As the Earth Turns Silver – Alison Wong
11 Feb 2011 Leave a Comment
in Book Review, Books, Fiction, Life, philosophy, Reading, Thoughts Tags: Alison, Alison Wong, As the Earth Turns Silver, Contemporary Fiction, India, New Zealand, Winner of 2009
I love receiving books by mail. As I came home one day, with a copy of the Asia Literary Review (which I didn’t know my husband had subscribed to), I received this book! I was filled with a somewhat childish exuberance.
I began to read not knowing what its about. (I am one of those people who like to read the end after reading less than 20 pages of the book.) But somehow, it didn’t greatly appeal to me. I thought it will be one of those books which I pick and don’t finish (which off late have been quite a few).
The books smoothly takes you into the setting. It is a very unique setting. Pre-world war I – New Zealand. Being part of the commonwealth nations that were at one time ruled by the Great Britain, its easy to ignore the far east and far far south east while thinking of World War I.
Amidst the changes that world was going through in the first two decades of the new century, there was a love story brewing somewhere. The story of two people who find themselves alone. Two people who are capable of civility and humanity and who are drawn to each other despite the differences in their physical appearance, colour of the skin and greatest of all – language.
Yung till his end aspires to speak English. Did I say till his end? Yes. The story unfortunately does not end happily. Alison Wong, the author, does provide perspectives. The most frightening being that of Katherine’s son, Robbie. He is the sum of all brain washing that society can do to a child to make it believe in caste and difference in the class of two human beings. Being from India, casteism is something I have seen and grown up with. But somehow, never been able to accept it. I was shocked at the age of 10 when my father told me that untouchability in India was an offence under a special legislation for that purpose. Why should there be any untouchability? Who declared us high and mighty? But my dad just shrugged and said, that is how things were in India.
For a long time I believed that the reason India was not progressing at a pace the western world or its contemporaries have progressed, is because of this blind belief in age old systems. However, at the time no one told me that this is not something that is true of India but is true of every place in the world.
Reading this book has only affirmed that thought process of mine. The holocaust gives me shivers everytime I think of it. In some form or the other people have found excuses to kill each other. I am not advocating that China is not trying to be a super power or that I am not scared of Chinese infiltration into India through the commercial world. But Yung is not China. Yung was not the reason that money was being “squandered” to China from New Zealand. The 5 pounds that Yung sent his sick wife and son he never saw cannot topple the economy.
The anger of people is so misplaced. To systemically teach children to hate on the ground that someone is a lower form of a human being! That’s not an education! Even the one moderniste, feministe, character in the book admonishes Katherine for thinking that a Chinese man was capable of being loved.
It is an extremely well written book. Although I wonder if it only portrays a lop sided picture. I cannot be sure.
Slow Man – J.M. Coetzee
28 Mar 2010 3 Comments
in Book Review, Fiction Tags: Book Review, Coetzee, J.M. Coetzee, Slow Man
He does it every time. I always believe that a book should be read without any research on the author or subject should you wish to read. When I picked up Slow Man, I was intrigued by the title. I didn’t know anything else about the book. Half way through the book I thought I had lost my book and gave up reading it. Yesterday, I found it again and finished it today.
The protagonist Paul Rayment does not strike you as one of those fighter type of people who will show the world that he will not give up and will make the best out of his condition. He is an ordinary man, who has a terrible accident, that forces him to swallow pride and manliness. He tries to get by, gets himself a nurse and foolishly falls in love with her. He has an unexpected visitor – a woman. Why she is there and who she is – is unfathomable. She somehow becomes involved in PR’s (Paul Rayment) boring, confused and dismayed life.
This saga continues (I am not going to give more details) but, suddenly like seeing a green clearing and sunshine when you get out of a dark dangerous forest, PR realises how simple life really is. Somethings that you hold on to for life become irrelevant. Perception can change in a second, all it takes is a drop of truth.
Of course, PR is the “Slow Man”. Why he is the slow man one can only discover after reading the book.
As a writer Coetzee does not cease to amaze me. His writing is so real. I was in the hospital, my father had just had a major operation and I used to read when he would sleep during the day. I could relate to his fear, his wanting to do things just to prove to himself that he is normal. I could understand the anguish of a man seeing people like his daughter try to make him comfortable, take care of him. He never thought that day could come. A man realising that age was catching up with him. PR helped me understand that and empathize with my dad.
As for Coetzee, he continues to be my favorite writer.
The Quickening Maze – Adam Foulds
03 Oct 2009 4 Comments
in Book Review, Books, Fiction, Reading Tags: Adam Foulds, Booker 2009, Fall Into Reading 2009, The Quickening Maze
A breezy book, easy to read and a unique and enjoyable style. I really hope he wins the Booker. I finished this book last tuesday and have not had a chance to write at all since then.
Well it is about this poet – John Clare, who is in a mental institution. Tennyson arrives in the neighbourhood with his brother and admits him in the same institution. (Yes! I mean the poet Alfred Tennyson. The author has beautifully blended the fact and fiction.) The paths of the two contemporary poets never cross really. But their lives are interwoven with the rest of the characters.
