The Unexpected Inheritance of Inspector Chopra
By Vaseem Khan Mulholland Books 2015
 
Inspector Ashwin Chopra’s last day in his post proves an eventful one.  Forced to retire early, with heart trouble, at the age of 45, he goes for the last time to the police station in Sahar, in north Mumbai, to bid farewell to his colleagues.  Outside the station he is confronted by a bereaved mother whose son’s body had been brought there earlier.  The distraught woman says no one will investigate her son’s death and the police are there only to serve the rich and powerful.  Inside the station Chopra finds his successor all too ready to write off the boy’s death as suicide.  Meanwhile he is confronted by another problem at home, he has been bequeathed an elephant, by his late uncle, Bansi.  The note from his uncle states - this is no ordinary elephant.  An elephant, even a small baby one, would be difficult to look after anywhere.  It is especially difficult in Mumbai, where Chopra and his wife Poppy live on the 15th floor of an apartment complex in the suburbs. The colony has strict rules enforced by the president of the managing committee, a formidable woman. To further complicate matters the elephant seems unwell and Chopra has not the slightest idea on how to deal with situation.
 
The words of the woman at Sahar police station that there will be no justice for her and her son because they are poor, together with his successor’s dismissal of the case, haunt Chopra.  He uses his old contacts to set about uncovering  the true cause of the boy’s death and soon he is busy and active as if he had not retired after all.  At the same time he has to try to find out the reason the baby elephant, adopted by his wife and named Ganesha, is ailing.  Inspector Chopra’s investigations send him on the trail of criminals operating in the north Bombay.  It takes him all over modern day suburban north Mumbai, the constituency of Andheri, the localities of Sahar and Marol through which runs the Western Express Highway. He goes into the seedy Queen of the Night bar, a modern shopping mall, the Atlas Mega Mall and the biggest slum in the world, Dharavi.  The trail leads to the seaside and the beach at Versova where there is a fisherman’s colony and which has also long been a haven for smugglers and a place for landing contraband goods.  Inspector Chopra uncovers a criminal network operating with the connivance of dishonest policemen and corrupt politicians.  Inspector Chopra solves the mystery of the boy’s death and exposes the workings of a criminal gang who have been operating in league with persons in high places.  Ganesha, just as his uncle had said, turns out to be a special elephant and plays a crucial part in the proceedings.
 
Ashwin Chopra does not suffer the fate he had dreaded when he retired.  He does not end up like so many Indian men, old duffers who spend half the day reading the newspaper and the other half watching cricket on television.  He decides to set up as a private investigator calling his agency the Baby Ganesha Detective Agency.    Readers can look forward to the further adventures of Ashwin Chopra and Baby Ganesha.  In the genre of crime fiction there is a new kid (elephant) on the block.
 
Vidya Borooah
20 November 2015
 

West With the Night
by Beryl Markham
Virago Press 2015 (First published 1942)

Beryl Markham was a woman of action not words, busy leading a life of adventure and derring-do and with little inclination to spend much time writing about it.  As a result West with the Night, an autobiographical work, is composed of a few fragments of the extraordinary life she led.  Her achievement in 1936, becoming the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic from east to west, which gives the title to this book, is covered in a short chapter of some dozen pages.  This record breaking flight may have drawn the attention of the world’s press but it is the extraordinary life she led which will enthral the readers of this all too brief memoir.

She grew up on a remote farm in Kenya, in what was then British East Africa.  She was taken there in 1906 from England, by her father after the break-up of his marriage, at the age of just four.  She grew up as one with the jungle and the native peoples of the land.  She went barefoot in the surrounding forest tracking animals with boys from the Nandi Murani tribe.  She was attacked by a lion whose scars she bore all her life, she slept in a hut with an open door through which wild animals such as leopards could enter.  She went hunting for wild boar armed with a spear with her Nandi friends. When her beloved dog, Buller, was injured she  thought nothing of staying out all night beside him in the forest.

When Beryl was 17, her father’s farm failed and he left Kenya for Peru in 1919 to try his fortune there.  He offered his daughter, whom he now considered an adult, the choice to accompany him or to stay behind.  She chose to stay in Africa.  Packing all her belongings into two saddle-bags (which included feed and grooming equipment for her horse) she set off to earn a living in a stud farm, being responsible for and tending horses.  A year later she moved again, established her own stables and trained thoroughbreds.  At 18 she obtained a trainer’s licence from the Jockey Club and became the first female race-horse trainer in Africa, probably in the world.

All this would have been adventure enough for most women but not for Beryl Markham. In the early days of aviation, she learnt to fly, becoming the only professional woman pilot in Africa at the time.  She set up as a freelance pilot in Kenya taking essential equipment, such as an oxygen tank, and ferrying passengers, to remote areas.  In an emergency this meant flying solo at night, without radio guidance, to land on a strip of hastily cleared land lit by rudimentary oil torches.  She later employed her plane and used her flying skills to pioneer scouting for elephants from the air for big-game hunters on safari.  She landed on  make-shift runways hacked out of the bush and came close to being trampled to death by a bull elephant.  It was well-paid work but, as a friend warned her, it was also ‘damnably, bloodily dangerous’.

The flight westwards across the Atlantic, against the prevailing winds, was record breaking.   A number of pilots had flown over the North Atlantic west to east while just one, a man, had done it the other way and that too from Ireland.  No one, man or woman, had flown westwards alone from England. For Beryl it was just one more achievement in a life packed with acts of courage and adventure.  So it should not come as a surprise that she does not make a great deal of it in her  brief account of the journey.

It seems almost an irrelevance that she was beautiful, with striking good looks, was married three times and had a number of liaisons.  She is silent about her personal life in her memoir.  These were, however, matters on which writers about her have dealt, downplaying her bravery and the many adventures of a truly remarkable woman.

Vidya Borooah
25 September 2015

 

The Meursault Investigation
Kamel Daoud
translation John Cullen Oneworld Publications 2015

In this, his first novel, Kamel Daoud, a journalist based in Oran in Algeria, takes on one of the most iconic works of French (and world) literature, Albert Camus The Outsider, on which to base his fiction.  The intent is made clear from the very first sentence – Mama’s still alive today, set beside Camus - Mother died today. Or maybe it was yesterday.

The book is based on a bold concept.  In The Outsider, Meursault shoots dead an Arab on a beach in Algiers at 2 o’clock in the afternoon when the sun is at its hottest and most blinding.  The Arab has no name in the novel, he is anonymous.  Daoud gives him a name, Musa (changed in the English translation from the French Moussa, why?) and the book is written by his younger brother Harun (Haroun in the French) who was just a boy when his brother was killed.  He lives alone with his mother, the father having abandoned wife and family and disappeared long before.  Harun, now an old man of 70, sits in a bar in Oran, one of the few left in the city, recounting his brother’s story and his own to a, fittingly, anonymous stranger.  In Harun’s account, Meursault and Camus are merged into one individual, they are one and the same.  The murderer/author using  his art and his mastery of the language, has gained fame and renown, while Musa has sunk into obscurity.  It is from this state of nothingness, no name, no family, not even a dead body which could have been given a proper burial, that his brother seeks to rescue him.

Having conceived of this bold idea, Daoud succeeds in carrying it through and sustaining it to the end.  The two books are even of a similar length. Based on a close and careful reading of the original, the parallels between the two, Meursault/the author and the narrator/ Harun are subtly and skilfully drawn. The similarities between  their two lives are never crude yet are clear enough so they provoke recognition and admiration in the reader.  The narrator falls in love with a young woman, Meriem (Marie in The Outsider) who, as a student researching the famous work, comes to the house looking for Musa’s family.    She gives him a copy of the book which he reads eagerly looking for traces of his brother.  Instead he finds a reflection of himself, the murderer and he are counterparts, one the doppelganger of the other.

In the years between the murder on the beach and Harun’s retelling of the story as an old man, Algeria has gained independence from France, in July 1962.  The old colonialists whom Meursault represents have left, their abandoned properties taken over and occupied by the native Algerians.  Independence has not however brought freedom.  A foreign colonial power has been replaced by a fundamentalist Islamic regime.  Like Meursault, Harun is an outsider to the society in which he lives and from which he feels alienated. He leads a solitary life on the margins reflecting there must be something between the banality of his existence and the infinity of the universe.  Not a simple indictment of colonialism, the book is instead a criticism of conformism and authoritarianism in all its forms.

Retellings of famous works, updating of classic texts, can be well written and pleasant diversions.  A recent  example is the series of modern versions of the works of Jane Austen by established authors, the latest Emma by Alexander McCall Smith with Curtis Sittenfield’s version of Pride and Prejudice next in line.  They can also be something more, they can be works of art in their own right.  Such was Michael Cunningham’s The Hours (Fourth Estate 1999), a novel based on Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway, which won the Pulitzer prize and with which can Daoud’s work can be compared. The Meursault Investigation is more than a retelling from a different point of view, that of the murdered man’s brother’s, and from a different period of time, post-independence Algeria.  It is a work of literature in its own right.  Based on a close reading of Camus seminal text, it will send the reader, if he or she has not already done so in preparation, hurrying to reread the original masterwork, which alone would be reason enough to read this debut work of fiction.

An hommage to a great work of fiction, it is a complement to the original, one worthy to stand beside it.  It is a remarkable work, which since its publication has deservedly won a number of literary awards, most notably, the Prix Goncourt for a first novel. Daoud’s achievement is that henceforth, for many who read, and for all who study Camus seminal text, this book giving life to the anonymous Arab killed by Meursault will be essential reading. 

Vidya Borooah
4 August 2015

 
 

Being Mortal: Aging, Illness, Medicine and What Matters in the End.
Atul Gawande Profile Books 2014

Being Mortal, Atul Gawande’s book on end of life care is essential reading for all us humans born with the certainty we are going to die one day.  The book analyses what happens to people’s lives during the declining and final years of their lives.  The writer, a practising clinician and a staff writer for the New Yorker magazine, uses his experience, both professional and personal, to analyse a subject that is too often ignored.

The first part deals with what happens when people become too old or infirm to manage living independently on their own.  With the support provided by traditional, extended families living together no longer an option, care homes are where the elderly go to live out their remaining years.  These establishments are driven by the imperative to keep the residents safe at all costs.  The elderly are kept in a controlled and supervised institution, plagued by boredom, loneliness and helplessness, where they lead a life designed to be safe but which is empty of anything they care about. The result is that the old and infirm are deprived of all that makes their lives meaningful and worthwhile.  As a person ages, the focus shifts to the present, to simple everyday pleasures and to the people closest to that individual.  The challenge for care homes is to help those in a state of dependence sustain that which is important for them. This is not easy.  Attempts have been made for example, in one case giving residents pets to care for or, in another home, allowing the residents to lock their own doors, small measures which improved dramatically the quality of life for the residents.

The second part concerns what happens when terminal conditions, heart and respiratory troubles, tumours and cancers, strike in old age or, at an earlier stage.  The array of treatments available in modern medicine and the willingness of the medical profession to use them, often encouraged by the families of the patients, means that doctors resort to increasingly intrusive measures to keep the body alive.  In the process they succeed in destroying all quality of life in the final stages of a person’s life. A simple insight the author gained when he ventured out of his office was that as people’s capacities wane, through illness or age, making their lives better often means resisting the urge to fix and control them through medical interventions.

Modern standards of care and medical advances mean we have become better at treating the ailments that affect the human condition.  The benefits for the living are obvious and many.  The problems arise as the body starts to break down and nears death.  For the sake of keeping the body alive before the inevitable end, the medical profession has a range of treatments available.  These can make the last days of an individual a trial and a painful experience, for the person concerned and for his or her loved ones.  He writes ‘our every impulse is to fight, to die with chemo in our veins or a tube in our throats or fresh sutures in our flesh.  The fact that we may be shortening or worsening the time we have left hardly seems to register’. Advances in medicine have not made dying easier or less painful.  Dying is all too often a prolonged process, intrusive, expensive, devoid of dignity.  The last days of person’s life can be far from peaceful.  Death eventually wins and ‘in a war that you cannot win, you don’t want a general who fights to the point of total annihilation.’

The book draws on medical research and enumerates a number of case studies, including a very personal one, the death of the author’s father. The author offers one ray of hope, a possible solution to this modern dilemma.  This is provided by the hospice movement.  While for most this conjures up the image of institutions where persons are sent to live out their last days, with no treatment other than palliative care, the hospice movement, as he describes in various places in America, offers more.  He writes clearly and dispassionately about the kind of care and support his father received from his local hospice community. The movement allows the terminally infirm and ill to live out their last days, where most people wish to die, in their own homes.

In the past people suffered because medicines were not available.  In modern times pain and suffering are inflicted on the dying because there is an array of treatments available.  A major failure of modern medicine in treating the sick and the aged is its ‘failure to recognise that they have priorities beyond merely being safe and living longer’.  Medical practitioners, he writes, have been wrong in thinking that their aim is to ensure their patients’ health and survival.  The medical profession’s job, in reality, is to ensure their patients’ well-being.  The treatments, the interventions are justified if, and only if, they serve the larger aims of a person’s life.  If they do not ‘the suffering we inflict can be barbaric’.  Modern medicine has ‘created a new difficulty for mankind: how to die.’ 

Vidya Borooah
4 December 2014

 
 

The Strangler Vine by MJ Carter Fig Tree 2014 339 pages

This is a tale of derring-do, reminiscent of Rudyard Kipling or RL Stevenson, for everyone, young and old, who enjoys a rattling good yarn.  It is set in the 1830’s in India, in the heyday of the East India Company.  The historical setting is portrayed with meticulous accuracy. It was a time when bandits, known as Thugs, who preyed on and murdered unwary travellers, had been largely subdued by the formidable Major Sleeman.

Lt William Avery, a young officer with no prospects in England has gone out to India, one of its attractions being the presence there of the poet Xavier Mountstuart.  When Mountstuart goes missing, researching for an epic poem about the Thugs, Avery is sent to find him.   The expedition is led by an old India hand, Jeremiah Blake.  Blake, a grizzled veteran of the continent, has gone native and turned against the Company.  The two set off, along with trusted native retainers, to find the poet.  Their many adventures include being set upon by murderous villains, and a tiger hunt in a princely state.  Avery, a good shot, acquits himself with honour.  Suffice it to say the plot twists and turns, all is not as it appears and our heroes are crossed and double-crossed.  The book proceeds at a cracking pace which keeps the reader enthralled.
The book has been longlisted for the Bailey (formerly Orange) fiction prize for women – M is for Miranda.

Vidya Borooah
12 March 2014
 

 

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Begums, Thugs & White Mughals: The Journals of Fanny Parkes.  Selected and Introduced by William Dalrymple.

          The journal of an unusual Englishwoman who lived in India from 1822-1846.  An independent woman who, lumbered with an unstable junior official in the Raj as her husband, left him behind to travel round the country on her own (with a retinue of servants, of course) discovering its lands and peoples.  Rejecting the prevailing attitude of superiority towards and of keeping aloof from the natives, she mixed with them on their own terms and delighted in what she found.  Though more restricted in her travels than a man, she managed to go where no man could go, into the zenanas, where women lived in strict purdah.  We learn from her of their lives lived in luxury but in restrictive, claustrophobic circumstances.   Her appreciation of Indian culture led her to learn to play the sitar and to acquire a knowledge of Persian.   Her enthusiasm for India and all things is evident on every page.  On her return to England she declares the place ‘wretchedly mean’, ‘cold and gloomy’.

November 2007
 

 

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The Blue Flower by Penelope Fitzfgerald

            Penelope Fitzgerald’s talent found its fullest expression in the last novel she wrote before her death, The Blue Flower.  It is a fictionalised account of the tragic love of the young Fritz von Hardenburg, who later became famous as the poet Novalis, for the girl Sophie. It draws the reader into the world of 18th century Germany from the beginning, with its description of the annual wash day at the Hardenburg household.  It whisks the reader effortlessly round the life of the time, of students at university, of the work of inspectors of salt mines, of the running of large households.  The author has the gift, like Jane Austen, of sketching in the characters who inhabit this world with just a few lines of dialogue.  Funny, moving, tragic, enigmatic, the story unfolds in such a way that, without understanding how she works her magic, we are captivated.

December 2005


 

The Elegance of the Hedgehog (L’élégance du hérisson) by Muriel Barbery

            This is a novel that has been a great success both in France, and worldwide, with sales of over 2.5 million.  This success moreover, has been achieved not because it is by an established author, has been hailed by critics, or driven by a publicity machine.  It has succeeded because of that most elusive of qualities, it is a word of mouth success.  One reader tells another, that person in turn recommends it to a few friends who enjoy it so much they tell others - et voilà it is read by millions.

The novel bears an unprepossessing title, The Elegance of the Hedgehog, and has a correspondingly unprepossessing protagonist, a plain, 54 year old woman, Renée Michel (the said hedgehog) who is the concierge in an apartment block for a group of well off residents in Paris. Ignored by the occupants of the building, Renée leads a secret existence in the pursuit of art and culture – books, films, painting, music, she is interested and well-informed about all such matters, a fact that she is careful to hide from the world.  One of the inhabitants of the building is a precocious 12 year old girl, Paloma who, by her own admission, is extremely intelligent. Paloma, for her part, has decided that life is not worth living and is resolved to commit suicide on her thirteenth birthday. She has been stealing a few of her mother’s sleeping tablets regularly so as to amass a lethal dose. The novel is written in the voices of these two characters, one alternating with the other.

           The death of the occupant, and owner, of one the apartments, Pierre Arthens, and its purchase by a Japanese gentleman, Kakuro Ozu, set in motion the events of the novel.  A new presence in the building, foreign, exotic, manifestly wealthy, causes a frisson of excitement to run through the building.   Its inhabitants are agog to know more about and to become acquainted with the new owner.  It is, however, the concierge who arouses his interest and curiousity.

             Mr Ozu, himself a cultured man, penetrates Renée’s secret.  He sees through the prickliness of the exterior she presents to the world to the elegance within.  It is his recognition that Renée is not what she seems that is the beginning of a friendship between them.  Another, equally important, relationship that develops is between Renée and Paloma.  Paloma is estranged from her family, especially her mother who is rich, idle, bored and into psychoanalysis, and from her not-too-bright sister Colombe.  She finds a refuge in Renée’s concierge lodge and is thus well placed to observe the events as they unfold.  There are a number of secondary characters, among them Manuela, also a domestic, who is Renées friend, an alcoholic tramp, Gégène, who lives at the corner, a son of the deceased owner, Jean Arthens, a rehabilitated drug addict, all of whom have their part to play.

             Not much happens in the bulk of the novel.  There are meditations on the nature of art, mainly by Renée, and acute observations on the behaviour of the affluent members of upper class French society, mainly by Paloma.  Cultural references abound and the book leaves the reader with a desire to become better acquainted with the works of Tolstoy, especially Anna Karenina, the films of Ozu and the still lifes of Dutch painters.  These are also references to popular artists, such as Eminem, and mainstream films such as The Hunt for Red October.  The observations of upper class French society are sharp, but they are not without sympathy.  Paloma  sees clearly the promiscuity and drug taking behaviour of her contemporaries.  She also writes with perspicacity of the considerate behaviour of her mother towards the domestic, the guilty feelings of her father when his mother has to go into a home.  There is enough going on to hold the reader’s interest.

           It is towards the end that the story really gets going as events pile on in a rush.  The novel is like a long, slow burning fuse that fizzles and splutters along then, towards the end, explodes in a spectacular display of pyrotechnics.  It is this explosion of emotional fireworks that has, no doubt, contributed to the novel’s popularity.  It is difficult to write about the events without giving away the plot.  Suffice it to say that the narrative takes turns that are both unexpected and unpredictable.  The end is extremely emotional and it would be a hard heart that was not moved by the turn of events.  Does Renée find something more than friendship with Kakuro?  Does Paloma go on to commit the suicide she has so carefully planned?  The best way to find out would be to read the book.

           The novel is unbalanced with nothing much happening for the major part then everything occurring in a rush at the end.  This is only the second novel by Muriel Barbery and judging by its success one can only hope for more to come.  Renée’s wish for Paloma is that she will go on to fulfil the promise that she shows as a young girl.  The same can be said of the author.  Readers can only wish that she will go on to fulfil the promise so clearly evident in this novel.

March 2010

 
 

The Mahabharata translated by John D Smith

           The Mahabharata is one the world’s great classic texts.   Together with the Ramayana, it is one of India’s best known and loved epics.  The Mahabharata, however, is much more than an epic, for incorporated within it are seminal Hindu teachings, most notably the Bhagvad Gita.  In the west, the story of the Ramayana is better known because of its association with the festival of Diwali.  Diwali celebrations are becoming increasingly popular in western societies, such as Britain, where members of the Indian diaspora live in significant numbers.

           The Mahabharata is known throughout India, in cities and villages, among all classes of society.  Most know the outline of the core story together with many of the main incidents.  The enduring popularity of the Mahabharata in India was illustrated when, in the 1980’s, a TV serialisation that ran to 94 episodes brought the entire country to a virtual halt on Sunday mornings when it was aired.

           Penguin’s decision to publish the Mahabharata in its Classics series is to be welcomed.  It is a new translation by John D Smith, a Cambridge academic (now retired).  The translation is based on the critical edition of the Sanskrit text, put together between1933-1966 by scholars at the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, Poona (Pune).  The Penguin edition is an abridged version as translating the text in full would have resulted in an unwieldy volume of some 5,000 pages.  Even the shortened version runs to some 800 pages.  Instead of condensing the entire text, John Smith has followed a system, of abridging the major portion of the Mahabharata, combined with translating some sections in full, a method that works well.

           The story that lies at the core of the Mahabharata is a simple one.  It tells of the enmity between two warring sets of royal cousins, five Pandavas and 100 Kauravas, and the ensuing battle at Kurukshetra in which the Kauravas are killed.  There are however, several reasons why the Mahabharata is a work of such enormous length.    First, it is not the work of a single author but has been added to over centuries, from about 400 BC to 400 AD, during which it grew in bulk.  Secondly, in addition to the incidents of the main story, it incorporates a vast amount of additional material – it is a compendium of stories rather than a single narrative.  Lastly, contained within it are key Hindu teachings, including the Gita and Bhishma’s sermon, which make up as much as a third of the text.

           Naturally, in such a long text, the cast of characters runs to thousands.  The principal characters are however small in number and their names, together with their deeds and misdeeds, stand out and are generally known.  On one side there are the five Pandava brothers, Yudhistra, Arjuna, Bhima, Nakul and Sahadev, their joint wife, Draupadi, and their principal ally, the god Krishna.  Ranged against them are the hundred Kauravas, the eldest of whom is Duryodhana.  The Mahabharata however is not a simple tale of good vs evil for there are many virtuous and noble men on the Kaurava side, notably Bhishma, Drona, Vidura and Karna, who unknown to everyone, is the eldest Pandava brother.

           The text can be divided into three sections of roughly equal length.  The first part deals with the origins and early history of the various characters.  It is the events that occur during this period that are best known from the Mahabharata.  It describes the growing up of the princes; their training in the martial arts under Drona; the winning of Draupadi by Arjuna in an archery contest and how she became wife to all five Pandavas; the growing enmity between the two sets of cousins; the gambling match in which Duryodhana cheats Yudhishtra and the Pandavas of their kingdom and sends them into exile in the forest for 12 years with a further year to be spent incognito.  The scene is thus set for the great battle that follows.  The second third of the text is taken up with the war itself which takes place at Kurukshetra and lasts for 18 days.  It is on the eve of battle, as Arjuna, hesitates at the prospect of killing his kith and kin, that Krishna, who is acting as his charioteer, expounds to him the Bhagvad Gita.    The war itself is depicted in stylised terms with heroes using celestial weapons to perform heroic deeds against a background of great carnage.  The incidents that stand out are the felling of the great heroes – Bhishma, Drona, and Karna and the means, not always honourable, by which they are defeated.  In the third section, after their victory, the Pandavas reclaim their kingdom.  The major part of this section is taken up by Bhishma’s dying sermon, which is a key text in Hinduism.

           To help the reader with the long text and its complexities, among them the convoluted way in which the story unfolds, is a brilliant, seventy page introduction by John Smith.  It is, unlike other introductions to classic texts which are often commentaries, a helpful guide for the reader to what lies ahead.  The introduction includes a succinct summary, in three pages, of the story, introduces the main dramatis personae, discusses concepts such as dharma (an untranslatable word), the role in the story of fate, and the use of vows, boons and curses.  There is a guide to pronunciation, a map, genealogical tables, a key to names and glossary, as well as a detailed index.  Helpful footnotes guide the reader to the relevant chapter and verse as reminders of particular events, incidents and characters.  In short, every help is provided for the reader either new to, or not familiar with, the text. 

           The new Penguin Mahabharata makes accessible for the general reader one of the great texts of world literature.  As RK Narayan wrote in the introduction to his translation, the Mahabharata ‘is a treasure house of varied interests’.  It can be read in its entirety or in parts – some might prefer the stories, others the religious teachings – there is something in it for everyone.  

25 November 09

 
 

Messieurs les enfants by Daniel Pennac

             Overnight three schoolboys are turned into adults while, simultaneously, the adults around them, parents, a mother and, in the third case, a cop who has arrested the boy, become children.  This is the central conceit on which the book is based.  The difficulty with a conceit is to sustain it, be it for the duration of a film, as in Groundhog Day,in which Bill Murray is forced to live the same day over again, or for the length of a novel.  Pennac manages this brilliantly.  Before these transformations take place there is first the setting of the scene.

           The three schoolboys, all twelve year olds, are classmates.  Caught passing round a sketch of a teacher they dislike being pursued by a mob of vengeful schoolboys, all three claim to be the offending artist.  Two, Joseph and Igor, are childhood friends, while the third, Nourdine, of Arab descent, joins in the blame, because he is keen to be accepted by his classmates.  As punishment the teacher, Crastaing, sets them an essay for the next day, the topic – to imagine that they are transformed into adults and their parents into children.  The two friends go home where we learn of their family circumstances.  Joseph’s parents run a dressmaker’s shop.  Igor lives with his widowed mother Tatiana, who has not stopped grieving for her husband.  The third, Nourdine, follows the teacher with murderous hate.  He (and the reader) is astonished to find that the teacher goes to a street of prostitutes where the others direct him towards a lovely, young, new arrival.  Nourdine returns home to an elder sister, of volatile temperament, who runs the home after their mother ran away with the postman, and a father who has given up his job as a taxi driver and spends his time painting in the garage.  When the sister throws the father’s paint onto the fire in a fit of anger, Nourdine rushes out into the night.  His theft of a pot of paint leads to him being arrested and locked up in a police cell.  The scene is set for the transformations to occur one by one.

           What follows is a fast-paced narrative as the boys are plunged headlong into the world of adulthood complete with misbehaving young ones to manage.  The plot takes twists and turns that are wholly unpredictable.  The cast of characters is a varied, colourful mix.  The boys are no saints, they cuss and swear, are often in trouble at school and are not unfamiliar with run-ins with the law.  Home life is not a model of harmony for any of the boys, with prevailing tensions, only their causes different, in all three homes.  The characters includes a street full of  prostitutes, a young cop, a stuffy headmaster and his insufferable deputy, while a ghost, that of Igor’s father, crops up regularly.  The language spoken by this melange of characters is slang, not that taught in French language courses, and there are plenty of swear words with verlan (a type of slang, favoured by the young, formed by inverting the syllables) thrown in.  Into this narrative the author manages to pack in the hostility of a girl’s father to his Jewish son-in-law, the painful efforts of those of Arab descent to integrate into French society and the ambitions of a deputy eager to replace the head of the school.  The oldest, seniormost of the prostitutes, Yolande, is not the clichéd prostitute with a heart of gold, simply one who is smarter and more worldly wise than most and she steps up magnificently to play a part at the school when needed.  There is even sympathy for les flics who are just trying to do their job. There is the development of not one but two love stories. The ghost, Igor’s father, is also the omniscient narrator whose role in this whole crazy set up the reader has to wait till the end to find out.     

           The novel includes a raft of literary references among them to R L Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde and Hans Christian Andersen’s The Little Mermaid.  The true comparison of the novel is not with the magic realist works of Gabriel Garcia Marquez or Mario Llosa Vargas, mentioned of course, but with the surrealist films of Luis Bunuel – yes the author throws in that reference as well.  Pennac is lover of books whose Comme un roman (Reads like a novel) is a paean to the joys of reading.

           The novel is a modern day fairy tale of France peopled with real life characters, both children and adults, who use language that would make members of the Académie Française blush.  As in all the best fairy stories, in today’s equivalent of they lived happily ever after, everything turns out right in the end.  At its heart, the story encompasses a moral – the importance of childhood in the life of each and every human being and the lost souls who wander this earth, successful men and women propelled by ambition into premature adulthood, who have missed out on the insane joys of childhood.  An inventive, funny, moving book that the reader finishes with a sigh of satisfaction. 

June 2009

 
 

My Life in France  by Julia Child with Alex Prud’homme.  Paperback, Anchor Books, New York, 2007.

           Julia Child, who introduced French cuisine to America, has had her life entertainingly depicted in the film, Julie & Julia (2009), directed by Nora Ephron, in which Julia is played by Meryl Streep.  Equally entertaining, and more satisfying, is her memoir My Life in France.  If the film is the appetiser which serves to tempt the taste buds, the book is the main meal which leaves one replete and contented.

           Julia arrived in France in November 1948 with her husband Paul Child, a junior official in the US embassy in Paris.  Ten years her senior, he had lived in France earlier, in the 1920’s, and was more worldly wise.  What Julia lacked in experience, she made up for in enthusiasm.  Her attitude to France (though she said it of their later move to Marseille) is best expressed in her own words – ‘We arrived .. with our minds open, hope in our hearts, and our taste buds poised for new flavours.’

           The account of her life was put together in the year before she died, aged 92, in August 2004, by Paul’s grandnephew, a writer, Alex Prud’homme.  For the memoir he used the hundreds of letters Julia and Paul wrote home, chiefly to Paul’s twin brother, Charles.  This was supplemented with long conversations he had with Julia, many of which were conducted, mais naturellement, over meals, during which he took notes.  The book is expertly put together so the voice that comes through clearly is Julia’s and a wonderful voice it is.  Beside her throughout, in a supporting role, is Paul.

           From the very first meal she ate in the country – sole meunière – Julia was captivated by the taste of France and all things French – ‘It was an epiphany’.    They rented an apartment in Paris in the Rue de l’Université which she dubbed Roo de Loo.  She made light of its many discomforts – it was dark, lacked central heating and was badly furnished – and set out to explore the place and its people.  She plunged into the local life with enthusiasm in every inch of her 6’ 2” frame.  She took formal language lessons at the Berlitz school.  A better education in all things French was provided in the nearby shops which she frequented.  It was there she really learned the language and became acquainted with the local produce and people.  The expatriate Americans, who stuck together, she found a dull lot and, together with Paul, a photographer and artist, she made friends with a more interesting, bohemian set of people.

           Restless, looking for somewhere to channel her energy, she enrolled in the Cordon Bleu for a year long cookery course.  She was no dilettante, seeking to idle away a few hours.  She attended classes from 7.30-9.30, came home and cooked, went to demonstrations at the school from 2.30-5.00 and, returning home inspired, made the dishes herself.  At morning classes in the Cordon Bleu, when the electricity failed (this was post-war Paris), the chef took his class shopping, often to Les Halles.  ‘Indeed, shopping for food in Paris was a life-changing experience for me.’  Soon Madame Scheeld as she became known, acquired a thorough grounding in all aspects of French cuisine.

           With two like-minded Frenchwomen, Simone Beck (nicknamed Simca) and Louisette Bertholle, she started her own cooking classes.  The two Frenchwomen had been working on a cookbook they hoped to publish in the US.  When they asked Julia to help with the enterprise she accepted with alacrity.  The notion that she simply helped write down some of the recipes she (and they) had mastered is to be dismissed. Julia worked for days on end without a break.  The project grew and turned into an encyclopaedic work which Julia referred to as The Book.  Work on it continued even after Julia moved away from Paris, to Marseille, Germany and Oslo and finally back to the US.  It was to consist of traditional French cuisine but all the ingredients had to be available in America. For Julia, cookbookery became an all-consuming affair as she rewrote, revised and retyped the manuscripple.

