnash his long canines in rage. Meanwhile, serious readers cling to their classics like they were almighty crucifixes, in an attempt to ward off this terrifying surge of inanity. If you want to see evil, shorn of any pretense of glamor, it’s better to turn to the original.

The conjunction of ‘Frankenstein’, ‘The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde’, and ‘Dracula’ forms the unholy trinity that laid the foundation for Horror fiction, which truly came into its element in the 20^th. century. Though I have an unabashed preference for classics, Horror is not a genre that I’m enthusiastic about. I certainly did not expect to enjoy ‘Dracula’ to the extent I did.

There are three main strands to the plot. First, we see Jonathan Harker, a newly-minted solicitor on business in Transylvania. He’s been engaged by Count Dracula to act as his agent in the purchase of estates in England. The meticulous-minded but naïve young man soon realizes that he’s a prisoner, not a guest of the sinister count. Leaving him locked up in his castle, Dracula makes his way to England, where Lucy Westenra, a fluffy-brained but sweet-natured young woman pays a high price for her sleep-walking tendencies. Alerted to the menace that threatens London, four gallant young vampire-hunters under the leadership of the steely-willed Professor Van Helsing make it their mission to hunt down the monster.

It’s a commonly known fact that Bram Stoker based his 1897 book, on a Romanian prince – Vlad the Impaler, son of Vlad Dracul – whose cruelty was legendary, and far more shudder-invoking than any work of fiction. Stoker was a journalist, and this reveals itself in the book, as the entire story unfolds in the form of journals, letters, or news articles. Not the most direct form of narration but it’s a testament to Stoker’s story-telling skills that despite this circuitous technique, the story loses not an iota of suspense or narrative tension. Stoker’s oeuvre is a page-turner; and you cannot say that about too many books that are more than a hundred years old.

 The story is told from multiple viewpoints, and each journal entry or letter conveys with a charming ring of realism the character of the person writing – whether it’s in the intimate confidences between two young women, or a memo by a traveller to get the recipes of new dishes for his fiancée. On the whole, the sensibility pervading the book is refreshingly modern. The book’s main characters are each individuated, but they have one thing in common, a touching but quite believable earnestness and nobility of purpose. In his depiction of evil too, Stoker shows nuanced subtlety; as in the deranged behavior of Renfield, an inmate at the lunatic asylum; the victims who become victimizers in their turn; and, the count who is a monster now but was not always so.

The problem with the slew of contemporary publications dealing with the undead as their subject is that, they glorify and romanticize that which should be reviled. For horror to be taken seriously as literature, the work has to be informed with a moral intelligence – an awareness of the existence of good and evil, and allotting each to its rightful place in the scheme of the universe. Lacking that, it’s nothing more than junk food for the brain.

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

Rating:  3 & 1/2 Stars

It needs to be said – ‘Jane Eyre’ is not the greatest love story in English Literature. It is a truth universally acknowledged that Jane Austen’s ‘Pride and Prejudice’ is the best goddamn romance since pen met paper. So, where does that leave Charlotte Bronte’s 19^th. century masterpiece? Somewhere in the top three, I would say, though my personal favorite is the other Bronte sister.

Misused and spunky little orphans have consistently proven to be a great windfall for story-telling. When we first see Jane at the age of 10, she is the lonely, barely tolerated ward of Mrs. Reed, the wife of her deceased uncle. Even then we’re charmed by her passion, undiminished sense of self-esteem, and fearlessness. It’s established in the very first chapter that here’s a heroine worthy of both our sympathy and respect. This is not someone to walk over.

When Jane turns particularly recalcitrant, Mrs. Reed packs her off to the Lowood Insititution for girls, a wretched charity school, where the penny-pinching manager, Mr. Brocklehurst enforces punitive lessons in patience and self-denial through a regimen of quasi-starvation, semi-indigence, and the ruthless squashing of any signs of incipient feminine allure. Even in these abysmal conditions, Jane finds friends, supporters, and some modicum of happiness. By the time she is eighteen, this bright and diligent young woman has been working as a teacher in the same school that she entered as a student. But by now she’s restless and longing to stretch her wings beyond the confines of the only world she has known. Not one to wait for life to happen to her, she advertises for the post of governess, the one respectable career for an educated woman in those days. She receives and accepts an offer at Thornfield Hall, and settles down there to teach Adele Varens, the little ward of Edward Rochester, the Master of Thornfield, and you guessed it, the hero of our story.

Jane’s meeting with Rochester turns the usual conventions of romance on its head. When they first see each other, Jane is no swooning damsel in distress in urgent need of rescuing by a handsome swain. Rather, it’s the masterful and imposing Rochester who’s caught in an awkward moment, and it’s Jane who goes to his assistance. Nor is it love at first sight. Jane is neither over-whelmed nor particularly drawn to her employer. She merely finds him interesting, though she does change her mind to fall irrevocably in love with him later. But there are very real obstacles in the way. Will Jane surrender all to the smoldering attraction between her and Rochester; or will she walk away, her integrity intact? More to the point, will these two ever wind up together?

It’s said that authors should write about what they know. Bronte must have believed this, because her descriptions of the boarding school, the circumstances of a female teacher, and the romance between a young woman and an older man, are all partly autobiographical. There’s a strong undercurrent of realism to much of the book. Her moral indignation at religious hypocrisy and social oppression would do credit to Dickens. The Gothic element is well-used but kept in hand, adding atmosphere to the narrative without being maudlin and over-powering.

One drawback to the book is that, really, no one else in the book is as convincingly characterised as Jane. The plentiful religious allusions put a damper on the spirit of Romance. It is noticeable that when the tone turns in that direction, the language too becomes ponderous and stilted. It’s probable that Bronte felt that all these pious sentiments would counter weigh the book’s portrayal of unabashed desire and ‘inappropriate’ behavior. That wasn’t a good judgment call. It didn't stop people from being scandalized when the book was published in 1847 under the pseudonym, Currer Bell. A renowned female reviewer of the day denounced the book and the heroine, and ominously hinted that if the author was indeed a woman, then she must be a ‘fallen’ one.

Still, a book is just as easily remembered if not for doing something the best, then for doing something else first. In Jane Eyre, the indomitable heroine is the delight – a strong unconventional woman, who will neither forgo her heart nor her self-respect, and who lives not by the narrow standards of society, but her own principles. Observe a skeptical Jane’s encounter with a self-proclaimed fortune-teller, who demands of her,

“Why don’t you tremble?”

“I’m not cold.”

Why don’t you turn pale?”

“I am not sick.”

“Why don’t you consult my art?”

“I’m not silly.”