The Wildings

I had never imagined that a novel like The Wildings would come out of India. After seeing shelves after shelves of predictably tragic literary fiction and badly written commercial fiction, I had given up the hope of ever seeing anything this vividly imaginative.  The Wildings by Nilanjana Roy, however, shows me I can be optimistic: not only is it a beautifully produced book, but it also takes on a subject that few ‘serious’ writers in India would dare to explore: the lives of cats.

Yes, Dear Reader, Cats. If you, like me, are crazy about cats no matter how much they ignore you, then this is a book you want to read. And if you don’t like cats, I still think you should read this book, because you just might come to appreciate them and their talents a little more.

OK, the part about the talent needs to be scratched, because this is after all fiction. But how I wish it were true! All those times when I saw my cat sit in balcony and look outside – they make so much more sense now that I have read this book.

But I’m running ahead of myself. You need to know what this book is about. So, The Wildings is about a clan of cats living in the bylanes and ruins of Nizamuddin in Delhi. They live by a strict code of ethics all their own and they are all connected to each other through a strong, invisible web of scent and whisker transmissions. There’s Beraal, a beautiful black-and-white queen who is also a fierce fighter, Miao the wise Siamese who is the clan elder, Katar the strong and brave leader, Hulo the warrior and Southpaw, the curious kitten who can’t help but get into trouble. Other animals make appearances too, such as the deadly and powerful Kirri the mongoose, the brave little mouse Jethro Tail, a pair of squirrels called Aao and Jao and the cheels who rule the skies. Life in Nizamuddin is not luxurious, but it’s good, nonetheless. The cats survive catching prey like mice, rats and bandicoots and often forage through the rich leaving found in the midden heaps of the Bigfeet (humans), most of whom usually leave them alone. They  wander the roofs at night and doze in the cool shade offered by trees.

This serenity is interrupted by the arrival of Mara, an orange kitten with monsoon green eyes. She is what is known as a ‘Sender’ – a cat who can transmit her thoughts to other cats and animals so powerfully that most of them see a projection of her in front of them. A Sender is a rarity, a cat who only appears when times are set to get tough and when the other cats need her the most. And Mara is the most powerful Sender to have ever appeared in Nizamuddin.  A series of extraordinary events follow Mara’s arrival, such as encounters with tigers and a battle for survival against a crazed and bloodthirsty group of feral cats, but it all ends…well, I suppose.

In fact, the end is pretty ambiguous. You think it ends well, but when you really consider it, you can no longer be sure. The attitude of the Bigfeet towards the cats seems to change a little and Mara still has to struggle with her fears and doubts, but there is no immediate threat to the cats’ survival in Nizamuddin. It seems like a happy ending, but I highly doubt it. There’s no end to danger in the lives of street animals and the saga of the cats of Nizamuddin is endlessly fascinating. If Roy ever decides to come out with a sequel, I will be one of the first in line to buy it. Even flipping through the book affords one such pleasure. The illustrations by Prabha Mallya are beautiful and they fit in exactly with how you imagine the characters would look like.

While I loved the book, there were some things that bothered me. One was the names of the cats, such as Southpaw, Abol and Tabol, Qawwali, Affit and Davit. These are human words and I’m not entirely sure how they fit into cat vocabulary, especially since the cats refer to the humans as ‘Bigfeet’. That last detail, then seems like a superficial touch, which exists merely to add a touch of the ‘cute’ to the story.

Nevertheless, this is a book that I will hold on to – the story is worth visiting again and the illustrations, like I said before, take the experience to whole other level.

This review is a part of the Book Reviews Program at BlogAdda.com . Participate now to get free books!

Book # 11 The Wednesday Soul by Sorabh Pant

The first thought that entered my brain, as I plunged headlong into The Wednesday Soul by Sorabh Pant, was that this was clearly a tribute to Douglas Adams. Just like that incomparable comic writer, Pant has taken a mighty leap off the edge of the Plausibility Cliff, and has swum, with some success, in the Sea of Improbability. He has, like Adams, created characters with varied shades of quirk in them and has also, like Adams again, shown us that the idea of death (or destruction) has great comic potential.

