Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi – Geoff Dyer

Geoff Dyer was one of the authors who charmed the quaint city of Wellington with his presence during the Writers and Readers week a couple of months back. Add to that a catchy title and it was but little wonder that this book soon occupied the grand stands of every book store in Wellington. Not to be left behind I got a copy from the local library and was soon walking through the art galleries of Venice and trying to “find myself” in Varanasi.

Jeff Atman is a freelance journalist who loathes his job (well who doesn’t?), but for the sake of the fine bread and butter on his table goes about writing mindless articles. He lands up with an assignment to cover the Biennale art extravaganza in Venice. Jeff is going through an acute mid life crisis and his self-esteem has reached an extreme low point when he meets Laura, a mind blowing, beautiful woman, who is in Venice to promote the art gallery for which she works. Amidst the pomp and splendour of the Biennale adventure, and a lot of mindless parties Laura and Jeff find themselves enjoying each other (sometimes they even have conversations ;)) to a point of excess. Jeff starts to fall in love with Venice when the spiritual city of Varanasi beckons in the form of another assignment.

After the raucous adventure in Venice, he is confronted with an entirely different experience in the city of Varanasi. Surprisingly Jeff and Varanasi start getting along splendidly with each other and soon he is in search of himself in the crowded streets of Varanasi.

Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi is an interesting book written in two parts which, other than the connecting thread called Jeff are entirely different. Geoff’s sense of humour is very apparent all through the book especially his accounts of life in Varanasi. The author deftly switches from third person narrative of events in Venice to a first person narrative in Varanasi. It is symbolic of Jeff’s journey from being a nobody to truly finding peace with himself. Geoff’s descriptions of  Varanasi, although coming from a westerner’s point of view are very accurate.

The part set in Varanasi started to resemble a travel guide of sorts after a while, but Geoff’s British humour more than made up for it. After some graphic descriptions of sex scenes in Venice, their absence was a bit conspicuous in Varanasi but they seem to go well with Jeff’s spiritual journey.

Jeff is Venice, Death in Varanasi is a good choice if you are looking for a book to crack up on but the reader has to be a bit patient in Varanasi.

Book Rating – 3.75/5

Book Stats:-
No. of Pages:- 296;
Year Published:- 2009;
Publisher:- Cannongate Books Ltd;
Book Setting:- Venice;Varanasi
Reading dates:- 10/Apr/2010 - 16/Apr/2010

Laughable Lines:-

“Anand was completely wrong about driving in  Varanasi. The traffic is not terrible at all. It is beyond any idea of terribleness. It is beyond any idea of traffic.” “You need three things if you are driving in Varanasi. Good horn, good brakes and good luck.” “Even the fake holy men- and I’d been warned by Jamal, that many of them were wholly fake – were genuine.

If you like this, you might also be interested in:-

After all the flamboyance of Venice and the hustle and bustle of Varanasi, join me in a ride through 18th century France in my upcoming review of Perfume:The Story of a murderer by Patrick Suskind.

Interpreter of Maladies – Jhumpa Lahiri

It almost seemed like a lifetime since I had read a collection of short stories. I was also looking forward to reading a book set in India to partly quell my nostalgia, but partly to give my readers a spicy, aromatic taste of this exotic land. Interpreter of Maladies just seemed to fit my bill and so I set about perusing it. In the end, I was left with some mixed feelings about the book.

 

Interpreter of Maladies is a motley collection of nine tales travelling between the frigid New England winters to the bustling city of Calcutta in India. There is a strong undercurrent of love and longing welling up in her characters, some for their homeland, while still others for the life that once was, with the familiar stranger that they have grown used to. Through these stories, Lahiri has tried to capture the feelings of awe and fear that passes through an immigrant’s mind as they travel the seas to a land far removed from their own. All the tales are heavy with an air of poignancy, typical of Lahiri.