           Nor was publication a straightforward affair.  Two publishers rejected The Book as being too large and unwieldy. It took a sympathetic editor at Knopf, Judith Jones, who finally oversaw its publication. From the original encyclopaedic work, it became a primer on French cooking, from hors d’oeuvres to desserts, for American cooks.  It was published as Mastering the Art of French Cooking, in 1961, by which time Julia and Paul had moved back to the US.  The book was an immediate success.  Julia’s appearance on a TV show on books led to her presenting a regular series of cooking programmes on television The French Chef.  Julia became a national celebrity and in 1966 she was on the cover of Time magazine.  She and Simca started collaborating on Vol II of their book which Julia referred to as Son of Mastering.  Preparing for and appearing on TV, working on Vol II of The Book, writing articles for magazines, she worked harder than ever.  There were also regular visits to France.  Some years later, in 1964, she and Paul acquired a small place of their own in Provence.  It was a place to live, to entertain friends and to enjoy for part of the year life in la belle France.   

           The memoir ends, fittingly, with Julia leaving France, in 1992, for the last time as Paul was ailing and could no longer travel.  She continued to work for several years after that, but part of her remained with her bien aimée France.  She died before the memoir was published but would have approved of the words with which it ends - toujours bon appétit.
November 09

 

The Road Home by Rose Tremain

            Rose Tremain’s The Road Home charts the journey taken by many immigrants who leave country and loved ones to seek work here because there is none to be had at home.  It tells the story of Lev, from an unnamed East European country, who comes to London, grieving for his dead wife, to earn enough to cover his expenses and to support the young daughter and elderly mother he has left behind.  The book is filled with compassion for the rich cast of characters, those in Lev’s home country and those in London, from many sections of society and hailing from many countries, he encounters.  It gives voice to the feelings and emotions of immigrant workers who lack the language and education to articulate them.  The story unfolds in a deceptively simple style that masks the skill of a great writer at work.  It is a humane, compassionate work that makes the reader care for all its characters.

December 2008


 

Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson & David Oliver Relin


        This is the story of one man’s mission, against all the odds, to build schools in the remote frontier areas of Pakistan, to provide education, especially for girls, and so better equip them for life.

           The journey began with a failure and a wrong turn.  Greg Mortenson, a mountaineer, had set out, in 1993, to climb K2 and place on its summit the necklace of a beloved sister who had died tragically young.  He was forced to turn back some 600 metres short of the summit.  On the return he lost his way and instead of rejoining the others in his party, ended up in a remote village, Korphe. Here he was cared for by the villagers.  Touched by their generosity, he wanted to do something in return.  He asked to see the school and the village headman took him to see the children of the village studying by themselves, out in the open, for there was no school and a teacher who came just three days a week. Greg Mortenson had found a way to repay the villagers and to honour his sister’s memory.  He promised to build a school for the village.

           Mortenson went back to Berkeley, California, where he worked as an ER nurse, and set about trying to raise funds for the school he had promised.  He sent out 580 letters, to everybody who he thought might contribute. In response he got one cheque, for $100, from a college friend.  He also received a small amount from his mother’s pupils, schoolchildren who collected pennies and donated $600.  There is now a programme, Pennies for Peace, though which schoolchildren can donate pennies to help. A short item about his efforts in a mountaineering newsletter attracted interest from Jean Hoerni, a former climber, a scientist and multimillionaire.  He gave the $12,000 needed for the school.  Nor was building the school a straightforward forward matter.  Greg Mortenson flew to Pakistan, purchased the materials and trucked them to the area, only to realise he could not transport them across the Braldu river.  Naively, he had forgotten that the only means to cross the river was in a box suspended from a steel cable along which a person could pull himself.  A bridge would have to be built first for the materials to be transported.  The rich benefactor again provided the funds to build a bridge.  The school was finally completed three years after Mortenson had embarked on his mission.  The multimillionaire was ailing and, impressed by his protégé’s efforts, he founded the Central Asia Institute with a grant of a million dollars and with Greg Mortenson as director. Now experienced and with funds, Mortenson established three more schools in the next three months.

           As head of the CAI, Greg Mortenson continued his work. Along with opening more schools, the CAI provided building extensions to existing overcrowded schools, salaries for teachers who hadn’t been paid, and set up schools in refugee camps.  The CAI projects expanded to provide training for sherpas and for teachers, to supply clean water, to set up eye camps and health dispensaries.  In the following decade Mortenson built over 50 schools plus supported numerous other projects.  When home in the US, he continued his fundraising efforts with slide shows and talks.  Personal happiness came his way when he met and married Tara Bishop in 1995 with whom he had two children.    

           He was prepared to endure any number of hardships for the sake of his cause.  When he first set about trying to raise funds for the school in Korphe, he decided to save money by not renting a room and sleeping in his car an arrangement which, in addition to the discomfort, attracted the unwelcome attention of the police.  He then slept in the hallway of a building used by mountaineers, where others stepped over him during the night.  The difficulties and hardships he endured pale in comparison with the dangers he faced in his self-appointed mission.  He had fatwas pronounced against him, twice, by rogue clerics, both of which were revoked with the help of friends and supporters. On a trip to Waziristan to learn about the region, he was kidnapped and held hostage by armed bandits then, suddenly, released.  Venturing into neighbouring Afghanistan, he found himself caught in cross-fire between rival gangs of drugs smugglers and somehow managed to escape alive.

           Mortenson succeeded in his aims not by imposing himself, his ideas and money, on the villagers.  He showed himself willing to listen to the people of the region on what they needed and to take their advice on how to go about achieving his aims.  To fit in, he dressed in shalwar kameez like the residents of the area and learnt the local languages.  Though not a Muslim, he learnt to pray as a Muslim, to show he respected Islam. 

           The failure of governments comes through loud and clear in the book.  There is, first, the failure of the government of Pakistan.  It is left to individuals like Greg Mortenson to step in and build schools, buy books and pay teachers, which should be the responsibility of the government.  Other forces acting to fill this gap are not so benign.  Wahhabi madrassas, with millions from Saudi Arabia, provide education but are also a breeding ground for Islamic extremism.  The UN estimates a significant proportion of the pupils receive military training and become Taliban recruits.  There is the failure too of the US government.  After the bombing of the twin towers it launched a war on terror by bombing Afghanistan (which Mortenson initially supported).  However the US did not provide the funds to rebuild afterwards.  Attention turned to Iraq and the money promised for rebuilding efforts in Afghanistan was diverted to the war there.  The US government pays lip service to winning hearts and minds.  Greg Mortenson single-handedly shows how this can, and should be done.  He understands that terrorism cannot be defeated by military might alone. 

Greg Mortenson is too busy, so the book is written by a journalist.  This is a pity, starting with the title, which is meaningless without an explanation (provided). It is written in florid prose of which the opening sentence is indicative - ‘In Pakistan’s Karkoram…. more than sixty of the world’s tallest mountains lord their severe alpine (sic) beauty over a witnessless high-altitude wilderness’.  A glimpse of what might have been can be found in the acknowledgements at the back.  Here Greg Mortenson’s voice comes through clearly, as it did for this reader, who heard him on the BBC World Service in the early hours of one morning, and listened, mesmerised, as simply and modestly, he talked about his work.  Irrespective of how it is told, his is a remarkable story.

14 September 2010
 

 

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Travels with Charley by John Steinbeck

            With great writers, such as Steinbeck, whose oeuvre includes several masterpieces, lesser works receive little critical attention, are often overlooked, and are seldom read.  This is a pity as even a minor work by a great writer can prove to be a gem.

           Travel writers usually go off seeking adventures in far off, exotic and inhospitable places.  Steinbeck’s aim in Travels with Charley was a more modest one.  He felt he had become disconnected from ordinary Americans - ‘I had not heard the speech of America, smelled the grass and the trees and sewage, seen its hills and water, its color and quality of light.’  So he got himself a truck with a home mounted on it, a sort of camper van, named it Rocinante, took along his dog Charley, a large French poodle and set off from his home in Long Island on the east coast – ‘to try to rediscover this monster land.’  His biggest adventure came before he had started his journey when a hurricane hit the east coast.  His boat, anchored in the harbour, was in danger of being smashed, so he went out in full fury of the storm, clambered aboard, took the boat to a place of safety after which, incredibly, he jumped into the sea and clinging to a passing bit of wood  drifted to the safety of the shore.

           The account of his journey is an honest, clear-eyed account of his land and its peoples.  It is written with the skill, honed over a lifetime, of a writer and the wisdom of a man with a wide experience of life.  There is no attempt to impress the reader, to be ‘clever’ or to show off.  It is hard to think of a successful contemporary writer who would have the confidence to write such a simple narrative.  It is noteworthy for the descriptions of the natural beauty of the land and of his encounters with ordinary people.  Charley provides company throughout and he also causes his master some anxiety when he develops prostate trouble – both master, Steinbeck was 58, and dog are growing old. 

           The encounters with ordinary people he meets are memorable, whether it is with a group of migrant workers come across the border from Canada for the potato harvest, truck drivers at truckers stops, people who choose to live in trailers, rather than built houses, many of whose homes he visits in Maine, a solitary travelling actor in Dakota, or a quarrelling father and son who run a filling station.  He reconstructs the conversations he has with these people as if they were characters in his fiction and so brings them vividly to life.  Steinbeck’s empathy with the simple, ordinary people he meets shines through.  He does not mock them for their lack of learning nor sneer at the meagreness of their worldly wealth, but accepts them on their terms.  The warmth of his encounter with the Canadian migrant workers is such one should be able to warm one’s hands in front of the pages on a cold winter’s day.  It is by no means all bonhomie and goodwill.  Steinbeck also writes clearly about the darker side of American life.  Racial hatred against the blacks was on full display in 1960, the year of his travels.  He stops in New Orleans where he goes to see the ‘Cheerleaders’, a group of women, egged on by a baying crowd, who gather to shout obscenities at a young black girl being taken to school by state troopers enforcing racial integration.  Dramatic and ugly as these scenes there, the prejudice against the black people of America is brought out even more forcefully when Steinbeck offers a lift to a black man.  The man’s fear and nervousness, his eagerness to get away from a white man, even one who treats him kindly, speaks volumes of the inhumanity with which the members of his race are used to being treated.  Steinbeck’s sagacity and wisdom are in evidence throughout such as, for example, in the way he disarms and then wins over a young man who comes to order the author off his employer’s land on which he has camped beside a lake in Michigan.  In parallel with the accounts of the meetings with ordinary Americans, are his descriptions of the natural beauty of America, the hues of the leaves in fall – ‘The climate changed quickly to cold and the trees burst into color, the reds and yellows… There’s a quality of fire in these colors’, the mountains and lakes of Montana, the majestic giant redwoods in his native California, standing beneath which ‘comes silence and awe’.  He provides the right mix in his descriptions of the changing landscape he passes through, enough to give an idea of its wonders, but not at such length that the reader is tempted to skip passages.

           Suffused with humanism, responsive to the natural beauty of the land, written with the skill of a great writer, it would be hard to find a better book about the ‘monster land’ that is the USA.

28 April 2009