Unlike the late great Adams, however, Pant is still mastering the art of writing. I’ve watched his stand-up routine a couple of times and I’ve always enjoyed it. Pant has great energy and a wonderful sense of comic timing when he’s on the stage and he brings this to his book as well. However, a stand-up act does not last more than an hour, so the joke-a-second formula works perfectly well in that format. In a book, however, it can get exhausting. There seem to be at least four punchlines in every paragraph and unfortunately, it seems like that is all there is to it.

Another major problem I had with the book was that too many things seemed to be happening together. The action shifts constantly between two different sets of characters and only in the end, is there some semblance of cohesion.  There are LOTS of characters and some of them are genuinely funny, but the problem with having lots of characters – all of whom have something important to contribute to the story – is that sometimes the author simply doesn’t have time to build enough back-story for them, or give them enough depth to make us care. One instance is that of the mysterious Radha N. Recliws, who gives us the introduction to the story, then disappears for most of the book except to give us bits of information at the beginning of every chapter. He only reappears right at the end.  Now, this Recliws is an intriguing character – you’ll know when you read the book – but his reappearance is abrupt, and consequently, seems very tacked on. Remember how bewildered you were when Gandalf the Grey suddenly reappears as Gandalf the White in The Two Towers?  At least in that instance Tolkein had built up the story enough to make us care that Gandalf had returned to the narrative. In The Wednesday Soul, there’s no such build-up.  It’s just action, action, action.

But you probably want to know what the plot is, so here it is in a few words: Nyra Dubey, is an vigilante who is suddenly killed by a bus. She’s furious because she had finally managed to get herself a boyfriend, and now all she can think of is how she can get back to him. Unfortunately, the afterlife is pretty much like real life, in that whatever you want to do is not as important as what the powers-that-be want you to do. Nyra is constantly thwarted by red tapism. She also finds out that sinister plans are afoot, which may throw the whole balance or life/after-life off-kilter.

So what is it about the book that works? As I said at the beginning, The Wednesday Soul shows great imagination.  Pant has created his own version of the afterlife with some truly brilliant concepts like the categorization of souls. He’s also introduced celebrated people – fictitious and non-fictitious, including Marie Curie, Agatha Christie and Guru Dutt – as minor characters.

Reading this book proved more difficult than I had expected, and in all fairness, I must admit that most of the time, it wasn’t Pant’s fault. What really lets the book down is the shoddy editing: there are quite a few spelling errors, and the breaks traditionally used to separate scenes are often missing.  Since the book has a fairly complicated plot, such errors on the part of the editors is unforgivable.

The book seems to have been generally well-received and there’s already talk of a sequel.  I would congratulate Pant on the success of his first novel, but I would also warn him to take a little more time with his next one. Perhaps that will make it easier to read, and also funnier.

Book #10 Other Voices, Other Rooms by Truman Capote

Regular readers of this blog are aware of my fondness for Truman Capote’s work. I can’t say it enough: the man was a literary genius. He spun sentences with such skill and deftness that one couldn’t possibly improve upon them. His prose is the most effective example I’ve read of painting pictures with words. Sample this description of a nameless Alabama place:

“…this is lonesome country; and here in the swamplike hollows where tiger lilies bloom the size of a man’s head, there are luminous green logs that shine under the dark marsh water like drowned corpses; often the only movement on the landscape is winter smoke winding out the chimney of some sorry-looking farmhouse, or a wing-stiffened bird, silent and arrow-eyed, circling over the black deserted pinewoods.”

This is from the opening paragraph of Other Voices, Other Rooms, Capote’s first published novel. It tells us the story of 12 year old Joel Knox, who sets off from New Orleans after the death of his mother, to go and live with his father at Skully’s Landing, in Alabama. His father had abandoned him at birth and this would be the first time that two are meeting.  Only, other people, who are not his father, await little Joel as he arrives at the decaying mansion: the sullen, jittery stepmother Amy, the narcissistic and flamboyant Cousin Randolph, the paranoid servant Zoo who dreams of escaping to Washington DC and her grandfather Jesus Fever. Joel doesn’t meet his father until halfway through the book, and then he discovers that the father he had hoped would support him, needs taking care of himself. Edward R. Sansom, Joel’s father, is now paralyzed and cannot communicate with anyone except by rolling a red ball on the floor to get their attention.

It’s clear that Joel has arrived in a place where all that’s left is ruin and broken dreams.  This is where the significance of the passage that I quoted becomes clear. It sets the tone for the rest of the book: that “lonesome country” with its “dark marsh water” and “black deserted pinewoods” prepares us to enter a landscape that reflects the deep melancholy that will mark Joel’s new life. His father is an invalid, his stepmother is peculiar and Randolph wears his depression and dissipation like a cloak. It’s a strange place and the only person who manages to enliven life for Joel is the local tomboy, Idabel Thompkins.  Idabel, who develops a bit of a crush on our forlorn hero, is wild, loud and prickly. Not exactly hug and kiss material,as Joel finds out, much to his dismay. But she is the only bright spot on the horizon for him; she offers him a chance to escape the dull misery of life at Skully’s Landing and Joel grabs at it, only to find out that it’s not so easy to let go of one life and start a new one.

Truman Capote , 1948 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Despite the way Joel gets sucked back into life at Skully’s Landing, the novel is also about renewals and rebirth. More specifically, it’s about accepting oneself and one’s circumstances, as Joel does at the end of the novel. One popular interpretation of the novel has it that it’s a ‘coming-out’ story: in the final scene, when Joel goes to join the mysterious lady in the window (who we now know is Randolph in drag), he’s finally accepting, and celebrating, his own homosexuality – just like a young Capote once did.

In fact, most readers agree that Joel was just a stand-in for Capote himself, since the novel has strong auto-biographical elements. Like Joel, Capote was a lonely little boy who barely knew his parents and was raised mostly by relative. In fact, Capote himself admitted that the major theme of the novel was a son’s search for his father.

To me, however, it seems like Other Voices, Other Rooms is about finding love and acceptance in the most forbidding of places. Joel finds out that he does belong in Skully’s Landing, after all, and that there are people here who care about him.  He is no longer a poor little orphan boy, but a mature young man now, who is confident enough in himself to let his guard down finally and let people get close to him. We realize that the difficult part for Joel was not finding love, but to let himself be loved.  The most forbidding place, then, was Joel’s own heart. And once he found acceptance for himself there, he found acceptance elsewhere.

Book #9 Marathon Baba by Girish Kohli

Title: Marathon Baba

Author: Girish Kohli

Publishers: Fingerprint!

Price: Rs 150

 

As I flipped through the pages of Marathon Baba the very first time, I was distinctly dissatisfied. On the back cover flap, the author, Girish Kohli was described as having been born “on the day when a dog in the US was put on trial and executed for barking too much”. Girish, it went on to say, “hasn’t passed out of the IITs or the IIMs. He doesn’t have a day job either. If you wish to speak to him, you will not find him either on Facebook or Twitter. He drives a jeep without a spare tyre and is the author of two unpublished novels. Marathon Baba, his third book which has been published first, is the only book in the world based on a pair of unused running shoes”.

What put me off about this author bio was that it used the tired old trick of using humour on the back flap. It felt a bit too much. I mean, I know this is a funny book, but when I read an author bio, I’m looking for actual information.  Information about his social networking or lack thereof is not going to help me understand his work better.

At this point, I must confess that when the book arrived from the publishers, I was in a very cranky mood. I had just read another ‘humour’ book: an endless, tiresome bore of a book with too many words and too little wit. So naturally, I looked on another ‘humour’ book – complete with a funny author bio – with ill-concealed loathing.

Turns out, it was a good thing. Because I was expecting so little enjoyment from Marathon Baba, it hit me with quite a wallop when I realized that I was racing through it and enjoying it immensely. Sometimes people like me need that wallop. It keeps us from becoming overbearing cynics and turning to one-note bores.

Now, if you’re one of those who view the boom in Indian publishing with sinking hearts, be of good cheer. There is at least Marathon Baba, which you can read and actually enjoy.  The book is written with a frantic pace which reflects its main concept: that a man can keep running away from his troubles and still find salvation. No, really! It’s the opposite of everything we’ve read in Paulo Coelho books.

The plot in a few short sentences: Boy Karna grows up in bad home. Mom and Dad fight. Boy runs away for the first time.  After that, he runs away from other problems like girl who broke his heart and a dead-end job.  He finds that he can’t stop running. That’s his salvation, his peace. He finds a magical pair of sneakers which go on to be a major point of contention in the novel.  Karna ends up founding the Marathon Ashram which becomes a refuge to all those who are running from something or the other.  He refuses to be religious and refuses to be political and that, ultimately, may be his downfall.

A deeply cynical vein runs through Marathon Baba and it is not afraid to poke at Modern India’s holy cows. Corporate jobs, the idea of success, the ubiquity of politics and religion, worship of celebrity and our desperate need for someone, anyone to lead us – all of these are skilfully skewered by Kohli. There’s no denying that the prose tends to be a little uneven, but there’s great energy in this book. It’s almost as if it was written under the influence of the kind of drugs that Marathon Baba sells to fund his ashram.

Marathon Baba is not a very heavy book and it won’t take too much of your time. Don’t hesitate to pick this up if you’re looking for a story that will breathlessly take you right till the end and will make you laugh as well.

Column on True Blood

‘Blood and Lust‘, the latest in my column series ‘Big Books, Small Screen’ for Helter Skelter is up and ready to be read. Please do leave a comment!

Book # 8 The Forest of Stories by Ashok K Banker

The frame story for the epic Mahabharata is the 'Snake Sacrifice' of King Janamejaya

It’s funny how little one really knows or recalls about the stories one grew up hearing. Like most Indian kids, my favourite bedtime stories used to be from the Mahabharata and the Ramayana, which my grandmother would narrate to me every night at bedtime. When I was a little older, I would watch the television adaptations of these stories every Sunday and when I started to read, Amar Chitra Katha’s comic book versions kept me entertained. The thing that struck me the most, even at that young age, was how these stories never got old. They remained constantly fascinating and endlessly repeatable. There was always something fresh, some new connection that one hadn’t quite understood the last time, or a new perspective through which one viewed these ancient stories.

But here’s the thing: so few of us actually revisit these stories as often as they deserve. The problem seems to be that they become such a part of our lives as Indians, so very familiar, that we never feel the need to read them again. No matter what religion you personally profess, if you grow up in this country, you know all about Rama, Sita, Ravana, Krishna, Arjuna and all the rest from the wide and colourful cast of these two epics. And so, you may end up thinking that there is nothing new to learn from them.

Or maybe I’m wrong. Perhaps some of you re-read the stories when you grew up a little. I didn’t. I always meant to, though. I would look at the thick, beautifully bound volumes of the epics in bookstores and would tell myself that I simply must read them again. But I never did, because there are so many other stories that I still haven’t read, and am I not already so familiar with the Ramayana and the Mahabharata?

Turns out, I’m not as familiar with them as I thought. For instance, whenever I thought of the Mahabharata, I always had this vague idea that the story was about the fratricidal war between the Pandavas and the Kauravas and the politics behind it all. But there is so much more to it! There are hundreds of characters, each with his or her fascinating back story and motivation. So many little incidents that happen generations before the actual war actually make that event inevitable.

So what happened, that I’m thinking all this now, was that I received a copy of Ashok K. Banker’s The Forest of Stories from the good people over at Westland. It is the first instalment in Banker’s retelling of the Mahabharata. He calls it his MBA series, but don’t assume that the stories have been mangled by modernity. These are straight retellings. As Banker explains in the introduction, he sat with the various versions of the Mahabharata and put together a coherent version for the modern reader. It must have been a gargantuan task because although the Mahabharata does not have as many versions as the Ramayana does, it is nevertheless a massively complex work.

Banker sticks pretty faithfully to what we know as Vyasa’s Mahabharata, which was actually framed as a story within a story within a story. To put it simply, there’s Vyasa’s original epic poem Jaya (with 8,800 shlokas), which tells the story of the great fratricidal war of the Kuru clan and features Vyasa himself as one of the characters. This is expanded into the Bharata, comprising 24,000 shlokas and narrating the history of the Bharata race itself. Eventually, the number of shlokas went up to 100,000 shlokas and the epic came to be known as the Mahabharta. It was narrated by Vyasa (also called Krishna Dweipayana or ‘Dark Islander’) at the 12-year-long snake sacrifice ritual conducted by King Janamejaya who is descended from the Kuru line. The story of this narration as well as that of the snake sacrifice and why Janamejaya is doing it, is being told to the inhabitants of the ashram Naimisha-sharanya by the storyteller, Ugrasrava Sauti.

I know it sounds complex, and I assure you that it is. But it’s such wonderful reading! If anything, I find myself more drawn towards these little framing stories than to the story of the war itself. One particular section, the one that talks about the origin of snakes and how they’ve come to acquire the evil reputation they possess is alone worth the price of the book, in my opinion.

Don’t expect to dive into the core story straight away when you start reading this book. It wanders around and takes its own time to arrive. And yes, I know that you know where the story is going and that you might think there are no surprises to be had along the way. But when you read this book you understand more deeply than ever the truth behind Ursula K Le Guin’s words, “It is good to have an end to journey toward; but it is the journey that matters, in the end”.  What you’ll enjoy, when you read this book, will be the stories about the Nagas, Shakuntala and Dushyanta, Garuda and the churning of the ocean. As you read the subsequent books, you will get to the heart of the conflict between the Kauravas and the Pandavas, but in the meantime, the journey to that point will keep you fascinated.

Related articles

• The forest of stories: A review (thatandthisinmumbai.wordpress.com)
• Sequel to Mahabharata Begins With A Nuclear Explosion (bhagavatambybraja.wordpress.com)
• Was Mahabharat War Justified? (bellepost.wordpress.com)
• Mahabharat War- the circular firing squad! (bellepost.wordpress.com)

Book # 7 A Calendar Too Crowded by Sagarika Chakraborty

When I was first asked to review A Calendar Too Crowded by Sagarika Chakraborty, I was sure I wasn’t going to enjoy the book. Given the recent spate of predictable books by first time Indian authors, I was sure that this was another book that I would add to my own private ‘slush pile’.

However, I was in for a surprise. Not only is A Calendar Too Crowded well-expressed, it is also quite original. The basic concept is this: almost every month of the year, the world celebrates some token Day or the other, in honour of women or as a mark of understanding various female-specific problems. There’s International Women’s Day on March 8, of course, Mother’s Day on the second Sunday of May and Sister’s Day on the first Sunday of August, but there are also lesser known dates for which Hallmark prints no cards: November 25 is Elimination of Violence Against Women Day, September 24 is International Girl Child Day, February 6 is International Day Against Female Genital Mutilation.

Chakraborty’s contention is this: despite being aware of the various problems that plague women, we have actually managed to do quite little solve them. In fact, the author takes a broad, non-gender specific approach and even addresses issues such as nationality, caste, adoption and the emancipation of the elderly. Each of her stories, then, adopts the point of view of a fictitious person, and through his or her (usually her) travails and thoughts, we come to understand a particular problem. Witch Without a Broomstick is about how a young widow finds herself ostracized by society and labelled a ‘witch’ by her in-laws, while in Naked the mutilated corpse of a young women is left with as little dignity as clothes by the end of the story.  One of my personal favourites is a story that appears right at the beginning called Finding an Ideal Mother for my Unborn Child, where the author tackles the tendency of Indian mothers to smother their sons with affection and expectations. It is an acutely observed piece; in fact, so acutely observed that the author informed me that she received maximum hate mail for this particular story, as mothers from all over the country wrote in, defending their parenting techniques.

I had only one problem with this book. When I spoke to Chakraborty, she had maintained that she will continue to publish fiction as long as it contained a social message and was thought-provoking. While I applaud the sentiment, I do feel that there are more subtle ways of writing fiction with a social messages. In the stories and poems of A Calendar Too Crowded, the message becomes much bigger than the plot, and for readers like me, who principally look for surprising and challenging stories, that might be a turn-off. It’s not as if books cannot address issues while also remaining faithful to literary principles: novels like The Color Purple, Things Fall Apart, Animal Farm, Invisible Man (the one by Ralph Ellison), To Kill A Mockingbird are all great works of literature, which people read over and over again, because the voices in it are so strong and the characters are so compelling. That doesn’t mean their messages — social, moral or political — get lost.

* I also have a little interview with the author, Sagarika Chakraborty, about being a first-time published author, which I shall post sometime this week. Watch out for it!

Related articles

• Book Review: A Calendar Too Crowded (crimsonshadows.wordpress.com)
• A Calendar too Crowded (bondwithbooks.wordpress.com)
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In Defense of History Lessons: Book # 7 A Game of Thrones by George RR Martin

Back in school, I was one of the handful

of kids who actually enjoyed history lessons. Not because our teacher was an inspiring, ‘O Captain, My Captain’ kinda lady. Her lessons were, if anything, rather soporific. She would drone on, reading passages from the textbook, while the class fell into a post-lunch stupor.  However, a couple of my friends and I – true-blue history buffs – would sit at the back and debate history. We had already zoomed through the textbook on our own, and now we were busy forming opinions and having arguments about whether Communism was ever a realistic philosophy and whether Subhash Chandra Bose‘s faith in Hitler’s friendship was misplaced. There was no nuance to our any of our arguments, yet. That would come with college. But we did begin to appreciate why history is and always will be an important subject. It teaches us a lot about human psychology, about how we make the same mistakes over and over, and it takes us back to root causes of many of our current problems. But one outstanding feature of history as an academic subject, which I began to appreciate only recently, is that it has proved to be such a generous fount of great literature.

What got me thinking about this was my tryst with A Game of Thrones by George RR Martin. Strictly speaking, it’s not a historical novel. It’s an epic, medieval fantasy story. And if we’re really finicky about it, it’s not even ‘great’ literature. It’s expertly-written and a rollicking read, but the turns of phrases and imagery are hardly likely to make a lit crit sing hosannas. Anyway, to get back to my main point, fantasy though A Game of Thrones is, it owes a lot to the real-life, documented bloody history of human beings. More specifically, it owes a lot to the history of the Wars of the Roses, a series of dynastic civil wars which rocked England between 1455 and 1485.

Now, here’s the interesting thing about A Game of Thrones. It is categorized as ‘fantasy’ and yes, it does feature dragons, sorcerers, ice zombies, giants and mysterious Children of the Forest, but that is hardly what makes the book such a compulsive page-turner. What keeps your interest engaged is the courtly intrigue, the secret alliances, double-dealing characters, illegitimate heirs and strategic battlefield decisions. In other words, things that have affected human history in real life. The world of A Game of Thrones (the first book in the series A Song of Ice &  Fire) is a post-magic world. This means that while there is evidence that some strange, unexplained power might have existed at one time in this world, most of its current inhabitants – much like us – don’t believe in it. To them, those are tales that Old Nan tells the children. And that is why the inspiration provided by the Wars of the Roses to Martin, while he was writing his tale of fictitious Westeros, is so very important.

The plot is massively complicated, of course, much like the history of the Wars of the Roses was. On the continent of Westeros, a dynastic battle for the Iron Throne at King’s Landing is set off by a series of events. The main families (or houses) involved are the Lannisters (like the Lancaster of the Roses) and the Starks (like the Yorks of the Roses). There are others as well, such as Baratheon, Targaryen, Martell, Tyrell, Umber, Tully, Arryn, who play their own important roles here. It begins with the mysterious death of Jon Arryn, the Hand of the King Robert Baratheon. Robert asks his friend Ned Stark, Lord of Winterfell in the north to come to the capital, King’s Landing and be his new Hand. While Ned despises politics and doesn’t really want to leave his family behind at home and travel all the way to the South, he feels he’s duty-bound to find out exactly how Jon Arryn died, especially since Jon was like a father to both Robert and Ned. At the same time, mysterious powers are rising in the far north, beyond the Wall that separates the Seven Kingdoms from the icy wilderness. The ‘wildlings’ that inhabit that vast, snowy expanse are moving south, while strange, supernatural beings seem to be laying the stragglers to waste. The third plotline deals with Daenerys Targaryen, who is moving towards Westeros to lay her own claim to the Iron Throne. She is the daughter of ‘Mad King’ Aerys Targaryen, whose rule was overthrown by Robert Baratheon in a war that pretty much wiped out the whole Targaryen dynasty. Only baby Dany and her older brother Viserys managed to escape. Viserys is now bent upon defeating the ‘Usurper’ and taking back the throne, and to achieve this end, he’s even willing to trade on his sister.

This is the set up when we first venture into the world of A Song of Ice & Fire. And if you think this is complicated, wait till you actually read the series. It just gets more complex. And bloodier.  And if you can’t stomach the thought of reading the massive books (800 + pages in each), then you can watch the brilliant HBO adaptation called ‘Game of Thrones’, which has just started its second season.

UPDATE: If you enjoyed this post, you might want to scoot over to Helter Skelter and check the column where I have written about the television adaptation of A Game of Thrones.

Related articles

• 2 Reasons Why I Like Game of Thrones TV Series (tvshowsforme.wordpress.com)
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Book # 6 This Way for a Shroud by James Hadley Chase

This is a year of many literary firsts for me: my first e-book, my first James Hadley Chase. I know, it’s rather shocking . And while I’m in this confessional mood, I would also like to declare that I have never read a single Alistair Maclean, Louis L’Amour or Robin Cook. I’m not proud of it. I’m merely stating facts.

Before I write what I thought about Chase’s This Way for a Shroud, I must thank my husband for pointing out that a reading life without having once touched upon one of the most popular pulp writers ever, is really not much of a reading life. What good is it if you’ve read all the Dostoevsky and Proust and Camus there is, if you haven’t once read a truly popular writer. The kind that everyone – from a beleaguered  office worker to a bored student to a literature professor- enjoys reading. Is there really any harm in letting one’s hair down once in a while in order to enjoy and good old thriller? No, I thought, not really. I might even learn something new.

And ladies and gentlemen, I did learn something new. I learned that even pulp doesn’t have to be predictable.  I started reading the book with a few ideas lodged in my head: the case would get solved, the burly detective would get his man, the wilful wife would learn the errors of her ways, and the oily gangster would…well, be got by the detective. Win-win for all, except the oily gangster.

How wrong I was. How wonderfully, delightfully wrong I was. There is no happy ending in this little bit of hard-boiled fiction. There’s just too much realism. The victim was no innocent, the gangster is not as powerful as he ought to be and the detective himself is fairly helpless against the relentless cunning of one man. This one man, by the way, really upends the situation towards the end of the book. It leaves a bitter taste in your mouth, but like the other characters in the book, there’s little we can do.

So what is the plot? A popular Hollywood star, June Arnot, has been brutally murdered, along with her whole household staff. The crime scene is a bloodbath, and yet there is no evidence of the killer. Clearly, he or she was a professional. Detective Paul Conrad’s suspicions are roused after someone mentions that Arnot had been having a secret affair with a dangerous mobster named Maurer. The lack of evidence, however, hampers his investigation, until he discovers that there may have been a witness to the crime. It then turns into a race against time to find his elusive witness and to stay ahead of Maurer, who will stop at nothing to cover his crime. The matter is further complicated by Conrad’s wife Janey, who resents the amount of time her husband spends on his job. Also in the picture are a phantom-like assassin, a would-be gangster turned snitch and a compromised police officer.

Chase has a clean, conversational style which I really enjoyed. Despite the brevity of the book, the story is water-tight and the characters are all fully-realized – even the mobster’s moll, who is a minor character, gets her own moment of epiphany. We see how precarious her situation is and understand why she does the things she does, just as we understand why the star witness is unwilling to talk to the police, or why a detective’s wife might flirt with a known gangster.

I once read on Chase’s Wikipedia page that one of his hallmarks was using highly manipulative female characters, who cause more trouble than they’re worth. It made me think of the writer as a bit of a misogynist. However, based on this one book, I’m prepared to give him the benefit of the doubt. If anything, Chase seems to have had a deeper understanding of his female characters’ motivations and the boundaries within which they were forced to function. Janey, for instance, is a beautiful, sociable young woman who is expected to live out her life at home. She’s clearly described as a girl who lead a somewhat ‘hectic’ life before her marriage, and to suddenly expect her to change, as her husband does, is unfair. Paul expects her to keep his house, look pretty and have no social life when he isn’t there to chaperone: all the while, he will stay busy with his work and pay little attention to her emotional needs. Under these circumstances, one can see why Janey lashes out and takes one stupid step after another, even if she herself doesn’t really understand it herself.

If like me, you’re in a bit of a reading slump, I suggest you pick up this book. Or any other by James Hadley Chase. And if you’re already a Chase fan, then perhaps its time to revisit one of your favourites.

Book #4 The Confession by John Grisham & Book #5 Red Dragon by Thomas Harris

I haven’t properly read pulp fiction in many, many years. That is probably why when I was going through my dry reading period last month, I felt increasingly drawn towards books that would entertain me without demanding too much of my little grey cells. I finally picked up The Confession by John Grisham and Red Dragon by Thomas Harris.

The Confession by John Grisham

Now I have a little confession of my own to make. The only Grisham I read before this was The Pelican Brief. I tried reading The Runaway Jury for years, but I would get bored after the first couple of chapters. I’m not sure why that is. I found The Pelican Brief to be quite the page-turner, and The Confession was just as gripping. It’s one of those books where the blurb at the back grabs your attention and book itself mostly lives up to its promise. Donte Drumm is four days from execution. Nine years ago, he was arrested and tried for the abduction, rape and murder of a popular high school cheerleader. The case seemed air-tight to everyone:  the police, the victim’s family, the DA, the judge and the jury. Except that there was simply no evidence that Drumm had committed the crime. On the contrary, there was plenty of evidence that he did not have anything to do with it, and his tireless attorney Robbie Flak has been doing everything he can to stop the impending execution. However, the police and the system think they have their man and they simply want to shut such an ugly case up.

Then, just days before the execution, the real culprit surfaces. He’s a drifter and former convict with a history of sexual assault, and he’s dying of cancer. He now wants to confess. But of course, its not so easy, and plenty of precious time is wasted before Boyette can get anyone to listen to him.

The book is more than just a crime thriller: it addresses racial prejudices that continue to exist in the USA and more importantly, it takes an uncompromising stand against the death penalty. By the end, however, the novel becomes a bit of a soap box for Grisham and his reformist fervor mars the narrative flow.

Red Dragon by Thomas Harris 

I watched the movie before I read the book, so I knew what was coming. However, while watching the movie I did feel like I couldn’t quite get a grip on why exactly Agent Will Graham is so troubled and what his special gift is. I also wanted a clearer glimpse into the warped mind of serial killer Francis Dolarhyde. The book provided reasonably clear answers to both. In a nutshell, Red Dragon is about a serial killer nicknamed Tooth Fairy who has gruesomely murdered two families. In the race to prevent a third such attack and apprehend the killer, Special Agent Jack Crawford gets his protege Will Graham on the case. Graham, who has been retired for three years after notorious serial killer Hannibal Lecter almost disemboweled him, is understandably reluctant. Nevertheless, he is persuaded to join the hunt for the Tooth Fairy and even visits Lecter in jail to gain some insight into this new killer’s MO. Lecter not just taunts him, but also sends Tooth Fairy, with whom he has been corresponding, after Will and his family.

Dolarhyde, in the meantime, has fallen in love with a blind co-worker named Reba and seems to be trying hard to stop his murderous urges. But salvation isn’t so easy and as the book races towards a chilling climax, we find out what exactly made Dolarhyde the monster that he is today (abused childhood, naturally) and why Will is so indispensable to cases like this (he has a uniquely empathetic bent of mind, which often gives him flashes of understanding of killers’ motivations).

Lecter himself appears disappointingly little in this novel. Apart from sending Tooth Fairy to kill Will and his family, he doesn’t do anything else particularly nefarious, but even in his limited scenes he does quite a good job of taunting the tortured Agent Graham. I just might read Silence of the Lambs, Hannibal and Hannibal Rising to find out more about him.