Lahiri is definitely a good writer with her vivid imagination and accurate depiction of her characters. It is because of this latter trait that the reader becomes quite attached to most of her characters, although they are only available for twenty or so pages. I liked her knack of bringing unlikely people together in a relationship that seems to extend it’s arms of friendship, while making strangers out of once-upon-a-time-lovers. She has brought our attention to the strangeness of the human mind when a woman cannot tell her husband some bitter truths about their relationships but can do so to someone she has met for only a day, for precisely that reason.

However a few stories like ‘This Blessed House’ and ‘The Treatment of Bibi Haldar’ seemed to have been stretching on forever and in the end, revealed themselves to be quite pointless.

 

Interpreter of Maladies is a decent choice if you are looking for a collection of stories to read.

Book Rating – 3.5/5

Book Stats:-

No. of Pages:- 198;
Year Published:- 1999;
Publisher:- Houghton Mifflin Company
Book Setting:- US, India;
Reading dates:- 05/Apr/2010 - 07/Apr/2010

Stories in my order of preference:-

Sexy A Temporary Matter Interpreter of Maladies When Mr Pirzada came to dine Mrs Sen’s The Third and Final Continent A Real Durwan This Blessed House The Treatment of Bibi Haldar

Other books by Jhumpa Lahiri that you might be interested in:-

Watch out for my next review from the exotic Caribbean island of Jamaica, A Long Song by Andrea Levy, the tale of a 19th century slave and her owners.

Broken Verses – Kamila Shamsie

After reading Burnt Shadows by Kamila Shamsie, I was so taken in by her elegant writing style that I could not stop myself from picking up Broken Verses. Kamila has revealed yet again the artful story teller that she is. If a book can move you to tears, then surely there is something much more to it than just a story.

 

The protagonist, Aasmaani Inqalab literally meaning Celestial Revolution, lives in the seaside city of Karachi, where she flits from one mundane job to another so she can remove any spark of the person she once was willing to be, a person who thought she could change the world. Born to a highly unconventional activist mother and a regular banker, Aasmaani, since her childhood has been embroiled in conflicting worlds, an idealist world of protests and poetry which belongs to her mother, Samina and her lover, The Poet, and the pragmatic comforting world of her father and his family. Aasmaani, who cannot come to terms with her mother’s disappearance, has been conjuring up images of her glorious return the past fifteen years. She is so caught up in thinking she has never been good enough for her mother to stay, that she fails to see the people around her reaching out to her and trying to pull her out of her shell, including her half sister Razia and her colleague Ed. It remains to be seen whether Aasmaani does loosen up as this riveting tale draws to a close.

 

A literary feast, a political fiction, a tale of passionate love, the story of a person torn between her role of lover and mother, I cannot even begin to categorise what Broken Verses is all about. Kamila etches out her characters so vividly that the reader soon becomes engrossed in them. In a nation, at a time when one cannot even say the word democracy loud enough for fear of getting caught by the minions of the government, Samina fearlessly dons the activist garb and you find yourself wondering through Aasmaani, whether she stops being a mother when she starts becoming an activist. When she takes her beloved in her arms, is she any less of a mother? These questions torture the reader as Aasmaani goes through her life not being able to let go of any hatred as she imagines herself to be the girl whom her mother has left behind over and over again.

 

The sea speaks out to you through The Poet’s muse, which is a passionate rendition of his love for Samina. Their love is beyond words that, it is little wonder that everyone who loves Samina, including Aasmaani, feel they are competing with a force they cannot reckon. I loved Kamila’s portrayal of the quiet courage and determination of Bheema, Aasmaani’s step mother, who fights battles everyday at home for the sake of her family, which are no less courageous as compared to the battles fought on the street for the sake of the country.

 

I enjoyed reading the book thoroughly, although, I wish it had ended differently. But I quickly brush aside that thought as the book has too many merits to be ignored. With Broken Verses, Kamila has once again proved that she is a literary genius.