Perceptions are created and dispelled by the author. The hue of John Clare’s character has several variations throughout the book. One begins to empathize with him towards the end. Whereas Tennyson’s life is as amorphous and as dreamy as Tennyson himself. The Doctor’s (Dr. Mathew Allen who runs the institution) daughter falls in love with Tennyson and expresses herself to him. I love the way he has subtly dealt with the subject. Tennyson’s non-reaction explains it all. He simply does not understand that girl in the state of mind he is in.
In fact, the entire story is filled with subtleties. Margaret, an inmate, who thinks she is actually Mary, John Clare who thinks that Mary (his childhood sweetheart) is the one he is married to and not his own wife and the event that brings them together. Yet, John Clare yearns for his freedom to live with his real wife and kids. Also the part where Tennyson is preparing for his nobel prize is beautifully written. It is mind blowing the simplicity with which the author engages you in the scene and fires your imagination.
The author has intricately drawn a contrast between the good and the bad and the ugly (forgive my cliche!). The man i.e. John Clare is incoherent, thinks he is Lord Byron, yet can see that the Caretaker of the inmates is abusing his power and is taking undue advantage of Mary. He gets out of the institution and also saves the girl whom he earlier thought was Mary (the childhood sweetheart) with the knowledge that she is not a part of his fantasies and desires. The supplosedly sane individuals like the caretaker, have crooked minds filled with evil as is demonstrated by the one incident which the author describes.
The title is apt. The Quickening Maze – is that which John Clare believes is engulfing him pushing him to ingeniously procure his freedom – the very maze that Tennyson is unable to see.
The Holocaust – An Essay by an Ignoramous
03 May 2009 1 Comment
in Books, Fiction, Life, philosophy, Politics, Uncategorized Tags: Auschwitz, Holocaust, Imre Kertesz, Life is Beautiful - movie, Odessa File, Schindler's List, Sophie's Choice, The Reader, Valkyrie
“It is as if, after a night of terrible dreams, one looked around the world, defeated, helpless.” – Imre Kertesz
One definitely cannot imagine what the victims of Aushwitz would have gone through. Of course, there is abundant literature on the subject and we get different views in each piece of work. I am going to outline the various things I have read or seen in that connection and may be reflect on the subject.
My first exposure to the Nazi treatment of Jews, obviously apart from word of mouth, came from The Odessa File by Fredrick Foresyth. He is, of course, a master story teller and the book recounts through the diary of one person who commits suicide and the horrors that the concentration camps were. Of course, then I was too young to understand the concept of mass killings or genocide. Let’s just say my sensitivities weren’t that developed.
There was one movie titled “Life is Beautiful” which put a positive spin on the gory past. It was about an intelligent Jew who refuses to let his son despair and manages to convince him that all this was but a game and if they won, they would be rewarded with a big tank. The bleak and horrifying situation around the concentration camp is turned into a game and despite everything, we can not help but smile at the antics of the Protagonist. The child ultimately is freed and one can’t help but feel joyous.
Then, years later I saw Schindler’s List. The movie moved me in many ways and I got a glimpse of what a horror the whole situation actually was. The abuse of power by one man as an example of all the Commanders of the concentration camps who device ingenious ways to torture people. Strangely these persons/German commanders find ways to benefit themselves in the midst of all this. Of course, we see how Schindler manages to let several escape and the historic list actually is the reason for the survival of the entire Jewish community.
Then I watched (not read) Sophie’s Choice. It is an intricate story of a young polish woman who was sent away without reason and without any explanation with her children. Towards the end of the story we learn that Sophie’s choice really relates to her having to make a choice between her two children – to be killed. She ultimately loses both her children and comes to be cared by a mentally challenged person.
An extremely varied perspective is that of “The Reader”, from the eyes of those who were part of the regime, and wish to continue a normal life. The trial, the embarrassment of the protagonist and her experiences at the time. She got little children to read to her before she sent them away! Was she postponing their destiny or was merely arbitrarily using her powers to put an end to their lives? No one can really tell.
I started writing this post in February and then shelved it. However, for some reason I saved it. Yesterday I watched Valkyrie, the movie. This was another perspective. Well, more than a perspective it was an example of hope. It is touching what some German Commanders and Generals tried to achieve for their Germany, who were sensitive to the obnoxious ways of Hitler.
They almost had him. But Hitler was not to be deceived and each of the members of the Valkyrie Operation was shot dead or hung to death.
Of all that I have read and heard of the Holocaust so far, Imre Kertesz’s one sentence (supra) summarises the anguish perfectly. It is difficult to say whose anguish it is – the sufferers, the people who caused the suffering, the silent witnesses or the generation that abhors the silent witnesses.
I wonder what was the command Hitler had over the people. Can a mass of people really, truly believe in the extermination of an entire race? Hitler’s antipathy towards the Jews is really indiscernible. Today, can a Hitler pull something off like that?
Today, possibly we are too factionalised for something like the Holocaust to happen. My only question is, are we today protected against such tyranny were it to be perpetrated by another mad man. Is it even today a possibility? I shudder to think, yes. Only it is a different set of people with a different agenda. Can we protect ourselves? Can we protect our next generation?
I shudder when I think, another holocaust is not impossible.
