2015 Reading: Reva (Part 2)

Well, here's part 2 of my (highly disorganised) reading thread.

I had a tentative project earlier this year, to read more books by Indian women, in translation. I'll be continuing that. I'm also off to grad school in September, so a lot of my reading from May on will be dull and technical.

Currently Reading

• Mikhail Shishkin - The Light and the Dark
  
• Lyudmila Petrushevskaya - There Once Lived A Girl Who Seduced Her Sister's Husband and He Hanged Himself: Love Stories
  

Other media/miscellaneous things

• Podcasts I'm listening to and more here. here
  

Deccan Art and the National Museum's Nauras Exhibition Review

2015 Masterlist of Books Read So Far

January

1. Qurratulain Hyder - River of Fire
   
2. Barbara Pym - No Fond Return of Love and The Sweet Dove Died - review
   
3. Pico Iyer - The Lady and the Monk - review
   
4. Yasunari Kawabata - Snow country
   
5. CK Meena - Black Lentil Doughnuts
   
6. Dhiruben Patel- Rainbow at Noon
   
7. Mark Gatiss- Black Butterfly and The Devil in Amber
   
8. Tana French - Broken Harbour
   
9. Jennifer Egan - Emerald City
   
10. Perumal Murugan - One Part Woman - review
    
    February
    
11. KR Meera - Hangwoman (translated from Malayalam by J Devika)
    
12. Bani Basu - The Fifth Man (review)
    
13. Shashi Deshpande - Writing from the Margins and Other Essays
    
14. Vita Sackville-West -The Edwardians (Review)
    
15. Ismael Kadare - The Accident
    
16. Adolfo Bioy Casares - The Invention of Morel (Review)
    
17. Vladimir Nabokov- Pnin (Review)
    
18. Jawaharlal Nehru- The Discovery of India
    
19. S Chakravarti, The Price of Land
    
20. Gerald Frug, City bound: How States Stifle Urban Innovation
    
21. Ranjit Hoskote - Central Time Review
    
22. Kedarnath Singh's Cranes in the Drought (in the original Hindi)>
    March
    
23. Bhagat Singh - The Jail Notebook and Other Writings
    
24. Bama - Sangati- (Review)
    
25. Elizabeth Gaskell - North and South - (Review)
    
26. Damodar Mauzo - Teresa's Man and Other Stories
    
27. Lindsay Clarke - The Chymical Wedding (Review)
    
28. Terry Pratchett - Thief of Time, Thud, Jingo, A Hat Full of Sky, The Last Continent (Review of Thief of Time)
    
29. China Mieville - Perdido Street Station (Review )
    
30. China Mieville - Iron Council
    
31. William Goldman - The Princess Bride (Review )
    April
    
32. Somerset Maugham - Ten Novels and Their Authors - (Review )
    
33. Anthony Doerr - All the Light We Cannot See (Review )
    
34. Junot Diaz - The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao - (Review )
    
35. John Hart Ely -Democracy and Distrust
    
36. Italo Calvino - If On A Winter's Night A Traveller
    
37. Shahid Amin - Event, Memory, Metaphor
    
38. Colm Toibin - The Empty Family
    
39. Vasudha Dalmia and Rashmi Saldanha (eds),The Cambridge Companion to Modern Indian Culture (Review )
    
40. Victor Pelevin- A Werewolf Problem in Central Russia
    
41. Vijay Seshadri - Three Sections: poems
    
42. Amrit Rai- A House Divided: The Origin and Development of Hindi/Hindavi - (Review )
    
43. Sarah Joseph - Gifts in Green (Review )
    
44. David Mitchell - The Bone Clocks (Review)
    
45. Italo Calvino - If on a winter's night a traveler
    May,
    
46. Andrei Platonov - The Fierce and Beautiful World: Stories
    
47. Charles Hallisey -Therigatha, Poems of the first Buddhist nuns - Review
    
48. Vladimir Nabokov - Letters to Vera - Review
    
49. Victor Pelevin - A Werewolf Problem in Central Russia and other stories Review
    
50. Yuri Olesha - Envy - Review
    
51. Vijay Seshadri- 3 Sections
    
52. László Krasznahorkai - Seiobo There Below
    
53. Emmanuel Carrere- Limonov
    
54. Rachel Polonsky - Molotov's Magic Lantern
    
55. Boris Akunin - The Winter Queen
    
56. Boris Akunin - The Turkish Gambit
    
57. Boris Akunin - Murder on The Leviathan
    
58. Boris Akunin - The Death of Achilles
    June
    
59. Janna - Tale of the Glory-Bearer, The Episode of Candasasana (translated TRS Sharma) - Review
    
60. Boris Akunin - The State Counsellor
    
61. Kingsley Amis - The Green Man-(Review)
    
62. Kalidasa - The Loom of Time
    
63. KC Sivaramakrishnan - The Enduring Babu
    
64. Marina Lewycka - A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian
    
65. Shaukat Osman - God's Adversary and Other Stories
    
66. Andrei Kurkov - The Case of the General's Thumb
    
67. Saeed Jones - Prelude to Bruise
    
68. AS Byatt - Ragnarok, The End of the Gods
    
69. Sangeeta Bandhopadhyay - Abandon, translated by Arunava Sinha
    July
    
70. Lyudmila Petrushevskaya - There Once Lived A Woman Who Tried To Kill Her Neighbour's Baby: Scary Fairy Tales
    
71. T M Krishna - A Southern Music
    
72. AS Byatt - Ragnarok, The End of the Gods
    
73. Gogu Shyamala - Father May Be An Elephant and Mother Only a Small Basket but..
    
74. Eric Hobsbawm - Revolutionaries
    
75. Nammalvar - Hymns for the Drowning
    
76. Hugh MacDiarmid - The Revolutionary Art of the Future: Rediscovered Poems
    
77. Graham Greene- The Tenth Man
    
78. Sujata Bhatt - Brunizem
    
79. Anjum Hasan - Difficult Pleasures
    
80. Anita Desai -The Artist of Disappearance
    
81. David Mitchell - The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet
    
82. Mridula Koshy - If it is Sweet
    August
    
83. Benjamin Black - Holy Orders
    
    

What are you going to study in grad school? And congratulations for getting in!

>2 rebeccanyc: Thank you! A combination of law, philosophy and politics. I can't wait.

Podcast Update

So, lately I've been listening to podcasts, while walking home from work. Here's what I'm currently listening to:

1. Welcome to Nightvale - I've just begun this one, which is in the form of radio broadcasts from a fictional town called "Nightvale". So far, I'm enjoying it, particularly the bits about the scientist, Carlos, and his fabulous hair.
   
2. Pleasuretown: Similar to Nightvale, this is a podcast narrated by Claude and Cyrus, the founders of a fictional settlement, Pleasuretown, during the great Land Rush in western America. Pleasuretown is dedicated to hedonism: so far, I've heard from two residents who talk about how they ended up there. I'm really enjoying this, particularly the bits of music that accompany the podcast.
   
3. The New Yorker's Fiction Podcast: This is a really well-produced podcast. The idea is to have a contemporary author pick out works by another author published in the New Yorker, and then introduce, read and discuss them. I enjoyed Aleksandr Hemon talking about Nabokov's Pnin (after which I read the book), and two sessions with Edwidge Danticat (who has such a lovely voice).
   
4. Harper Audio Presents: this is a podcast from the publishers, Harper, and I've listened, so far, to a completely engrossing episode of Howard Zinn and Matt Damon reading from Zinn's A People's History of the United States. Highly recommended.
   
5. The Big Ideas: This is a podcast put out by the Guardian. The idea is to have scholars and thinkers dissect a "phrase that's become an intellectual cliche" to ascertain its true meaning. For instance, Benjamin Walker discusses Plato's "just society", John Gray discusses Adam Smith's "invisible hand". It's really about concepts, not phrases, but it's engaging enough.
   

>3 reva8: What a fascinating combination!

Review: Charles Hallisey (translator)- Therigatha- Poems of the First Buddhist Women

The Therigatha is a collection of poems written roughly in 600BC, by Buddhist nuns ('theri' meaning nun, and 'gatha' meaning song, or verse). The Therigatha was written in Pali, a middle Indo-Aryan language that was spoken in India and is the language of many of the early Buddhist scriptures. The Therigatha has been translated many, many times, into very many languages, but I picked Hallisey's translation because it forms a part of the fantastic Murty Classical Library (MCL). The MCL, financed by Indian philanthropist Rohan Murty, and published via Harvard, is the first large scale attempt at establishing a multilingual Indian canon of historical and classical texts. Harvard has done this before, with the Loeb Classical Library that contains classic Greek and Latin texts. For the Indian subcontinent, however, there haven't been any comparable efforts that have succeeded. I'm very excited about the MCL, which brought out five books this year, including the Therigatha, and will continue to bring out books through Rohan Murty's generous endowment to them. The editor in charge is also the fantastic, erudite, Sanskrit scholar Sheldon Pollock, which explains their excellent selection of texts.

Hallisey's introductory essay and notes to the Therigatha describe it as being characterised by a number of firsts - the first anthology of poems from the subcontinent, possibly the first recorded poems at all, certainly the first recorded poems by women, and among the first recorded Buddhist texts. So naturally these are of great sociological and historical merit; but more than that, Hallisey argues that the Therigatha has great poetic merit. I am delighted to agree with him. Hallisey, quoting another, prior translator, Martin Wickramasinghe, points to the duality in this text: that it is at once, highly literary, and simultaneously, texts that teach Buddhist philosophy. How then, does the lay reader approach them? Hallisey quotes Wickramasinghe as saying, "these verses must be read with a sensibility that is guided by the poetry itself." Hallisey expounds this: that we read them, keeping in mind the "tension between expected pattern and delightful surprise". Conceptually, this isn't unfamiliar: more recently, we know of this from how volta works in poetry.

I really enjoyed reading the Therigatha. It is a text that surprises and charms, is full of received wisdom and joy at attaining insight. It is often wicked and funny; the nun, Mutta, whose name means "free", writes for instance:
"The name I am called by means, 'freed'
and I am quite free, well-free from three crooked things,
mortar, pestle, and husband with his own crooked thing.
I am freed from birth ad death,
what leads to rebirth has been rooted out."

More than anything, though, I got from these poems, a sense of joyful sanctuary that I encounter again and again, in the poetry of women, and in particular, in the religious poetry. This is a pattern I find in bhakti poets, when Meerabai writes, किनारे लगाव (take me to the shore) or Mahadeviyakka writing, "My mind is my maid/:
by her kindness,/ I join/my Lord". These are the poems and songs of women who sought sanctuary, yes, but they are no beaten or defeated women. A theri, Sundari, speaking to her preceptor, writes, "Give me permission, O honored one, to go to Savatthi/I will roar like a lion in the presence of the Buddha." As theological texts, these poems are also 'udanas' - poems of liberation, representing, "the unsurpassed safety from all that holds you back". There's a combination of a deep understanding of suffering, of women who have endured loss and discrimination, grief and sorrow, who have lost lovers and children, as well as an understanding of the pleasures of life: of good food, and love, and sex, and from these, a move to something greater than all of them, but a move made joyfully, without regrets.

The Therigatha is something I've been reading, off and on, for a while, and it is something I revisit, again and again, not just, as Hallisey writes, for their "moral acuity" and sensitivity to suffering, but also for the sheer joyfulness and wit that they contain.

>4 reva8: Very glad to hear you're enjoying Night Vale. Ah, Carlos! Perfect, perfect Carlos! I don't think it's a spoiler to say you'll be hearing more about him. He's a lot of fun.

And I'm thinking I may have to add The Big Ideas to my list of podcast subscriptions... But maybe not until I've caught up a bit on the ones I already have.

>7 bragan: More Carlos? Delightful. And yes, The Big Ideas is fun, but I think it depends on who is speaking in that particular episode.

Victor Pelevin - A Werewolf Problem in Central Russia

This is definitely amongst my top reads this year. I don't know how much credit one accords the translator, but this is some of the most powerful, gripping, witty prose that I've read in a long time.

A Werewolf Problem in Central Russia is a collection of short stories by Pelevin, translated from the original Russian by Andrew Bromfield and published by New Directions. The Russian fiction I've read before is not contemporary: it's been Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, Pushkin and Lermontov, Akhmatova and Solzhenitsyn. So it was a delightful surprise to find that Pelevin approached his prose with so much simplicity, joy and humour. And yet, he is not at all a frivolous writer, touching as he does on political and philosophical problems through the stories.

I noticed two things about Pelevin's prose that I liked very much. The first is, and this is the best way I can put it, is that he gets right to it . His stories begin mid-event, or rapidly, and so effectively that you are drawn right in. World-building and context are slipped in gradually, and smoothly, so you do not feel at any point that the writer is taking you, arm in hand, to the Department of Backstory so that it all makes sense - and yet, it does make sense.

The second thing I noticed is that each story contains, somewhere within, a little twist, that makes the unreal suddenly real, or completely undercuts the preconceptions you've built up until then to surprise you. And Pelevin executes this brilliantly: you don't see it coming, but when it happens, you think, "Oh, there it was, that is what was niggling at me!".

I don't want to say too much about the stories themselves, but I will say this: Pelevin has all kinds of things, from the old female attendants in a public washroom who clean floors and talk philosophy, to werewolves (but terrifying ones, and not sullen high school teenager ones), to mysterious strangers, to political leaders in China. Even if, like me, you don't pick up on some of subtler political references, these are still witty, fascinating stories, with a touch of the imaginary and the ghoulish to them. Highly recommended.

Review: Vladimir Nabokov - Letters to Vera

I may have already written before that I'm a tremendous Nabokov fan, and so I've spent a pleasant almost-two months dipping in and out of these letters. I really don't have much to add by way of review, so I'll just mention a few things that I noticed and enjoyed about them.

Nabokov brings to his personal correspondence the same force and wit and style that he brought to his novels. This indicated, to me, many things: firstly, that his skill inheres so deeply that it emerges even when dashes off lines, evidently in a hurry, to his wife, filled with instructions and news, and yet, with moments of poetry. Secondly, that his style in his novels, unlike those of many authors, were as much performative, as they were expressive of how he thought and wrote, which I find remarkable.

Nabokov wrote the most agonisingly tender, beautiful letters to his wife Vera, in their early days of courtship, marriage and separation. Even through his slightly pleading, defensive tone when he conducted a brief affair, he remains the most passionately in-love man that I have ever encountered. In the introduction, his anthologisers mention him describing his marriage as a "cloudless sky" - and indeed, though there were clouds, the power - and the security of love - that formed the basis of this marriage from 1925 till his death in 1977, is extraordinary.

He fills his letters, moreover, with charming little puzzles and games to entertain her, particularly when she was unwell and recuperating in a sanatorium. Later, when his son was young, he filled each letter with small drawings, and sketches for the lad, always mentioning, and remembering him to Vera. This edition of the letters has a tidy little annexe reproducing each of the puzzles and handdrawn crosswords and games that he created for them.

People tend to write of Vera as some sort of iron-willed angel, supporting his career and their marriage with her spine and mind, typing and collecting and organising his work and making it all possible. And yet, what comes through very strongly here, as well, is that Vera had the intellect and force her husband did, although we are left to gather it from him, because her letters remain private. He speaks of reading bits of what she writes to friends ("now they all know who writes my books for me") and appreciatively of things she wrote to him, referencing them as he replies. Evidently, this is not the voice of a servant or an assistant he hears, but entirely an equal, shoulder to shoulder with him, and that is very gratifying.

I have pages and pages and pages bookmarked in this collection, and I'll revisit them, no doubt. But the romantic buried deep within the cranky old man that I am is confident that in a world that can contain not just writing like this, but also a love like this, we are not badly off at all, indeed, we are not.

>9 reva8: Enjoying your thread Reva. Great review of A Werewolf Problem in Central Russia.

>9 reva8: Interesting! I'm not much a fan of short stories normally, but I read Pelevin's Buddha's Little Finger pretty recently and really enjoyed it in all its absurdist glory. I'm definitely interested in reading more of what he's done.

>9 reva8: Somebody recommended Pelevin to me a few years ago, and this book sounds intriguing.

Pelevin sounds very interesting! There are French translations of his works, but only one is available as an e-book apparently, a novel called Numbers (there are so many touchstones for this title that I couldn't find the right one). I'd like to try the short stories. Maybe in English translation...

Enjoyed your review of A Werewolf Problem in Central Russia – you really pinpointed all the things that made the stories work. I’ve had that on the mental list for a while now but have never seen it in the stores. I did find The Sacred Book of the Werewolf though and it’s in the pile somewhere. (I guess he really likes werewolves.)

I've added A Werewolf Problem in Central Russia. A solid collection of short stories is something I'm always looking for. Good review.

>11 Polaris-: Thanks for dropping by :)
>12 ursula: He's really engaging, I found. Part of the problem with short stories, I've found, is that if they don't draw you in right away, then the author loses the reader entirely. And Pelevin seems to have got that bit just right.
>13 rebeccanyc: I'd definitely recommend giving him a try!
>14 FlorenceArt: If I found a lot of English translations available, of his work, actually. I'm afraid I have no idea about French translations!
>15 DieFledermaus: He does seem to like werewolves.
>16 RidgewayGirl: Hope you enjoy it!

Thoughtful and intriguing reviews. I'm interested in the Therigatha, having prior encounters with Mahadevi and Mirabai -- such strong female voices.

Catching up quite a bit, finally. So many great reviews here.

>10 reva8: Very intrigued by Nabalov's letters and loved your review and that last paragraph.

>6 reva8: just fascinated by Therigatha

Very nice review on Pelevin. Also, somewhere on your previous thread, that review you thought no one would be interested in, on Indian languages, I found that review fascinating too.

Review: Yuri Olesha - Envy

Continuing my project of reading Russian fiction this month, I picked Yuri Olesha's Envy, published by NYRB, translated by Marian Schwartz and introduced by Ken Kalfus. The book begins beautifully: the narrator, Nikolai Kavalerov, living a hapless, impoverished existence, is rescued by Andrei Babichev, a civil servant and model citizen. Kavalerov camps, temporarily and resentfully, on Babichev's sofa, hating him and all that he represents while being unable to actually declare this hatred. I loved how delicately Olesha outlines this very 'envy' - how beautifully he depicts those brutish conversations that Kavalerov has in his head, contrasting them with the reality of Kavalerov's servile dependence on Babichev.

The book, however, slides inexplicably from this delicate satire, to a series of increasingly bizarre, unrealistic events: semi-sentient machines, flying girls, unlikely alliances. At times it is clear that this is Kavalerov's insanity, and at others, it is hard to make out what it is at all. Ken Kalfus in his introduction makes a valiant attempt at explaining the roots of this, but even he can't avoid noting that "Envy carries itself like a satirical novel, but the reader may find it hard to locate precisely the object of the satire."

Kalfus does, however, outline very well the tremendous impact that Envy had on Russian literature and society, describing its theatrical adaptations, its reception, and eventual revival. I enjoyed this book in parts, but was left confused by the avant-garde experimentation in others - whether this is because I am not a particularly sophisticated reader, or whether the book itself is obtuse, I am not sure.

>18 janeajones: I, too, am fond of Mirabai. Although, I think we have experienced her differently: we sang her poems in school (the way some school do prayers, I suppose).

>19 dchaikin: You're very kind! I'm glad people are enjoying the reviews.

I'm thrilled that Laszlo Krasnahorkai won the Man Booker International: Seiobo There Below is possibly the best thing I've read all year.

http://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2015/may/20/man-booker-international-...

Oh, that's exciting. I loved his War & War, and have Satantango, The Melancholy of Resistance, and Seiobo There Below on the TBR.

I own Satantango, but I haven't read it yet.

Boris Akunin - The Fandorin novels

I have been picking my way through Boris Akunin's charming, witty Fandorin novels over the last few weeks, while in the process of moving home, and preparing for grad school. These are absolutely delightful, and great summer reads.

Akunin's Fandorin novels are about a detective in 19th century Russia, just moving from a Tsarist rule with signs of revolution stirring all about. The series starts with The Winter Queen in which we are introduced to young Erast Petrovich Fandorin, who begins his career as a clerk in the police force. Orphaned at nineteen and left penniless by his father, who gambled the family fortunes away, Fandorin is lucky enough to be posted to the office of a senior police officer, who allows him to investigate a series of very odd apparent suicides, linked to a mysterious international coalition. Fandorin demonstrates wit, intelligence and skill, solving the crimes, but at a very great personal cost. By the end of the book he has been promoted up to the role of State Counsellor.

In the The Turkish Gambit, an older Fandorin, greying prematurely at the temples, is occupied with capturing a spy during the war that Russia had with the Ottoman Empire. He manages, in the process, to acquire, briefly, a beautiful, bright and troubled secretary Varvara Suvorova, who is hunting for her fiancee, a volunteer with the Russian army. The book is filled with fascinating details about how reporters covered the Russian front during the war, as these very reporters mill around the camps. Fandorin meets his old friend from The Winter Queen, the dashing Count Zukov, and we are also introduced to the Russian General Sobolev, handsome, charming and a famous hero (apparently based on the real 'White General' Mikhail Skobelev). Fandorin, after some hiccups, is successful, but when asked for what he would like as a reward for his success, he asks for the furthest possible posting - and gets sent to Japan for his next posting.

In Murder on The Leviathan Fandorin solves a classic closed-room mystery: a murder happened in Paris, all suspects are aboard the ship that is taking Fandorin to Japan, and they seemingly all have motives that connect to a missing royal treasure trove from India. This was such a well-executed mystery, that I didn't even mind the casual potshot approach to details concerning the "Orient" - whether it was Deccan history, or the claim that the Chinese and Japanese write in the "Same hieroglyphics".

The Death of Achilles is set after Fandorin returns from Japan, with a young Japanese manservant (Masa) in tow. Fandorin has just arrived and entered into the service of Prince Dolgorukoi, when word comes that General Sobolev has been murdered. Sobolev, in turn, was last seen in the company of a beautiful singer-courtesan, Wanda. Fighting the officers who have closed ranks to protect Sobolev's memory, and negotiating the sharp politics around Prince Dolgorukoi's circles, Fandorin gets to the bottom of the mystery. The skills he has picked up in Japan, including calligraphy, martial arts and a certain internal discipline, all seemed to have helped. The Death of Achilles is told partly from the perspective of the killer, a highly skilled, cold man called Achimas, who is modelled quite clearly on the mythical Achilles. This was, by far, the most complex and interesting Fandorin novel.

I am still reading the next book in the series, The State Counsellor.

I like Akunin's Fandorin greatly - his hesitant, periodic stammer that disppears in moments of crisis, his thoughtful, gentle approach met with sharp and swift action and the marvellous quirk of perfect luck in games of chance, that travels through his family and skips every generation. These books are such a great, light peek into the end and decline of imperial Russia - The State Counsellor for instance, is so far, an acute examination into the motivations of the young 'revolutionaries' that are emerging everywhere. Highly recommended, as fun and engaging books.

>23 rebeccanyc: >24 kidzdoc: Oh that's lovely. I'm envious of you both, the only one I could source in India was Seiobo There Below. It's incredible and I look forward to one day getting hold of his other books.

Nice reviews of the Fandorin novels, Reva.

When do you start graduate school?

Years ago, I couldn't get into The Winter Queen and so have avoided Fandorin -- but you've made me think I should give him another look.

>26 reva8: Have you tried BetterWorldBooks.com or BookDepository.com? If you're willing to read the works translated into English, you might be able to find an affordable used edition. I believe they both have free world-wide shipping.

>27 kidzdoc: In Fall - August. I have a long list of recommended readings, which I'm clearly not reading (yet)!
> 28 I have a soft spot for detectives, I'm afraid! I will read almost anything involving one.
>29 ELiz_M: Thanks! - I have not heard of either of those, but will definitely checke them out. I appreciate the tip!

Review: Janna - The Tale of the Glory-Bearer, The Episode of Candasasana

Janna was a medieval Indian poet, writing in approximately the 12th century, in the early Kannada language. This is a translation by TRS Sharma, of parts of Janna's two major works - the Yashodhara Charite (the Story of Yashodhara) and the Ananthanatha Purana (The Legend of Ananthanatha).

Janna was a Jain poet (Jainism is a religion that emerged roughly parallel to Buddhism, and is practised almost only in India) and was supported by the Hoysala kings of Karnataka, where he was not only a court poet, but at times, a judge and a minister as well. The beautifully-written translator's introduction notes that Janna was a an accomplished poet, writing intricate, metrical verse (although the translation is in free verse).

The first part of the book, an excerpt from the Yashodhara Charite, is the story of how King Yashodhara's beautiful wife, Queen Amrtamati, heard the voice of a mahout (elephant trainer) from her window, and fell in love. The Queen embarks upon an affair with the unattractive mahout who has a voice of gold: the King, on discovering this, is lead by his mother to commit a symbolic sacrifice of a cockerel made of flour. The cockerel comes to life at the last moment, but is sacrified anyhow, and for this crime of violence (for Jainism preaches non-violence), the King and his mother are trapped in the cycle of birth and rebirth until they attain enlightenment.

The Yashodhara Charite is fascinating from many perspectives. To some extent, it takes the trope of the unfaithful wife crossing barries of caste and class, common in medieval writing from the 7th century on, and turns it on its head. Amrtamati's effort to convince her maid of her love for the mahout, so the maid will act as interlocutor, is a marvellous narration of what could be described as locating truth internally. Janna takes the common adultery trope, and as the translator says, "transcreates it" to imbue it with Jain philosophy.

Ananthanatha Purana, on the other hand, was an epic poem intended to celebrate the canonisation of Ananthanatha into the Jain pantheon, but the episode that the translator chooses from the poem is that of Candasasana, a prince who falls in love with his friend Vasusena's wife, Sunanda. Obsessed with Sunanda, he abducts her and brings her a dummy severed head to convince her that her husband has been killed in battle. Sunanda does not turn to Candasasana for solace: instead, inconsolate, she kills her self, and overcome with his obsession, Candasasana jumps on her funeral pyre and immolates himself.

I enjoyed TRS Sharma's translation, despite the rather grim stories he narrates. I am always on the lookout for the literature of my country, made more accessible to me from our vast diversity of languages through effective translations, and this was a rather interesting one. I'll leave you with an excerpt of Queen Sunanda hearing the mahout's voice for the first time.

"The mahout down in the elephant
stables was a born singer. His voice,
tremulous
and sensitive to the minutest crease of fancy
dithered,

wavered,

and answered
to the metamorphic
variations of the tune.
Keeping time,

working

to a climax,
the song took a stance

stood poised

limned,
and limbered away to the end.
The voice came

smooth and vivid

to the queen as if
she had touched it."

Greatly enjoyed your review of the stories from Janna and I loved the little excerpt you posted.

>30 reva8: plenty of time for that prescribed reading, which shouldn't be a problem for you as you love reading so much.

>32 baswood: Yes, indeed! I'm glad you liked Janna's work. The translator is very good.

The Green Man by Kingsley Amis

I'm afraid I didn't enjoy this novel, much. It seemed to meander quite a bit without ever attaining a point, and was not, as novels sometimes are, sustained by beautiful prose in absence of a discernible plot. The Green Man is essentially a ghost story, also described in some reviews as a 'black comedy' (though I found no humour in it, black or otherwise).

The protagonist, Maurice Allington, is an alcoholic, a womaniser and the owner of an old, historical inn called The Green Man. In the beginning of the book, Maurice's father dies, and soon after, Maurice starts seeing things (a woman with red hair, a massive creature made of twigs and bark). The people around him: Maurice's discontented second wife Joyce, his acerbic friend and doctor, Jack, Jack's beautiful and tiresome wife, Diana- they all acknowledge that Maurice is seeing something but cannot see it themselves. The only person who shares Maurice's visions is his alienated, unhappy teenage daughter, Amy, but Maurice is far too busy seducing Diana and trying to convince her to join him and Joyce for a threesome to pay the child any attention.

The book swiftly descends from here: initial sharp character sketches are sidelined by Maurice's long, agonising, meandering monologues on the nature of death and tender descriptions of his alcoholic fugue states. The end is both, predictable and uninspiring ( The eponymous 'Green Man' tries to kill Amy, but is defeated, Maurice has an exorcism done and removes all lingering ghosts, and his attempt at engineering a threesome backfires when Joyce decides to leave him, taking Diana with her.. Would not recommend, but then, I'm not generally a fan of Amis, anyhow.

Kalidasa - The Loom of Time (translated by Chandra Rajan)

Kalidasa is probably the most well-known and the greatest figure in classical Sanskrit literature in India: you could compare him, perhaps to Homer, or even a latter day Shakespeare, to understand his stature in the classical Indian canon. He lived, probably around the 4th or 5th century BCE, although very little is known about his life, the era in which he lived in, or his times.

The selection, titled 'The Loom of Time' is a compilation of three of the six works that are attributed to Kalidasa, translated, annotated and introduced beautifully by Chandra Rajan. Penguin has published this as one of their distinctive black-and-white Penguin classics, and I've had my slightly tattered copy for many years now.

I re-read Kalidasa, as several others do, every year, as the monsoon comes around the subcontinent and we are flooded, rained upon, thundered over and drenched every day for three months. The monsoon hit India this last week, and I spent a pleasant few hours on the balcony, conducting my annual reacquaintance with Kalidasa, and watching the rain come down.

I read Kalidasa during the moonsoon primarily for his two major poetic works - the Ritusamharam (the Garland of Seasons) and Meghadutam (The Cloud Messenger), although The Loom of Time also contains one of Kalidasa's most famous plays, The Sign of Shakuntala.

Meghadutam (The Cloud Messenger) is an lyric poem about a yaksha (nature-spirit) who has been exiled to central India for neglecting his duties. On seeing a cloud, signalling the onset of the monsoon, he asks the cloud to carry a message to his wife, who lives on Mount Kailash in the Himalayas. The poem contains the yaksha's descriptions of the cloud's journeys, the lands it will travel over, the people it will see and how they react to the arrival of the rains, and so on. A little bit from the Meghadutam - the yaksha addressing the cloud:

"Listen first, while I describe the way
fitting for your journey, which you will follow
Resting your foot on mountains when weary,
refreshed when wasted by the clear water of streams:
then you shall hear my message, O Rain-Giver,
drinking it in eagerly with your ears.

While simple Siddha maidens with upturned faces,
watching your impetuous power, tremble in alarm
and cry: 'Is the wind carrying off the mountain's peak?'
soar high up into the sky facing north,
far above this thicket of sap-filled nicula,
shunning on your path the proud sweep of the heavy trunks
of elephants that guard the sky's quarters."

Ritusamharam, or, "The Garland of Seasons" is a more traditional poem, consisting of six cantos of four-line stanzas, each depicting a season: summer, rains, autumn, the season of frosts, winter, and spring. Again from Canto II (Rains):

"With streaming clouds trumpeting like haughty tuskers,
with lightning banners and drum beats of thunder claps,
in towering majesty, the season of rains
welcome to lovers, now comes like a king, my love."

"Hurling thunderbolts that crash down to strike terror,
bending bows strung with lightning streaks, letting loose
fierce sharp-shooting showers - cruel arrows, fine-honed -
clouds, relentless, wound the hearts of men far from home."

The Sign of Shakuntala, which is Rajan's last translation, is a play, about a baby girl Shakuntala, who was abandoned in the forest by her mother (an apsara, a sort of magical beautiful being) and her father (a sage who disowned her). Discovered and raised by a woodsman, she meets King Dushyanta while he is hunting in the forest one day. They fall in love, and they enter into a marriage. He gives her his ring, promsing to return for her.

Shakuntala, who now has a son by the king, is dreaming about her husband in the woods, one day, and does not see and fails to greet a famous sage. The sage, incensed (not very sage-like, I thought) curses her: the one she is thinking about will forget her. Sure enough, when Shakuntala goes hunting for the king, he has forgotten her. She is unable to prove her story, because her ring slips off and falls into a river while she is crossing it to meet the king. The king casts her out, and she returns to the woods with her son. Meanwhile, a fishermen, cutting open the belly of the fish, finds the royal ring that slipped off Shakuntala's finger. When he returns it to the King, the King remembers her, and the family is reunited. Shakuntala has been adapted and readapted thousands of times: as a play, as a music, and even, several times, as an opera.

If you've never read Kalidasa, I'd highly recommend him. There are several free translations online, as well as Chandra Rajan's translation. I like Rajan's translation, however, because of the classical formality of her verse.

It's an education reading your reviews of Indian poetry!

Yes, thank you for those reviews! You made me go look for information on available French translations, and I found that the magazine Europe published an issue about Indian litterature in 2001. I downloaded the pdf of the introduction and table of contents, and I think I might order the magazine, or maybe try to see if it's available at my library.

Just catching up after a week away. The Fandorin novels sound intriguing. I'm a fan of detective novels. And, as Rebecca says, your poetry reviews are very interesting.

>31 reva8: & >35 reva8: just wow. This is all new to me and most of us here. So fascinating to read about these poets. You certainly make me want to read them.

>36 rebeccanyc: >37 FlorenceArt: Glad that people are reading them! And I'm intrigued by this issue of Europe. I wonder what they've translated?
>38 NanaCC: I quite enjoyed the Fandorin novels, although six at a time is a surfeit.
>39 dchaikin: I'm glad, and hope you do!

Marina Lewycka - A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian

This richly comic, dark and funny novel is based roughly on Lewycka's own family history and on her parents' escape from Ukraine in the throes of unrest to the United Kingdom, her fraught relationship with her sister, and her own life. In the book, the narrator, Nadezhda and her sister, Vera fight over their mother's will and remaining property, even as their eccentric, poet-engineer father embarks on an ill-advised marriage to a much younger Ukrainian woman desperate for citizenship in Britain.

Lewycka has a sure and deft hand, measuring out grief, homesickness and histories of brutal suffering and desperation along with highly amusing anecdotes, wry self-aware resentments and hysterical family interludes. I've been very much vested in the immigrant experience this year, I suppose, in part because of reading Nabokov's achingly sweet letters to his wife, in part, because I too, will be leaving my homeland later this year, , but these resonated so strongly because Lewycka's got a gift for balancing misery and joy in equal measure to avoid mawkish sentimentality or boorish slapstick humour. I hate the word, 'poignant' - it's overused in book reviews - but it seems appropriate for this book.

>40 reva8: Reva, here's the list of authors (except for a few essays) from the PDF I downloaded:

Short stories:
S.K. POTTEKKAT
Gopinath MOHANTY
Kishori Charan DAS
Mahasveta DEVI
Qurrat al-‘Ain HAIDAR
Krishna Baldev VAID
Nirmal VERMA
O.V. VIJAYAN
ASHOKAMITRAN
U.R. ANANTHAMURTHY
Prem PRAKASH
Dilip CHITRE
AMBAÏ
Pundalik NAIK
Keisham PRIYOKUMAR
Dhruv SHUKLA

Poems:
SHRI SHRI, NAGARJUN, Dina Nath NADIM, Amrita PRITAM, D. Balagangadhar TILAK, Suresh JOSHI, Nissim EZEKIEL, Popati HIRANANDANI, Lokenath BHATTACHARYA, Jayanta MAHAPATRA, ISMAIL, A. K. RAMANUJAN, Raghuvir SAHAY, Ayyappa PANIKER, C. Narayana REDDY, Arun KOLATKAR, Nirmalprabha
BORDOLOÏ, Sunil GANGOPADHYAY, Kedarnath SINGH, Keki N. DARUWALLA, Dom MORAES, Ravji PATEL, Padma SACHDEV, Sitanshu YASHASHCHANDRA,
Girdhar RATHI, A.K. MEHROTRA, Mangalesh DABRAL, Namdeo DHASAL, Jyoti LANJEWAR, Joy GOSWAMI, SHIKHAMANI, Gagan GILL.

>41 reva8: I think I'll have to wishlist this. Frankly just the title alone would be enough, but your review makes it sounds worthwhile.

>42 FlorenceArt: What a fantastic list, and thank you for taking the trouble to post it here! Dabral, Dhasal, Ramanujan are all fine poets and Kolatkar has long been my favourite. Of the authors you listed, Gopinath Mohanty, Mahasweta Devi, Haider, Ambai and Chitre are those I've read and loved. Hope you can find this one, it's sounds great.

Thanks Reva! The introduction was very scholarly and didn't do much for me, but since the selection of authors seems to be good and there are so few French translations available, I think I'll order it. It seems to be available from the magazine's website, although unfortunately in the original paper version and not electronically.

41> I heard about this book years ago, but never followed up on it. I think I must put it on the wish list.

Review: Shawkat Osman - God's Adversary and Other Stories, translated from Bangla to English by Osman Jamal



Shaukat Osman (1916-1998) was one of Bangladesh's pre-eminent novelists and writers. He lived through the nation's most turbulent times, from the period of liberation from colonial rule, to annexation by Pakistan and subsequent independence to become Bangladesh. He was particularly bitter about General Ayub Khan's grabbing of power from a democratic elected government, and wrote an allegorical story (The Laughter of the Slave) that received wide acclaim. He later went into exile, while Bangladesh fought for independence from Pakistan, and remained, writing a fictionalised diary for a Bangladeshi government-in-exile (Mujibnagar).

Osman began his career as a poet, and continued to write poetry through his life, but also began, over time, to write short stories and novels. He has a keen eye for satire, a commendable empathy with his fellow people, particularly Bangladesh's poor and rural citizens, and an overwhelming sense of how the political crosses into the personal.



In this collection, God's Adversary and Other Stories, the translator Osman Jamal introduces him in an excellent essay detailing Osman's life and works. Jamal says,

"Osman has sometimes called himself a literary scavenger. He has likened his job to that of a murdafarash, a remover of dead bodies. Moving dead bodies, albeit metaphorical, out of the way, is a job, he believes a writer, especially a writer of the Third World, cannot ignore. To him, pursuit of art, in the sense of fine writing, is self-indulgence. He seems to see the two goals - the political and the aesthetic - in terms of binary opposition."

I don't agree with Osman's rather functional vision of literature, but when applying his yardstick to his own work, it is hard not to concede that he succeeds in both, fine writing and social relevance. Common themes run through the stories in this collection, the strongest of which is inequality in all its omnipresent forms in Bangladesh. Coupled with this are repeated narrations of how the peasant views the distant city - the city representing prosperity and wealth, the peasant, hardship and poverty.

In 'How He Went to Heaven' a Bengal peasant suffers at the hands of law courts and moneylenders, ending up heaven while the priest who sent him there robs his widow of her savings. In 'Abbas' - the first - and strongest story in this collection, the orphaned child Abbas walks down a long road from his village, where he used to love fishing - to the city, where he will be working in a factory. In 'Abbas', Abbas' stepmother, his only living family, sends him to the city, hoping he will learn a trade and have a future, although it is evident that what lies ahead is sweat and menial labour. Osman takes this theme further in 'Education' in which Jahar Mia, a boatman dreams of his son becoming a civil servant ('oppiser'), only to have his hopes dashed by an 'oppiser' who defrauds him.

Consequent to these themes, of course, is the notion of corruption, as exemplified in 'Father Johannes' - the story of a British priest who gives in to demands for finances for the parish school and activities by opening a gambling fair in his town. It makes sufficient money, but Father Johannes own moral discomfort with his corruption is matched with his servant's discontent as money accumulates for the church, leaving nothing for his broken down mosque. And yet, it is not entirely a collection of gloom and misery. Osman has a gift for humour - most clearly seen in 'Partners' and 'Jodu Jalaluddin' - both allegorical stories concerning religion and desire. The titular story, 'God's Adversary' is also an allegory, but more trenchant than amusing, about a man who attempts to emulate God's omnipresence.

Finally, the translators chose, bearing in mind Osman's focus on the political, three stories that centre around the events of 1971, when Bangladesh won independence from Pakistan (with Indian interventions). These three stories, 'The Wolf Forest', 'Two Brigadiers' and 'The Bill' are about war and resistance. As with another small story, 'Junu Apa' (about an unmarried young woman trying to settle down), Osman begins with a gentleness that is deceptive, slipping in notes of savage satire that catch the reader unaware.

I was very moved by this short collection. It is a difficult read, but a fascinating insight into Bangladesh. Osman is - if this makes sense - savage in his compassion, forcing the reader to look eye to eye with suffering and acknowledge it. And that is something that transcends the Bangladeshi context.

Very interesting review about an intriguing book.

Very interested to read your excellent review of God's Adversary and other Stories. Bangladesh only seems to make world news headlines when the monsoon results in those terrible floods and so it was good to read a little about it's turbulent recent history and to get a glimpse of day to day life.

>48 rebeccanyc: Thanks, Rebecca!
>49 baswood: This is true, and part of the reason I was so glad that I read some Bangladeshi literature as well, for perspective.

I really enjoyed your review of Shawkat Osman.

Review - Andrey Kurkov - The Case of the General's Thumb



Andrey Kurkov (1961) is a Ukrainian novelist, who writes in Russian. He was recently in the news for publishing his publishing his Ukraine Diaries -a record of the upheavals and trials of living in modern Ukraine (although Wikipedia tells me he now resides in the UK).

The Case of the General's Thumb (translated by George Bird) is a dark, clever detective/spy novel about the death of a decorated general in Kiev. His body is found, missing a thumb, attached to an advertising balloon, gently rising off the ground, by a low ranking Kiev policeman, Viktor Slutsky. Meanwhile, in Russia, a KGB translator, Tadzhik Nik Tsensky is moved to Ukraine to help in a mission to recover some missing funds, connected with the death of the missing general. Unaware of each other, Nik and Viktor are on a cat and mouse chase across Europe.

As thrillers go, the plot isn't particularly revelatory, or new. What elevates this book, though, is the beautiful, spare prose. When the plot demands urgency, Kurkov is able to create the feeling without the prose losing any of its measure, and that makes this a pleasant, if light, read.

>51 dchaikin: Thank you!

Saeed Jones - Prelude to Bruise

There's not much I find myself able to say about this book, apart from this: it is beautiful, brutal and very bleak.

Other people's reviews:
Amal El Mohtar in NPR,
Nolan Feeney in Time
Anna Journey in the Kenyon Review.

>54 reva8: well, you left me curious enough to check out the NPR review. What led you to Saeed Jones?

Wow, I read the NPR review and it is impressive. I'm not used to reading poetry, but I'm going to add this to my wishlist.

>55 dchaikin: He won the PEN award earlier this year, and I'd bookmarked a couple of reviews to check him out. When I read them, his work seemed intriguing, so I read it. On further reflection, the book is patchy, in parts, but there's no denying his power. So much life (as opposed to the milksap MFA variety one keeps seeing these days).

>56 FlorenceArt: Hope you enjoy it!

I always wonder whether so much new stuff is "milksap MFA" or that I'm just looking at it the wrong way, or in a non-seeing or non-open way. Not just poetry. Anyway, thanks for getting me interested in this lasted PEN award winner.

Review - Sangeeta Bandyopadhyay - Abandon, translated from the Bengali by Arunava Sinha

I disliked this book greatly, but I believe that has more to do with the fact that I found myself unable to sympathise with the protagonist at all, rather than with the quality of the writing. Bandyopadhyay is credited with introducing and normalising female desire into Bengali fiction - her story, 'Panty' caused a sensation when it was published in 2006, and again, when it was translated into English in 2014. Abandon, the third of her nine novels, refers not just to sexual abandonment but to abandonment in the most literal sense.

Abandon is the story of Ishwari, a young, well-educated woman who escapes a loveless, violent marriage, leaving her son, Roo, behind. A year later she returns, to take Roo, whom she describes as her "soul," to the city of Calcutta. Ishwari has written a novel, but it hasn't been published. Her Art (capital A) is important to her: important enough that she refers to her novel-writing, art-loving self as "I" and her responsible mother persona as "Ishwari". As if this were not confusing enough, she sometimes, but not always, collapses the distinction. Impoverished and alone, she visits friends in Calcutta who refuse her help, until finally, a taxi driver, Sukul, and an aging guesthouse caretaker, Gourohari, find her a room to stay in. The guesthouse owner, an old patron of the arts, Rantideb, finds her a job (after "Ishwari" finds two and "I" loses them again), but she leaves. Roo is constantly hungry, and now increasingly unwell, and Ishwari swings between adoring her son and being enraged by his needs, all the while longing for a return to her novel ("..oh God, must I churn the poison of this humiliation with my own hands in pursuit of my art?").

Eventually, through Rantideb's intervention she finds occupation as a companion to an unwell, businessman, Bibaswan, who is recuperating from a terrible accident, and grieving the death of his own wife and child. They talk of books and literature (which satisfies her "I") even as she embarks on a brief affair with the taxi driver, Sukul, who helped her. While conducting this affair, she abandons herself to pleasure, even as she despises herself for the differences between them ("..Sukul was an uneducated male, she was an educated woman"). The affair with the autodriver does not work out, but she slowly finds herself falling in love with Bibaswan. All the while, Roo is getting sicker and sicker. The novel culminates more brutally that one expects: Bibaswan gives Ishwari the intellectual companionship she craves, but tells her that there is no place in his life for her child. Roo falls critically ill, his kidneys collapse, but he survives, and when he is better, Ishwari takes him to a fair and abandons him there so she can go back to her intellectual life, but loathes herself for doing so.

I tried hard to find some sort of sympathy for Ishwari, but I find myself unable to be moved greatly, I suppose, in part because the author seems to despise her too (or atleast, Ishwari is written as despising herself). Certainly, she has suffered (she had an unhappy childhood, a bad marriage and she doesn't have much money), and I can see why she made her choices. But I can't tell what Bandyopadhyay is trying to say through this book, about Art or life or love or desire or anything else. It seems to me to be a narrative with neither soul nor sympathy.

You can read an excerpt of the first chapter, from the translator's website, here:
http://arunavasinha.in/2013/06/06/abandon-the-beginning-sangeeta-bandyopadhyay/

Sorry you didn't love the book, but I appreciate the review and the look into Bengali literature. A mom (not) balancing writing and parenthood...could there be any autobiographical elements to it?

>61 reva8: I really can't say if it's autobiographical, I don't have much information on the writer. I was disappointed, though. The book had great reviews.

Review: Jeffrey Eugenides - Middlesex

This was an entertaining read. Eugenides clearly has a gift, and he utilises it well: a flair for description, characters that draw empathy, and a story that is engaging. This book won the Pulitzer for fiction, and I agree, for once with their assessment. It is well worth the read.

Eugenides' protagonist, Cal Stephanides is born a hermaphrodite, but is initially not identified as such, because he carries largely feminine characteristics - until puberty. The onset of puberty triggers the realisation that he isn't, in fact, like other girls, and an ultimate medical diagnosis reveals to him that he is genetically, largely male. Calliope, age 15, decides to be Cal, and lives subsequently as a man, although he identifies clearly as female until then.
This is, however, a book that is not just about Cal, but also about three generations of his Greek-American familly, from his grandparents' flight after Smyrna was sacked by the Turks, to his parents' wedding and life in suburbia, to their giant house on the eponymous Middlesex avenue in Grosse Point, Michigan. Eugenides also has a flair for humour, which allows him to convey the trials of growing up different, not just as a hermphrodite, but also as a Greek immigrant amidst Americans. The story also explains how the Stephanides family carried the gene that makes Cal what he is.

I enjoyed this book, although I don't have the time to do it justice with a long review. So I'll just link two reviews that I think capture the book well:

Daniel Mendelsohn's review for NYRB, 'Mighty Hermaphrodite'
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2002/nov/07/mighty-hermaphrodite/

Laura Miller's review for NYT
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/15/books/my-big-fat-greek-gender-identity-crisis....

Strange, I could have sworn that Middlesex was in my wishlist already. Well, it is now. Thank you for the review!

A couple of Dick Francis novels

I spent an extended weekend with family, and rather unfortunately, left both, my kindle and my book (TM Krishna's A Southern Music) on a table by the door at home, as I was leaving. For a while, it seemed as though I might not survive the weekend, but then I discovered that a distant uncle (who has never been within spitting distance of a horse in his life) had a hoard of Dick Francis novels hidden away in a cupboard. I ended up reading five of them, and rather enjoyed them. I haven't read any since I was quite young, and since I don't really ride myself, I rapidly lost interest as a child.

As an adult, however, I liked how Francis deftly constructs tight, engaging plots. He plunges you right in, and you are drawn in even if you know nothing about the world of horses or racing. When you read five of his novels in a row, however, you do realise that all his protagonists are basically the same character (I'm not referring to the two or so series he did, one featuring a crime-solving jockey and the other featuring a former jockey who coincidentally solved crime). They're all basically cast from the same mould: stoic, extremely, even stereotypically British, reticent and modest, hard working, passionate about horses in one way or another, physically tall and slim, able to withstand large amounts of physical pain and generally too proud to complain about said pain. Even the idealised female characters are similar: built slim, delicate features, extremely intelligent, very independent and with understated style and apparent generosity of spirit.

It's no crime to stick to a successful formula, particularly when Francis executes them unflaggingly well. I would not, however, recommend reading five of his novels in succession because that does make the formula more apparent than it otherwise would be. I like the way he introduces tangential aspects of racing into his stories: his protagonists are not all jockeys: some are bankers or civil servants with a passion for riding; some paint horses and others photograph them, some breed or train or sell them. Having said that, I should be very clear that these are beach novels, and while he does touch upon a couple of more complex themes now and then (pride and intimacy, the ability of men to cope with grief and bereavement, human frailties), they are intended to be any more than entertaining pulp novels: and they are.

The ones I read, briefly, were:
To The Hilt: this is about a young, gifted painter who is charged by his uncle, the patriarch with hiding the pride of his Scottish family's inheritance: a gold sword hilt said to be gifted to his family by Bonnie Prince Charles. While the British government is trying to get its hands on the hilt, his stepfather falls unwell, and he discovers a massive scam that may have impoverished his mother and stepfather. The young artist succeeds in uncovering the scam, and protecting the hilt, but at some cost to himself. The horse connection is that his wife is a trainer, and that his stepfather's business owns a horse.

Shattered is about an expert glassblower, Gerard Logan, whose friend, a jockey, dies of injuries on the race course. Before his death, Logan's friend leaves him a videotape, of importance, but the tape is stolen before Logan can see it. As Logan attempts to track it down, all sorts of nefarious characters also try to get it before he can. Featuring an evil scientist, a teenage computer hacker, a tough female cop, and an excon with three bulldogs.

10 LB Penalty: is about Ben Juliard, just out of school, who wants to be a jockey. His father does not approve, and takes Ben instead to help him campaign as he stands for elections for a seat in the House of Commons. Ben and his distant father get to know each other, and Ben's quick reflexes save his father when the aspiring politician becomes the subject of a rather violent hate campaign. Five years later, Juliard senior is tipped for the next Prime Minister when the old troubles resurface, and Ben sorts them out again. This one was fun: tightly plotted with lots of surprises.

Break in and Bolt both feature Christmas (Kit) Fielding, a talented young jockey who rides horses for a woman of some distant European royalty (the Princess, as Fielding calls her). His brother-in-law is from the Allardyce family, which has has a feud going with the Fieldings going back centuries until Bobby Allardyce marries Kit's sister. An attempt to scupper Bobby's fledgling horse training business brings out Kit's protective side and he succeeds in saving his sister and brother, and putting rest to the feud: but in the process, making an enemy of Maynard Allardyce, Bobby's father. In Bolt, Kit again helps resolve a messy problem, this time involving the Princess' husband, whose business partner is pressuring him into an immoral deal. Meanwhile Maynard Allardyce seems resolved to destroy Kit's career. In both book, Kit's friendship with the Princess, his evolving relationship with the Princess' niece, and his ability to 'sense' trouble, particularly when it involves his sister, intertwine with a line of seriously thuggish criminals.

Entertaining stuff.

I remember getting lost in Middlesex and I still wonder about the Detroit history bits.

Fun reviews of Dick Francis. If I'm also ever trapped with nothing else to read, then I'll consider. ;)

Just catching up, and enjoying your reviews. You've had some great reading.

What a nice idea - to spend a weekend with a popular novelist and be entertained.

I read the Daniel Mendelssohn's review of Middlesex, which was quite detailed and is one of those reviews you would want to read after you have read the book.

Review: Lyudmila Petrushevskaya - There Once Lived A Woman Who Tried To Kill Her Neighbour's Baby: Scary Fairy Tales



Lyudmilla Petrushevskaya now tours and performs a one-woman show, wearing a magnificent floppy hat. She writes her own songs but has at various times, been a playwright, a writer of novels and stories, a visual artist and a singer. In the introduction to this bleak, yet compassionate collection, the translators, Keith Gessen and Anna Summers write of an episode in Petrushevskaya's life that really defines the context to these stories. In 1973, Petrushevskaya took a trip to Lithuania to visit Thomas Mann's summer home there. As a proscribed writer from the USSR, she couldn't go legally, so she went to the Russian town nearest to the border, and hitchhiked across. The year before, her husband had died at the age of 32 after a long illness, and Petrushevskaya, grieving and alone, made this pilgrimage, meeting all kinds of people, finding difficulties, encountering trouble and yet feeling, finally, freedom.

Her stories contain this same peculiar mix of exhilaration and grief, of an acute sense of the sadness of people, but with redemption, or atleast, hope, peeping around the edges. It isn't surprising that Gessen and Summers write, therefore:

"We know of no other writer in any language who is working at such a pitch of emotion, with such honesty in even the smallest and shortest stories, with such a profound knowledge of people's dreams and disappointments and consolations."

There Once Lived A Woman Who Tried To Kill Her Neighbour's Baby: Scary Fairy Tales is divided into four sections, each containing several stories. 'Songs of the Eastern Slavs' contains what the translators call 'urban folk tales' - dark, surreal and grim episodes, with only the barest hints of compassion or tenderness. In 'The Arm' for instance, an army colonel drops his identification into his wife's coffin while at her funeral. In a dream, she bids him retrieve it, but not to look at her face when he does. Naturally, he cannot resist and lifts her veil, only to pay a price. In 'Revenge' a woman tries to kill her neighbour's baby, and believes she succeeds, only to find herself suffering tremendously, in turn. 'Incident at Sokolniki' follows this vein, setting the pattern for one of Petrushevskaya's key themes: people, encountering well-beloved friends or family, believing them to be alive, when they are actually dead. It seems too simple to call these ghost stories - most of them are in the third section, titled 'Requiems' and it is more accurate to call them 'grief stories'. It is only 'Requiems' that we see stories that demonstrate that Petrushevskaya is capable not just of grim terror, but also of a deep, sure understanding and compassion for human suffering.

'Allegories' - the second section, contain some of Petrushevskaya's more well-known stories, describing apocalyptic worlds. These are horrifying stories, gruesome: 'Hygiene' is about a plague striking a city, and attacking a quarrelling family; and 'The New Robinson Crusoes' is about an family trying to survive in a post-apocalyptic world with little or no food; the father, with feverish delight at the adventure of being alone in a new world, the daughter struck by the loneliness and misery of it. The collection ends with a section that the translators have titled 'Fairy Tales' - fairy tales in the classical sense, allegorical, with magic and myth.

The story that I found most moving, however, was called 'There's Someone in The House' - about a woman coming to terms with crippling grief, learning again how to live her life alone, and to go on when there's nothing to go on for. The narrator in this story is convinced that there's a monster in her house, bringing down shelves, attacking her, and so she attempts to outwit it by destroying things herself. Her cat, emaciated, lives with her, and the pattern continues until she abandons the cat and leaves, only to realise that it is possible, after all, to go back, and to rebuild what has been broken. There's so much surprising gentleness in her stories, too, usually, in a quick twist to the end, so I won't tell you about them. I will say though, that this collection is remarkable: brutal in its compassion.

>68 reva8: Wow! That sounds very intriguing.

Various Links of Interest

Just things I've been reading.

• An interview in the Paris Review with Emmanuel Carrere, whose Limonov I read this year, and greatly enjoyed. I loved this bit:
  

  INTERVIEWER: Why is the book called Bravoure, which is sort of a cross between courage and chutzpah?
  CARRÈRE: Out of pretension, I’m afraid. There is an expression in French—“morceau de bravoure.” It’s a novel that seeks to be virtuosic, to say, Look what I can do.
  INTERVIEWER: But in the book, there is a moment when you use the word . . .
  CARRÈRE: To justify the title. Which is even more awkward! Can we move on?

  
  
• Roberto Calasso's Art of Fiction interviewin the Paris Review, as a prelude to reading his book, Ardor.
  
• Taylor and Francis made available a collection of articles on and about women in philosopy; I'm glad for the generous selection on Arendt.
  http://explore.tandfonline.com/page/ah/women-in-philosophy
  
• Amartya Sen on the revival of the ancient Indian university, Nalanda
  http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2015/aug/13/india-stormy-revival-naland...
  
• August Kleinzahler on John Berryman's dream songs
  http://www.lrb.co.uk/v37/n13/august-kleinzahler/all-the-girls-said-so
  
  

68> " brutal in its compassion" -- what a summary!

>69 rebeccanyc: It's a fascinating collection, and I've begun on a second one by her as well.
>71 janeajones: It's the only (somewhat vague) way I found to describe her writing. I hope it conveys what I'm trying to say.

>68 reva8: Wow! I tried to find a French translation of this book, or any book by Petrushevskaia, but couldn't find any, so I guess I'll have to wishlist the English translation.

Eric Hobsbawm - Revolutionaries

Revolutionaries is a collection of reviews and essays by the noted British Marxist historian, Eric Hobsbawm. When I was young, and cultivating an interest in history, I read his four volumes on the 19th and 20th centuries (The Age of Extremes, The Age of Revolution, The Age of Capital and The Age of Empire) and his lucid, clear style left a long-lasting impression. I've had two Hobsbawm books on the TBR for this year: one, of course, was Revolutionaries and the other, the intriguingly-titled, How to Change the World.



Revolutionaries is a collection of essays, speeches and reviews, all revolving around themes of revolution. Hobsbawm categories these into five groups. An initial section, titled 'Communists' is largely composed of reviews: In 'Problems of Communist History' he addresses historiography in the Communist movement, focusing on James Klugmann's history of the British Communist party. 'Radicalism and Revolution in Britain' similarly is a review on Kenneth Newton's The Sociology of British Communism, while his essay on French communism is more general and examines several authors and approaches. My reading of this section was hampered greatly for two reasons: firstly, I know the general outlines, but lack specific knowledge of Communist history in Europe, and secondly, I haven't read many of the texts that he reviews or addresses. Nevertheless, I enjoy his writing so I soldiered on.

The second section, 'Anarchists' is more approachable, containing four essays on the evolution of anarchism, how anarchists and bolsheviks perceived each other, and particularly, anarchism in Spain. I enjoyed his essay on the intellectuals and the Spanish civil war, particularly his brief but appreciative treatment of Orwell's Homage to Catalonia. The third section returns to fairly technical discussions on Marxism, but his lecture on Karl Marx and the British Labour Movement (delivered as the Karl Marx Memorial Lecture, on Marx's 85th death anniversary) with his rather prescient claim that 24 October 1929 would be remembered for the collapse of a capitalist system (althought I wouldn't go so far as he does and describe it as 'the end of the period of capitalistic stabilisation").

The last two sections overlap a little: in 'Soldiers and Guerrillas' he has three essays that examine warfare, and in 'Insurrectionaries and Revolution' an accumulation of essays that did not fit neatly into the other categories. Of note are two essays: in 'Revolution and Sex' he makes a rather ambitious claim that divorces political revolutions and morality (to some extent yes, but not as far he takes it) and in 'Vietnam and the Dynamics of the Guerrilla War' he presents a concise, contemporary account of the reasons for the United States' losses in Vietnam. Hobsbawm's accurate summation of the merits and demerits of guerrilla warfare is as much a general claim as it is a specific one, regarding Vietnam: "Nonetheless there are limitations to a guerrilla army's ability to win a war, though it usually has effective means to avoid losing one." His treatment of Hannah Arendt, I thought, was harsh, in 'Hannah Arendt on Revolution', although he has correctly identified a category of modern political writing as "the vague terrain which lies between literature, psychology and what, for want of a better word, is best called social prophecy.."

All in all, an excellent, informative read: I suspect that any shortcomings were largely through my own unfamiliarity with the material he occasionally discusses than with Hobsbawm's writing.

>73 FlorenceArt: Hope you enjoy it!

Enjoyed your review of the Hobsbawm essays

>76 baswood: Glad to hear it!

Nammalvar - Hymns for the Drowning
(translated by AK Ramanujan from Tamil)

Nammalvar was a medieval Tamil poet, one of the 12 alvars, or saint-poets of South India who dedicated their life and work to the Hindu god, Vishnu, in his many incarnations. Nammalvar belongs to the fine Indian tradition of bhakti ; literally, this means 'worship' or 'devotion' but practically, refers to a specific kind of worship and related to that, a specific kind of literature of worship. The Bhakti movement began as a medieval movement, and the alvars were a key part of it: their worship is intense and personal, and they are often, like the Sufis, sensual in their devotion to god. More than anything else, the Bhakti movement was intensely egalitarian, moving worship from the privilege rituals conducted by the upper castes and priests to personal, individual devotion.

Nammalvar (literally, 'our poet' or 'our alvar') lived approximately from 880 to 930 AD, and devoted his life to the worship of the god Vishnu (within the trinity of Hindu gods, Vishnu is the preserver, Brahma the creator, and Siva the destroyer. Visnu appears in many incarnations, including as Krishna, the dark-skinned, blue-necked god). Nammalvar wrote over a thousand hymns, these were passed down through oral tradtions and collected in the 10th century by the scholar Natamuni. This set of translations, by the scholar and poet AK Ramanujan, contains eighty-three hymns.

As with all the bhakti poets, I find in Nammalvar's work great peace and beauty, even though I myself don't worship Vishnu. While many of the hymns are contextual and appreciated best with some knowledge of the background myths and stories surrounding the gods, there are still poems that appeal (not unlike the works of Donne or Eliot) to the secular as well as the devout. I'll leave you with an excerpt.

4
Rich and perfect sound
  of strings
  on an ancient lute

other than all others
 that good men study

purity
 sweetness of sugarcane
  and ambrosia

O dark raincloud
 Krisna

without you;
I'm not:

 take me

from The Takeover
My lord
 who lives in the city
 of names
came here today

said he'd never leave
 entered me
  filled my heart

I've caught him
 the big-bellied one
 not content yet
with all that guzzling
 on the sevenfold clouds
 the seven seas
 the seven mountains
 and the world that holds them all

I've caught him
I contain him now

Hugh MacDiarmid - The Revolutionary Art of the Future: Rediscovered Poems (edited by John Manson, Dorian Greve and Alan Riach (Carcanet, in association with the Scottish Poetry Library, 2003)

I'm not quite sure how I ended up reading this book since I'm not a fan of MacDiarmid generally, but it was on the TBR, and having picked it up, I felt obliged to complete it.

I don't *get* MacDiarmid as a poet. Perhaps one just requires a particularly Scottish mindset, or a better understanding of his times, but none of his poems really spoke to me. I found them atonal, arrhythmic for the most (except when he wrote in Scottish, in which case I could discern a rhythm but understand little to nothing of the verse). The subject of most of his poems seems to be deep internal torment, which I can sympathise with, but I didn't find that these translated particularly well into poetry, as such. Since I'm not a scholar of poetry, I tend to go with my gut, and MacDiarmid, my gut did not like. To be fair, this is a collection of odds and ends, scraped together from his papers in the Scottish National Library, and not really representative of the best of his work. Nevertheless, I found it a charmless, dour selection of poems.

You've been doing a lot of interesting reading lately!

>52 reva8: - I enjoyed the couple Kurkov books that I read, and there are a couple more on the pile although not this one. Sounds like it is worth reading as well.

>59 reva8: - Too bad about Abandon - it sounds like it could have been interesting, but turned out really unpleasant.

>68 reva8: - Terrific review of the Petrushevskaya. I read that one last year and was planning to read a couple more books of her stories that are available at the library.

>80 DieFledermaus: I have! One of the perks of being on vacation. Although a lot of my reading has been coursework for college in the fall (I'm not even listing those here, I doubt they're of interest to anyone).

I plan to pick up another by Kurkov soon (the two Penguin books), and the next Petrushevskaya is on my TBR.

I have never warmed to MacDiarmid either.

>82 baswood: Glad to know I'm not alone!

Graham Greene - The Tenth Man



I began reading Greene rather late in life: the first book by him that I read was The End of the Affair, last year and this year I listened to Colin Firth narrate the same story in an audiobook. I may have read something by Greene when I was younger, but evidently it didn't leave much of an impression. I'm slowly discovering his work, and enjoying it as I go.

The Tenth Man was a random pick: I found it lying around in a bookshelf at home and decided to read it. In his introduction, Greene explains that he had written this under contract with MGM and had turned over all rights to them, including two other short, small screenplay suggestions. A few years later, well after he'd forgotten the story, MGM sold the rights to another buyer who approached him with the text to approve changes. Greene partially rewrote the story, and noted, on rediscovering the forgotten text that, "What surprised and aggravated me most of all was that I found this forgotten story very readable - indeed I prefer it in many ways to The Third Man...."

I liked the novel tremendously, for all reasons that people are fond of Greene's work: his spare, elegant prose, and rhythm of his writing. I did find the plot a little mawkish and sentimental but I don't mind that. This is the story of a lawyer, Chavel, who is jailed for no crime of his during the Nazi occupation of France. While in jail, with twenty-nine other men, their jailors decide to kill one in every ten of the thirty, to convey their fierceness to the French resistance. The prisoners are to choose who must die, and when it comes to picking scraps from a show, Chavel's scrap has an 'x' marked on it, indicating he must die. Chavel offers his wealth and his childhood home to anyone willing to take his place, and a young, poor fellow agrees to do so if Chavel will turn over his wealth to the man's sister and mother. Chavel is spared. The rest of the novel concerns Chavel's return to his childhood home under a false name after the war, although it is now occupied by the man's sister and mother. I won't reveal more, only to say that while the ending was not unexpected, it was still well-executed.

I'll also, in lieu of any more comments, add on this little exchange between Chavel (under a false name) and the sister of the dead man.

"Do you know the night they shot him I felt the pain? I sat up in bed crying.."
"It wasn't at night," Charlot said. "It was in the morning."
"Not at night?"
"No."
"What did it mean then?"
"Just nothing," Charlot said. He began to cut a piece of cheese into tiny squares. "That's often the way. We think there's a meaning but then we find the facts are wrong - there isn't just one. You wake with a pain and afterwards you think that was love- but the facts don't fit."

Sujata Bhatt - Brunizem (1988, Carcanet)



Sujata Bhatt's Brunizem is a short collection of poems; her first, published by Carcanet, although she had published poems before in poetry magazines and journals. An Indian immigrant from Gujarat, she moved to the UK, and then on to Germany, and writes largely about the immigrant experience and her childhood in India. She also writes a lot about women and female sexuality: perhaps no great shakes today, but certainly controversial enough in 1988 when this collection was published (and I was an infant, dreaming no doubt, of the books to come). Bhatt's poems combine vivid imagery with a keen sense of memory, and you feel very much like you are looking into a painting. Some of her poetry, particularly what she calls her 'erotic poems' I found a little harsh and dissonant (but I do find anything of the sort, apart from Donne's work, largely unappealing, so I'm sure she's not entirely to blame here).

I'm going to include this as part of my 'read more books by Indian women' list, even though she's strictly no longer Indian but German (no, I had not forgotten that project). I'll leave instead with a couple of links:

An interview with Sujata Bhatt, conducted by Vicki Betram of Carcanet
http://www.carcanet.co.uk/cgi-bin/scribe?showdoc=4;doctype=interview

'The Peacock' by Sujata Bhatt
http://www.english-for-students.com/the-peacock.html

'What is worth knowing' by Sujata Bhatt
http://www.poetrybyheart.org.uk/poems/what-is-worth-knowing/

>84 reva8: Very nice review. I had not read much of Greene, maybe it is time to change that.

>84 reva8: I started reading Greene last year, much later in life than you I believe! I liked The Power and the Glory and The Quiet American better than Orient Express (otherwise known as Stamboul Train, but I also have other titles that have been on my TBR for years. I haven't read The End of the Affair and I never heard of The Tenth Man before; it sounds intriguing.

I read quite a lot of Greene's novels a couple of years ago, but never got to The Tenth Man. It doesn't sound essential, but the sort of book you might enjoy if picked up at a second hand book stall on a rainy Sunday morning.

Haven't read any Greene in years (I came to him early in my 20s) -- but I'm sure I never read The Tenth Man -- I'll keep an eye out for it.

Greene is another one of these authors that I keep thinking I must read when I see reviews. But I'm don't think I will pick The Tenth Man, it doesn't appeal much compared to others.

what a rich collection of works you have been going through. I enjoyed catching up. Lots of poetry too. Very interesting about Nammalvar. Noting historiian Eric Hobsbawn, who I had not heard of before.

>86 AnnieMod: I'm slowly discovering his books, too, though this seems to be a lesser-known work.

>87 rebeccanyc: Oh, good, so I'm not the only one! I haven't read any of the other titles you mentioned: I've put them on my TBR, as well.

>88 baswood: Yes, exactly. Not his best work, but interesting enough.

>89 janeajones: I'd love to know what you think of it! Although I don't know if this is the best starting point..

>90 FlorenceArt: Yes, I think something else by him might be better to start with.

>91 dchaikin: Thank you, I've been having a good time reading this month.

Links of Interest

Just things I've been reading about, or reading.

Boston Review carried a review of a new translation of Argentine writer Haroldo Conti's book, Sudeste (Southeaster) by Jon L Miles. It sounded interesting: I haven't read anything by Conti before (and couldn't find anything by him available here) but perhaps I'll get my hands on it when I'm in the States next month.
http://bostonreview.net/books-ideas/jessica-sequeira-haroldo-conti-southeaster

Meg Wolitzer's poems, also in the Boston Review. I liked them, a little rough and hoarse. They reminded me a little of Matthew Dickman (but less lyrical)
http://bostonreview.net/poetry/poets-sampler-lisa-olstein-introduces-meg-freitag

Arunava Sinha's English translation of Bibhutibhushan Pandey's short story, 'Adorsho Hindu Hotel' is available online
http://ns2.caravanmagazineindia.com/fiction/adorsho-hindu-hotel

Nnedi Okorafor has a new book out. I wasn't particularly impressed by Akata Witch, her previous book (it seemed like it was aimed for much younger readers) but this sounds interesting. http://africasacountry.com/2015/07/the-futuristic-lagos-of-nnedi-okorafors-lagoo... In any case, I'm happy to read more SFF, particularly from Africa.

Thanks for the links. I look forward to exploring some of them.

The Boston Review article about Conti is very interesting. I had never heard of that author.

>94 rebeccanyc: You're most welcome!

>95 FlorenceArt: Doesn't it? I am still trying to get my hands on one of his books.

More links of interest

Since the weekends are when I catch up on these things....

I'm a sucker for anything pulp, so I was pleased to learn that both Sophie Hannah (who writes about British detectives Waterhouse and Zailer) and Sara Paretsky (who writes about Polish-American detective VI Warshawski - VI as in Victoria Iphigenia) both have new books out.
Hannah: http://www.npr.org/2015/08/02/428144316/this-woman-with-a-secret-plays-deadly-mi...
Paretsky: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/02/books/review/flight-or-fright.html?partner=rss...

There's also a new translation of Spanish writer By Juan Gabriel Vásquez's stories,titled 'Lovers on All Saints Day', translated from the Spanish by Anne McLean. It sounded interesting, so to the TBR it goes.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/30/books/new-books-from-louisa-hall-christian-kra...

The 2015 Man Booker long list is out. I'm counting out Anuradha Roy, because I read her previous book An Atlas of Impossible Longing and it was pretty awful. But Laila Lalami's The Moor's Account is something I've been wanting to read for a while.
http://www.themanbookerprize.com/man-booker-prize-2015

I've been thinking a lot about how we process information, especially the huge quantities of criticism, reviews, new book lists and 'listicles' and so on on the internet. Often it seems as though there's a surfeit. Naturally, my response was to cast around for someone who's written about this, and perhaps talked of ways to deal with and filter information overload (though I suspect its up to us to individually fashion coping mechanisms). Salon carried a review of a book by Princeton University professor Christy Wampole that seems to touch upon this.
http://www.salon.com/2015/07/28/comment_sections_are_brilliant_and_extremely_rel...

Also relevant is this series in LARB called "No Crisis" which focuses on critical writing and thinking.
https://lareviewofbooks.org/no-crisis/

David Mitchell - The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet

David Mitchell's The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet is a little unlike his other novels, in that for the most part it follows time in a tidy, linear fashion. It does, however, in line with his pastiche storytelling, jump between places. Jacob de Zoet is a historical novel, set in Japan in 1799. The novel begins on the artificial island of Dejima, where the Dutch East India company has been permitted to set up a trading outpost with Japan. Japan, and the nearest city, Nagasaki, however, remain closed to the Dutch: a sea gate closes the island to all but the occasional Dutch ship, and a land gate allows no Dutch through to Japan and in return, permits only three kinds of Japanese into Dejima: high end call girls, merchants and translators. In the midst of this isolation is the young clerk, Jacob de Zoet, who has already earned himself enemies by insisting on honest accounting that makes the rampant cheating by other Dutch traders more difficult.

Jacob de Zoet does not make things easier for himself by falling in love with a Japanese midwife, who has been allowed on to Dejima to learn from the Dutch company doctor, a Dr. Marinus. This woman, Orito Aibagawa, is herself trapped, much like Jacob, because her family eventually sells her to a nunnery after her father dies in debt. This is the part where Mitchell's meticulous research and interesting narration deviate a little: the plot here, as a review in the New Yorker said, becomes "reminiscent of the world of Japanese anime". Jacob naturally takes against the wealthy abbot who owns the nunnery, and attempts to uncover a complex intrigue taking place across Japan (while being confined himself to Dejima).

It is clear that two key themes run through this novel: varieties of imprisonment, and varieties of corruption. These are common Mitchell motifs, you see them in Cloud Atlas too, for instance. The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet has some great and gripping storytelling, but slides a little between serious historical fiction and the usual tropes of salty seadog captains swearing away, Marinus, the cranky genius. If you can tolerate this slight indecision in what the novel is attempting to do, then this is certainly an entertaining read.

Mridula Koshy - If It is Sweet

If it is Sweet is Mridula Koshy's first book, a collection of short (sweet!) stories published by Tranquebar in 2009. I picked this up as part of my plan this year to read more books by Indian women. Koshy, unlike the other books I've tackled for this project, writes in English, and writes very well: I'll be looking forward to more of her work.



This is a collection of 17 short, imaginative stories, deftly told. They concern themselves with the small particulars of every day lives: big sorrows and little, small acts of generosity and large. The most powerful story, by far, is her first: 'The Good Mother', in which a woman who has lost both sons to an accident tries to finally say goodbye in that quintessentially Indian way, by immersing their ashes in the Ganga, while memories cloud and restrain her. Many of Koshy's stories are about motherhood: in 'P.O.P' a mother struggles with acknowledging that she has a favourite son, and in 'Companion' details the relationship between a caretaker hired by the children of an old woman to look after her, while they absent themselves from her lives.

One reviewer, Chandrahas Choudhury, notes that Koshy herself has said that she has been a " trade unionist before she was a mother and a mother before she was a writer.” So it is also common, in her stories for her to feature the lives of the working classes, particularly those that serve the wealthy: 'Romancing the Koodawala' concerns a garbage man, and 'Today is the Day' is about Suraj, a man working as a domestic servant in a large household.

Koshy's stories are often no more than vignettes; a few pages, a few quick images, and little narration. If I have a complaint, it is that she descends too often into trite sentiment and cliche, but this is the voice of a young author finding her bearings and I'll be interested in seeing how her work evolves in time.

Anjum Hasan - Difficult Pleasures



Another book on my read-Indian-women list, this time by Indian poet and novelist Anjum Hasan. Difficult Pleasures, a collection of short stories, is her fourth book, following two novels and a volume of poetry that was published by the Sahitya Akademi (the Indian Academy of Letters).

Difficult Pleasures is a book I can recommend unreservedly (unlike my previous read, which was interesting but not marvellous). When asked about this book in an interview by The Hindu (she was shortlisted for their book prize) she said,

Difficult Pleasures was an experiment to see what I could do with the images that come to me of people’s lives, strangers’ lives. One of the things I realised while writing these stories was how our day-to-day lives are increasingly set in a mould that makes us feel like we know each other or that there is nothing to know because everything is touched with the same banality. Yet to me the interior life is always unique, strange, disturbing and yet familiar. These stories allowed me to explore different kinds of inner lives and the several ways of expressing them. And many of my readers seem to have understood that project.

And this, really is all that is required to describe this collection of stories: little narratives of day to day lives that are at once banal and unique. The struggles that the characters of her stories undergo are largely internal: in 'Revolutions' a man nicknamed 'Science' an amateur photographer struggles with his distance from the world: eating dinner alone he watches a family from his favourite restaurant living their lives, eating and watching television. In 'Good Housekeeping' Ayana returns to India after a failed love affair, attempting to set up houses and being undone by the quotidian, her Good Housekeeping magazines seemingly mocking her. These stories concern themselves with the ordinary, but they themselves are far from ordinary. Her characters, even through these short stories, are fully realised people, with joys and sorrows and pasts and likes.

I don't think I'm doing justice, but I'll only say that I enjoyed this book, and I'm leaving a couple of links to more detailed reviews:
http://www.asiancha.com/content/view/1250/115/
https://northeastreview.wordpress.com/2013/02/28/difficult-pleasures/

Difficult Pleasures sounds great, I wishlisted it. Is it written in English or translated?

>101 FlorenceArt: It's written in English. She's got a website with some of her writing on it, you can check it out here: http://www.anjumhasan.com/

Wonderful reviews -- you make me want to read all three books. Definitely going on my wish list.

Great reviews and enjoying the links too. Will have to check out the new Paretsky; I've missed a couple of novels but I used to read them all.

>103 janeajones: Glad you're enjoying them, and I look forward to your reviews if you do get around to reading them.
>104 rebeccanyc: I had a phase, when I went through about five or six at a go. I wonder I can pick up the new one or if going in order makes more sense.

Benjamin Black - Holy Orders

I picked this book on a whim: it was a short, light read, but I didn't enjoy the jerkiness and heavy-handed prose style.

Benjamin Black is the name John Banville uses, for his series of detective novels featuring pathologist Quirke, his (adoptive) brother Malachy, his semi-estranged daughter Phoebe and his on again, off again girlfriend, an actress called Isabel.

(Spoilers below for the series and this book below- tread with caution)

Quirke is a gloomy alcoholic: he is tormented by memories of childhood abuse experienced while in the care of a religious institution, further tormented by hints of abuse at the hands of his adoptive father (Malachy's father), a judge, tormented still more by the fact that his first love married Malachy and not him, even more by the fact that his own wife died young and his child was brought up by Malachy, and that the revelation that he was her father and not uncle has naturally strained relations between them. It seems like overkill to me.

In the middle of Quirke's nihilistic alcoholic fug, he occasionally solves mysteries along with a sharp witted cop called Inspector Hackett. This book, sixth in the series, concerns a journalist (a friend of his daughter Phoebe). Investigations lead Hackett and Quirke to the church, and in particular, to a priest around whom the most unsavoury rumours follow, and who is being swiftly sent off to Africa amidst some scandal. Another trail leads them to a community of tinkers, who may or may not have had something to do with the priest as well.

This was not the best plotted of books: it seemed clear enough where the author was going with this as soon as the relevant characters were introduced. But more than the plot, it was the author's ponderous style that really sank this book for me. There were many tedious Dept of Backstory type explanations, both, of Quirke's life, and of the various aspects of tinker slang that were used through the book.

I was disappointed because I have read Banville's non-detective work published under his own name, and I am at a loss to understand how his own smooth writing turned into this clunky business. I probably won't be reading the rest of the series.

Yuck, I hate it when that happens. Heavy-handedness is probably what I hate most in a novel.

>107 FlorenceArt: Yes, it wasn't much fun, unfortunately!

If It Is Sweet sounds like a good read - good review.

The American titles for Sophie Hannah's books are never as good as the British titles.

I just picked up a copy of Holy Orders, so I've exhibited uncharacteristic self-control and not looked at your spoiler. I'll come back after I've read it.

Enjoyed your latest several reviews. Noting Anjun Hasan

Well! I don't think I'll *ever* be able to catch up with everyone's threads now. I've just been settling into grad school, doing piles and piles of academic reading, and haven't really had the time to read anything else (but this is the weekend, so perhaps I'll start something new). I'm sorry for the very late replies, but:

>109 DieFledermaus: It's a nice read, but I don't know how easy it is to find outside India.
>110 RidgewayGirl: I quite enjoy Sophie Hannah's books! I'm going to see if my (new) local library has it.
>111 dchaikin: Anjum Hasan is worth keeping an eye on, I think!

Good luck in grad school! You can just ignore all the threads until you're finished.

Yes, absolutely. Good luck in grad school and I hope you enjoy it and have fun too!

yes, very best wishes Reva, I agree with rebecca and ridegwayGirl.

>113 RidgewayGirl: >114 rebeccanyc: >115 tonikat: Thank you all!

Well, the first two weeks were hectic but now I've settled into some sort of routine. I did manage to get a membership to the local library (which is fantastic), but I'm balancing non-academic reading with classwork so I'm sure I'll be reading less from now on.

I saw The End of the Tour, a film about David Foster Wallace. Here's some more information about the film: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3416744/ Apparently the university library has an excellent DVD collection, and I've been wanting to see this for a while. I've only read Wallace's nonfiction, and not Infinite Jest in particular (which is the book he is touring for, in this film). However, it's a film worth seeing, in my opinion, if you like his work.

I also read a couple of books:

Meg Wolitzer - The Uncoupling - I didn't much care for this. She doesn't have the lightness of touch that really defines magical realism: her bits and pieces seemed heavy handed and this really felt like a first novel (which it isn't, I believe).

Richard Flanagan - The Narrow Road to the Deep North - This was much better than Wolitzer's: well written, thoughtful. It is a novel about the lives of Australian soldiers working on building a railway while in Japanese POW camps at the end of WWII. Parts are graphic and horrifyingly disturbing, but Flanagan manages to sustain the pace of the novel through it all.

I'm currently reading:

Amy Gerstler - Scattered at Sea (poems)
James Baldwin - The Cross of Redemption: Uncollected Writings
Carla Speed McNeil - Finder Library volume 1 (graphic novel)
Alice Munro - Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage: Stories

I also began Anne Lamott's Stitch by Stitch but put it aside, because I don't think I'm in the right frame of mind for it. Perhaps later this year.

Nice to get an update from you. I keep thinking I'll read Flanagan's The Narrow Road to the Deep North. (Maybe I will). I'll bet I would love End of the Tour, except that I haven't done much with movies for the last decade or so. Enjoy your classes and reading.

Nice to catch up with you. I read Bird by Bird ages ago and she does take some getting used to. And I do enjoy Alice Munro.

>118 dchaikin: Thank you, and I am enjoying them, rather!
>119 rebeccanyc: Thanks for dropping by! I enjoyed Munro, too.

Good luck with grad school. Glad to hear you're enjoying your classes -- what are you studying?

>121 janeajones: Thank you! Politics, philosophy and law.

A quick update on what I've been reading (apart from the mountains for class - some stuff I've been reading for grad school listed separately below). I don't love the star system, but I haven't the time for detailed reviews. I hope to catch up your threads over Thanksgiving break!

Currently reading:
Robert Roper - Nabokov in America - biography
Brian Boyd - Nabokov The Russian Years
Roberto Calasso - The Ruin of Kasch - fiction
Stefan Zweig - Journey Into the Past - fiction
A Poem at the Right Moment - poetry anthology
Jason Lutes - Berlin City of Stones - graphic novel
Meena Alexander - Raw Silk - poetry

Things I finished reading (more stars=more love, on a scale of 1 to 5) - a partial list, there was more but I cannot remember, so obviously none of those books left an impact.
Marguerite Abouet - Aya Love in Yop City - a fantastic, dense graphic novel ★ ★ ★ ★
Roland Barthes - Mythologies ★ ★ ★ ★
Renata Adler - Speedboat ★ ★ ★
Susan Sontag - Reborn: Journals and Notebooks, As Consciousness is Harnessed To Flesh ★ ★ ★ ★ ★
WS Graham - Selected Poems
Tomas Transtromer - Collected Poems

Things I'm reading or did read for class (a partial list):
John Rawls - A Theory of Justice (this was a re-read)
Robert Nozick - Anarchy, State and Utopia
Avishai Margalit - The Decent Society
Roberto Unger - The Critical Legal Studies Movement (impenetrable)
Iris Young - Justice and the Politics of Difference
Mark Tushnet - Red, White and Blue: A Critical Analysis of Constitutional Law
Akhil Reed Amar - America's Constitution
Michel Foucault - Discipline and Punish (a re-read)

Things that are next on my reading list (both work and fun):
Ronald Dworkin - Taking Rights Seriously and Law's Empire
Timothy Snyder - Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and Warning
Albert Hirschman -Exit, Voice and Loyalty
Desai and Vahed - The South African Gandhi
Linda Hess - Bodies of Song
Claudia Rankine - Citizen an American lyric

Are you enjoying grad school? Interesting reading you're doing for it, and nice to catch up with what you're reading for fun too.

Nice to get an update from you Reva. I was wondering how things were going.

Some great reading. I tried Mythologies a few years ago, but it wasn't working for me. I know it's an important and interesting collection, but my brain just didn't want to be in that mindset.

Yes, that is an interesting list. I'll be back later if a discussion breaks out.