A little bit of cricket, a lot of politics, impassioned poetry, lyrical verse, subterfuge, religion, the book has it all. Do yourself a favour and grab the next copy you find.

 

Book Rating – 4.25/5

Book Stats:-
No. of Pages:- 338;
Year Published:- 2005;
Publisher:- Bloomsbury Publishing
Book Setting:- Karachi, Pakistan;
Reading dates:- 03/Apr/2010 - 05/Apr/2010

Lyrical prose from the book:-

…language somersault through rings of fire Yes, it is comforting to blame our failures on the bigotry of others, isn’t it? …lines that could wrap themselves around your chest until your ribcage cracked open and your heart lay exposed. Prayer is as quiet and as resonant as a single drop of raindrop falling on a desert. Karachi lit up in lights like a bejewelled bride trying to draw attention away from the ungainliness of her natural facade.

If you like this you might also like:-

From novels to short stories, coming up next is a review of The Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri, her first literary publication.

Juliet, Naked - Nick Hornby

Juliet, Naked was one the suggestions that came up on the librarything site for Her Fearful Symmetry and I immediately got a copy from the local library. I got latched on to the book pretty fast ,  this being my first Nick Hornby selection, but, unfortunately my great enthusiasm fizzled out after the initial few chapters. But it did provide me some much-needed laughter after The Piano Teacher debacle.

Juliet, Naked starts off in a little English seaside town called Gooleness. Duncan, a man obsessed with the work of former singer and songwriter, Tucker Crowe, lives in Gooleness with his partner of fifteen years, Annie. Duncan who does not have much to show for his own life, spends it fervently spinning conspiracy theories about Crowe's life (or what there was of it from a different era), with a few of his internet buddies, Crowologists as they call themselves. As the story progresses, Annie and Duncan start examining the pointlessness of their relationship, where Tucker always seems to be lurking as an invisible presence.

Just when the reader starts warming up to the character of Duncan, he is completely pushed aside by Annie and the story starts to weave around Annie. Exit Duncan; Enter Tucker and then the reader cruises through parts of the U.S., following the life of Tucker. Duncan soon becomes a shadow while Annie enters centre stage, with her trivial crush on Tucker looming into something more dangerous and serious.

I found the character of Annie quite insipid and pretentious, exhibiting an intellect and taste for music that she very well did not possess. The Duncan/Annie pair did remind me of the  couple, Martin and Marijke from Her Fearful Symmetry, although M&M were far more interesting. If Nick had stuck to Duncan's character throughout the story, it might have made for an interesting book. The title and the beginning of the book seem to suggest some serious insights to be gained into the nature of relationships but these are soon reduced into banal trivialities. Just when the reader is about to give up on the book entirely, Nick tries to win back his/her interest with all the drama surrounding Tucker's enigmatic albeit colourful past.

All is not lost with the book as there are some places where the reader truly enjoys a good laugh. The chracter of Jackson, Tucker's son, soon wins over one's heart and as with any child, one is taken in by his innocence and the hundred questions he keeps firing back at adults.

Juliet, Naked is definitely not a great book, but might be a safe bet for that long flight haul.

Book Rating - 3/5

Book Stats:-

No. of Pages:- 249; 

Year Published:- 2009; 

Publisher:- Penguin Books

Book Setting:- UK, US; 

Reading dates:- 26/Mar/2010 - 27/Mar 2010

Similar book(s) that you might be interested in:-

Her Fearful Symmetry - Audrey Niffenegger

Do you have a flair for some thrilling action and high drama? The Patriot's Club - Christopher Reich, my next review, is just what you are after.

Burnt Shadows - Kamila Shamsie

Some books are meant to be read. Others re-read several times. Burnt Shadows obviously belongs to the latter. I was drawn to the book as bees to nectar ,and emerged out of the Unity bookstall 30 dollars shorter. With such a name one can't go too wrong with picking a book, I argued with the notorious guilt conscience. The prologue had me.

Spanning 5 countries and 6 decades, Burnt Shadows begins where the world as we knew ended, in Nagasaki, on August 9 1945. The day began as a perfectly blue day but only the survivors, among them Hiroko, would associate it with a certain greyness. The greyness clouding the world, when war has removed all the vibrant colors.

War remains at the core of Burnt Shadows, not the horrors of war as you see it happening before you, but picking up from broken shards of a former life, in the aftermath of war itself. Every country that it encompasses, begins at a point when it has been razed down by hatred. Hiroko Tanaka loses her lover, Konrad, a German translator, on that fateful August day and her life changes forever.  Two years later she moves to Delhi, in search of Konrad's estranged half-sister, Iles Weiss(Elizabeth) and her husband, James Burton. Being a born linguist, and not having much to do, she learns Urdu from Sajjad Ashraf, an employee of James and hence, of the Raj. Soon enough, her seemingly quiet life is once again thrown into turmoil as Pakistan is born, and suddenly religion comes to the forefront of issues during Partition.

Displaced once again, the story follows Hiroko into Karachi. Kamila's powerful narrative style is evident as she gives us a glimpse into the lives and loves of her characters as they  brave the heat of Delhi or catch the seashore breeze in Karachi. She brings to light an important fact, that beneath all the religious frenzy dividing the two countries, as even nature did not deem fit, is a fundamental similarity. Kamila's literary creativity is evident in her use of rich metaphors as evident in phrases such as 'hair like black water' to drive a point home. At various points in the book, Kamila reveals that she is a master story teller with her strong plot and deep characters. She could not have chosen better than Hiroko, the Japanese, to try and lift the existing social hierarchy in a class conscious Indian society at the height of the British Raj.

Kamila has accurately captured the sense of imminent fear in the minds of her characters as they propel through the course of history and their lives, in a post 9/11 era, comforting themselves with the phrase 'After the war', only there is no same after. These otherwise fair minded characters, particularly Kim Burton lose all their  sense of justice and morality when it is a question of their nation's security. 

Immigrants have been given their due as all the characters are blasted out of their natural surroundings by the loud cries of war. Even as sorrow, (never regret), pervades the lives of her characters, the colorful descriptions of the numerous flora in the gardens of Delhi, seem to bring relief to them.  Friendships seem to transcend national and religious boundaries. The scenes capturing Ilse and Hiroko's friendship in particular, seem to be a pleasure to read. Sajjad's optimism permeates through the pages of the book and the reader finds himself catching on to it.

Burnt Shadows touches you to such an extent that you can never get over those feelings or the book. It raises some important questions about the world we live in, in the reader's mind, with haunting echoes reiterating, what could have been had, being destroyed forever in the name of war. As Guns & Roses, once sang, 'What is civil about war anyways?'.

Hurry and grab your copy of Burnt Shadows before it is too late.

Book Rating - 4.5/5

Lines from the book that leave an imprint:

"As for justice, it seemed an insult to the dead to think there could be any such thing."

"On dewy mornings the spiders build elaborate webs. Or perhaps the webs only become visible when dew is captured in their threads." 

"The bomb did nothing beautiful."

"But until you see a place you have known your whole life reduced to ash you don't realise how much we crave familiarity."

"...just this easily everything worthwhile in a life can be erased." 

"Muslim fatalism? No. No. Pakistani resignation. It's a completely different thing." 

"The men and women who walk through shadow-worlds in search of the ones they loved. Monsters who spread their wings and land on human skin, resting there, biding their time. The  army of fire demons, dropped from the sky, who kill with an embrace."

"...bodies without skin, bodies with organs on display, bodies that reveal what happens to bodies when nothing in them works any more." 

"We make a desolation and call it peace." 

"War is like a disease. Until you've had it you don't know it."  

If you like this book, you might also like:-

Anil's Ghost - Michael Ondatje

And now that I have left my readers with a heavy heart, it will not be long before I come back with tales of mirth about The Graveyard Book-Neil Gaiman.  

The Time Traveler's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger

This is one of those books where, you know when you have read just a couple of pages that you are going to fall in love with the book. In fact, you are already in love with the book. I fiercely held on to the book for four days and wanted to keep reading it and yet did not want the book to finish. In short, I loved the book.

The author has dealt with a difficult concept - Time travel, yet at it's very core, the book is a love story, albeit a poignant one at that. Henry DeTamble has all the makings of a regular book hero and yet, he is not, at the very core. One minute he is here and the next minute he has left behind a pile of clothes. An average reader can deal with spatial displacement quite easily, however to come to terms with time displacement is a bit harder and the author has taken great pains to ensure this imagery is complete.

The scenes shift from one period to another with Henry scuttling the streets of Chicago as a regular citizen in search of drinks and women and then, a sober middle aged man just longing to be with Claire, who in turn is a budding teenager, against the backdrop of the meadows. The time periods have been clearly annotated making it easier for the reader to wander through Henry's "travel expeditions".

As Claire and Henry come to terms with his unusual condition, which has several handicaps, it does raise the moralist's eyebrow when they decide to use it to their advantage. The other interesting point raised in the book is around destiny. Did events unfold because Henry sees it that way in the future or did they happen in a certain manner and Henry a mere bystander, more of a future reporter? The contradictions and associated dillemma experienced by them is permeated to the reader. Food for thought, eh?

One of the highlights of the book is that the story is told through the view point of both Claire and Henry.All through the book one cannot but marvel at how much Claire and Henry are in love with other. It makes one want to really believe in true love. Claire comes across as a loyal, passionate person and her stray abbherations are but quickly dismissed by the reader. Music permeaded through the book quite a lot and reminded me of some scenes from "An Equal Music - Vikram Seth".

I watched the movie after reading the book, and though the movie has captured the essence of the book, so many of the little details that added to the beauty of the book could not make it to the movie.

Although a tome, I would urge anyone who wants to travel through space and time to reach out for love to add this book to their collection.

Book Rating 4.5/5

If you like this book you would also like -: An Equal Music - Vikram Seth; The Unbearable Lightness of Being - Milan Kundera

Watch out for my next review - The Great Indian Novel - Shashi Tharoor

Her Fearful Symmetry - Audrey Niffenegger

After devouring "The Time Traveller's Wife" my hands were itching to get a copy of "Her Fearful Symmetry". I grabbed this from the bestseller section of my local library(www.wcl.govt.nz).

The book took me on a roller coaster ride of feelings - interesting, creepy, suspenseful, sad. The book revolves around a few stories in parallel-the twins Julia and Valentina;Robert and Elspeth;Elspeth and Edie;Martin and Marijke. As the book progresses, these stories converge in surprising ways and other tales spin off from these.

The book takes off with the twins in Chicago but the reader is pleasantly surprised to be walking through the streets of London as it progresses. For someone like me who has not been to London and rate it as one of the top cities in the "Should Visit in my Lifetime" list, I could not agree more with the twins as they were taken in by the Englishness of all things London. The vivid description of the alleys and streets of London including the famed 'Underground' leaves one gawking.

Highgate cemetry occupies a central location throughout the book and the reader has a feeling of being haunted as the story takes shape. It is quite obvious that the author has gone into great details to create the graveyard scenes and the descriptions are so real that I caught myself looking over my shoulder as I progressed through the book. There is an underlying sense of suspense that hangs throughout the book which adds to the reader's interest. She touches upon the supernatural themes in a perfectly natural tone which leaves the reader musing.

Martin and Marijke make for very interesting characters in the book but I wish there were more glimpses into their life. The character of Robert has also been vividly etched out.

On the whole this book is a great addition to your bookshelf and if I have done my job my readers should be rushing to get their hands on this book.

Book Rating - 4/5

Stay tuned for my next review - The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffeneger