Interpreter of maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri, 1999

After delighting in another Victorian crime fiction series (the Lady Emily Ashton books by Tasha Alexander, recommended by the ever reliable A Work In Progress) I had some difficulty on deciding which book to read next. I felt like a book of short stories, which fortunately my TBR shelf isn’t short of. But then I had a few false starts- books which just didn’t match my mood. Dubliners by James Joyce? too much character, not enough plot. The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter? too unsettling. The Portable Virgin by Anne Enright? too fragmentary.

So, rather wearily, I started Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri. Her first story, A Temporary Matter, begins with the innocuous statement:

“The notice informed them that it was a temporary matter: for five days their electricity would be cut off for one hour, beginning at eight PM. A line had gone down in the last snowstorm, and the repairmen were going to take advantage of the milder evenings to set it right. The work would affect only the houses on the quit tree-lined street, within walking distance of a row of brick-faced stores and a trolley stop, where Shoba and Shukumar had lived three years.”

From there, husband and wife Shukumar and Shoba slowly start to communicate again after months of silence following the still birth of their first child. By the end, what they say to each other left me in tears and eager to keep reading this Pulitzer prize winning collection. So eager that I can wholeheartedly agree with the Scotsman quote on the back cover: “After reading three of these stories, I found myself rationing the remaining six to try to make the book last longer.”

Each story features people (and they do seem like people, not only characters) with some connection to India (especially Bengal), be they in America or India. So you meet (and feel for):

- Mr Pirzada, a botanist working in the States for a year without his family, who are still in Dacca when the Pakistani civil war of 1971 breaks out,

- Mr Kapasi, a tour guide and translator hired by an Americanzied indian family, the Das’s,

- Boori Ma, a stairwell sweeper in Calcutta,

- Miranda, a Boston newcomer having an affair with a banker called Dev,

- Elliot, an eleven-year old whose single mum organises for him to be babysat by recent immigrant Mrs. Sen,

- Sanjeev and Twinkle, a couple who inherit “a sizable collection of Christian paraphernalia” in their new home,

- Bibi Halder, who suffers from a mysterious condition,

- and just one of the many “penniless Bengali bachelors … struggling to educate and establish ourselves abroad.”

Lahiri sensitively and convincingly depicts each of these lives and leaves you longing to spend more time in their company. She writes unpredictably: I didn’t see where each of these stories was going and enjoyed finding out. The cure for my reading slump!

A wrap-up of this week’s reading

I started of this week by finishing How fiction works by James Wood. It is a clearly and sometimes caustically written study of the main elements of fiction (narrative, detail, characterization, dialogue and so on) from a personal point-of-view i.e what James Wood thinks works and what he thinks doesn’t, and why. As Wood writes in his introduction, “I hope, then, that this book might be one which asks theoretical questions but answers them practically- or to say it differently, asks a critic’s questions and offers a writer’s answers.” I particularly liked his close discussion of particular passages to prove his point, and as is only to be expected from a book of this type, I’ve come away with a few more TBR titles. (Sentimental Education by Gustave Flaubert, which I own, and What Maisie Knew by Henry James and A House for Mr. Biswas by V.s Naipaul, which I don’t.)

I next read Behind the scenes at the museum by Kate Atkinson. I so enjoyed her most recent Jackson Brodie books that I decided to try something from her back catalogue, with wonderful results. I couldn’t stop laughing at this shocking and sprawling family saga narrated by the unsentimental and rather omniscient Ruby Lennox. Atkinson is fast becoming one of my favourite contemporary authors and I’ll be reading more of her work soon.

I’ve just finished the latest Montalbano mystery translated into English, The Paper Moon by Andrea Camilleri. As usual, there was a nasty and complicated crime for Salvo to sort out, sustained by good food and his scathing sense of humour. Curling up on the lounge with this and my doona was a perfect antidote to an autumnal day in Sydney. A day very much crowned by viewing a screening of To Kill A Mockingbird on ABC2 tonight, which of course has made me want to re-read the book.

I’ve also been fortunate enough to be promised two free books- a Jane Austen sequel, Emma and Knightly (courtesy of Harriet Devine and Sourcebooks) and a Shakespeare play, The taming of the shrew (courtesy of Blog a Penguin classic).

And I still have Sunday to look forward to! I’m planning to read a few more Paris Review interviews, do some second-hand book shopping and make a start on And only to deceive by Tasha Alexander, which I first read about at A work in progress.

An involuntarily intermittent blogger

I’ve been off-line recently due to an external fault on my telephone line, but thankfully it has finally been fixed. Since I last blogged I’ve:

- found cause to lament that Deanna Raybourn’s third novel isn’t due out until next year, as her second one was as good as the first.

- walked London’s streets with Anna Quindlen, which has whetted my appetite to read further on the subject, starting with Peter Ackroyd’s mammoth history.

- been made to laugh and cry by the decidedly un p.c. Kingsley Amis.

- enjoyed the pistaches of Sebastian Faulks.

- caught up with DI John Rebus in Ian Rankin’s tenth novel.

- and started How fiction works, on which I’ll post soon.

On a serious note, I’d like to draw everyone’s attention to the PEN poem relay being held to highlight  almost 40 writers imprisoned in China. A poem called June by Shi Tao (about Tiananmen Square) was put on the net in Mandarin when the Olympic torch relay began and is virtually following the same route. When it reaches a new country, a translation in that country’s language can be read and heard here.

(Shi is currently serving 10yrs for revealing state secrets i.e emailing details of a government warning against media reporting of the 15th anniversary of Tiananmen Square in 2004. To their shame, Yahoo gave his name to the authorities!)

On a related note, Amnesty International has launched Uncensor to help end China’s censorship of the Internet. It encourages you not to take freedom on-line for granted, and is well worth a visit.

An unexpected pleasure

This weekend, I’ve read a historical crime fiction novel, Silent in the Grave by Deanna Raybourn, and found it an unexpected pleasure. Historical fiction is a genre I usually shy away from, but I bought this cheap ages ago and picked it up from the TBR shelf on Friday night. Two chapters in and I was hooked.

Opening with the arresting line: “To say that I met Nicholas Brisbane over my husband’s dead body is not entirely accurate. Edward, it should be noted, was still twitching upon the floor.” , the novel follows Lady Julia Grey through 1886 London as she investigates her husband’s sudden death at a dinner party with the able and argumentative assistance of private investigator Nicholas Brisbane. It is peopled with a host of well drawn and interesting characters from all levels of Victorian society, has a suspenseful and credible plot, a spark of sexual tension between the two protagonists and stylish writing.

I really enjoyed this foray outside my reading comfort zone. So much so that I’m looking forward to stopping by the bookshop after work tomorrow for the sequel, Silent in the Sanctuary.

Quite appropriately, until then I’ll be reading Imagined London: a tour of the world’s greatest fictional city by Anna Quindlen.

Book binge

Since I last posted I’ve:

- caught up with the Thursday Next series (fingers crossed there is more coming),

- confirmed my good opinion of Alice Munro with her second and third published books (Lives of girls and women and The beggar maid: stories of Flo and Rose respectively),

- succumbed to the predictable pleasures of chicklit with Sophie Kinsella’s latest, Remember Me?

- raced through Reginald Hill’s A cure for all diseases, a Dalziel and Pascoe novel up to his usual high standard although sadly not featuring Ellie and Rosie Pascoe,

- continued with my annual Austen re-read/ love-in,

- and laughed my way through Kate Atkinson’s One good turn, a superb follow up to Case Histories which lives up to its subtitle A Jolly Murder Mystery.

Amidst all the Easter festivities, I spent one afternoon book buying (or binging!) and came home with:

Second-hand, from the top:

1. Pistache: a collection of fanciful, satirical and surprising parodies, squibs and pastiches by Sebastian Faulks- for a literary laugh.

2. Seducers in Ecuador and The Heir by Vita Sackville-West- two novellas, the first about an Englishman’s holiday in Egyt, the second an insurance salesman who inherits a Tudor house. I’ve long meant to read something by Vita Sackville-West and I find the green Viragos hard to resist.

3. Love letters chosen by Antonia Fraser- 135 letters from the famous and not-so-famous, covering beginnings and endings, ecstasies to jealousies, declarations to rejections. I hope this book will encourage me to read some other letter collections languishing on my shelves (by Austen, Charlotte Bronte, Conan Doyle and the Mitfords, to name a few).

4. Imagined London: A tour of the world’s greatest fictional city by Anna Quindlen- how could a literary Anglophile resist?

5. The essential Carmel Bird- a short story collection by one of my favourite Australian authors.

6. Difficulties with girls by Kingsley Amis- I’m looking forward to re-visiting Patrick Standish, Jenny Bunn and co in this sequel to the hilarious Girls like you.

New, from the top:

1. The bay of noon by Shirley Hazzard- a tale of four friends in war-torn Naples by another favourite Australian author.

2. The wig my father wore, and at the bottom, The Portable Virgin, both by Anne Enright. I avoided The Gathering, possibly unjustly, as yet another Irish misery memoir. The premise of both Anne Enright’s first novel and first book of short stories sound intriguing, so if they are any good I may read The Gathering after all.

3. Interpreter of maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri- I’d like to see what all the fuss is about, and need to read some short stories by someone other than Alice Munro!

All just part of my lovely weekend which will soon (sadly) be over.

Dance of the happy shades by Alice Munro, 1968

Vaguely aware of Alice Munro as an acclaimed Canadian short story writer, I decided to try her first volume of short stories after seeing and being quietly impressed by the film Away from her, an adaption of her story The bear came over the mountain. (Incidentally, and before I start singing Ms. Munro’s praises, I think Julie Christie deserved the best actress Oscar for this film).

Having begun Dance of the happy shades, I settled in for a thoroughly enjoyable visit to the farms and quiet towns of south-western Ontario. In the space of only ten or twenty pages, Alice Munro gives startling insight into the past, present and future of each of her characters, conjuring up a world of which it might be said that still waters run deep.

In Walker Brothers Cowboy for example, a young girl and her brother take a trip with their father on his daily rounds as a door-to door salesman which in the 1930’s “keeps the wolf from the door. Keeps him as far away as the back fence.” Slowly, so subtle it’s almost unnoticeable, details are added to this picture- the failed fox farm and coming down in the world of this family, the mother’s resentful efforts to get by, the father’s dogged attempt to put on a brave face. An effort which seems to falter after a rude and unequivocal dismissal, leading to a visit which makes the young girl “feel my father’s life flowing back from our car in the last of the afternoon, darkening and turning strange, like a landscape that has an enchantment on it, making it kindly, ordinary and familiar while you are looking at it, but changing it, once your back is turned, into something you will never know, with all kinds of weathers, and distances you cannot imagine.”

Each story is vivid, empathetic and intriguing, with the truth of a life gradually and convincingly revealed. Anchored in a very specific, rural Canadian world, these stories none the less capture universal human situations perfectly. The thoughts of a lone dissenter amongst a vocal group for example, from The Shining Houses:

“She was trying desperately to think of other words, words more sound and reasonable than these; she could not expose to this positive tide any notion that they might think flimsy and romantic, or she would destroy her argument. But she had no argument. She could try all night and never find any words to stand up to their words, which came at her now invincibly from all sides: shack, eyesore, filthy, property, value.

…

And these were joined by other voices; it did not matter much what they said as long as they were full of self-assertion and anger. That was their strength, their proof of their adulthood, of themselves and their seriousness. The spirit of anger rose among them, bearing up their young voices, sweeping them together as on a flood of intoxication, and they admired each other in this new behaviour as property-owners as people admire each other for being drunk.”

This collection of short stories is amongst the best I have ever read. I can’t recommend it highly enough, and am eagerly anticipating reading more of the Munro oeuvre soon. It will be interesting to see how her writing has developed over the years from this, a highly accomplished and memorable debut.

The return of the devoted reader

Now that my internet connection has finally been restored, I can once again blog about what I’m reading, instead of boring anyone I know who’ll listen.

Over the past month, I’ve:

- enjoyed the company of a delightful Edinburgh spinster, Isabel Dalhousie, in Alexander McCall Smith’s Sunday Philosophy Club series.

- been moved by the painfully honest, tender and often surprisingly funny Iris trilogy by John Bayley, in which he recalls his marriage to Iris Murdoch,  relates her diagnosis with -and decline because of- Alzheimer’s disease, and describe his life in the widower’s house after her death.

- feverishly turned the pages of the two resolutely bleak but unputdownable crime fiction novels  by Benjamin Black (aka John Banville). Fingers crossed they keep coming, so I can again visit 1950’s Dublin with Harry Quirke.

- laughed my way though Jasper Fforde’s Thursday Next series.

- been shocked and delighted by four stories from Alan Bennett, which happily proved that The uncommon reader was more than just a fluke.

- and discovered Alice Munro for myself.

Now I’m off to catch up with what everyone else has been reading.

A reason to read John Banville

I’m sorry to say I’ve never read anything by John Banville or his crime-fiction alter-ego Benjamin Black. After reading this interview, I’ll have to give him a try- for the following quote if nothing else:

” ‘That’s one of my notions. Cast your mind forward to 2050. In a biographical dictionary you read: ‘Banville, John: Irish author of numerous novels, all of which are entirely forgotten. Chiefly remembered for a scurrilous review of Lord McEwan of Islington’s masterpiece, Saturday. Some of his novels, which Banville had written under the pseudonym Benjamin Black, are still in print.’ ”

It should be noted that I disliked Saturday intensely.

and a long-delayed review of A pair of blue eyes by Thomas Hardy, 1873.

Elfride Swancourt is the only daughter of a minister in the secluded seaside village of Endelstow. A church restoration project sees a handsome young architect named Stephen Smith visit from London and sure enough, Elfride and he fall in love.

There seems to be a mystery surrounding Stephen, who claims to know no one locally and yet is seen by Elfride with a woman and who has some unusual manners and unexpected gaps of knowledge for a gentleman. In time and by chance, it is revealed that Stephen is of quite humble antecedents, which causes snobbish Mr Swancourt to change his mind and oppose the match.

When Mr Swancourt goes on an unexplained but apparently important journey, Elfride and Stephen rashly elope. Their ignorance of the law results in unexpected obstacles and causes Elfride to change her mind. So much time has elapsed though, that their train journey back to Endelstow is through the night. Elfride then realises, but too late, that “Appearances are woefully against me. If anybody finds me out, I am, I suppose disgraced.” By the standards of the time, “It was wrong to go with you at all; and though it would have been worse to go further, it would have been better policy, perhaps.”

In the morning, at the station, Elfride worries that Mrs Jethway, a poor widow with a grudge against her for spurning her son, has seen the lovers together. She tells Stephen “You had better not be seen with me, even here where I am so little known. We have begun stealthily as thieves, and we must end stealthily as thieves, at all hazards. Until papa has been told by me myself, a discovery would be terrible.” The lovers part, but the surprising explanation for her father’s absence prevents Elfride from confiding in him.

Soon after, Stephen accepts a job in India, hoping to make his fortune and return home a wealthy man acceptable to Elfride’s father. Promising to be faithful to each other, the two part for the foreseeable future.

Unfortunately for Stephen, Elfride is “a girl whose emotions lay very near the surface”, and her feelings for him are only a first girlish fancy which she erroneously calls love. Nine months after their parting, she meets and gradually falls in love with Henry Knight, an older friend of, and mentor to, Stephen who is unaware of the secret engagement. Elfride struggles with her desire to be faithful to her first love and with her newer, stronger passion. Once the decision is made “she began to take a melancholy pleasure in contemplating the sacrifice of herself to the man whom a maidenly sense of propriety compelled her to regard as her only possible husband. She would meet him, and do all that lay in her power to marry him.”

Until that is, in a tense and thrilling couple of chapters (which you can read online here), Hardy has fate intervene. An almost deadly experience on a neighborhood cliff sees Elfride and Knight declare their feelings for each other. From this point on, the questions that keep the reader on tenterhooks until they’re answered, are:

* How will Stephen react when Elfride breaks off the engagement?

* Will Knight find out about the relationship (including the failed elopement)?

* If so, how will he react?

* And above all, what will Elfride’s fate be?

Questions I won’t answer and you’ll have to read A pair of blue eyes to find out!

Hardy is one of my favourite novelists, and this novel is as good as any of his more famous works. It’s plainly but beautifully written and its plot convinces and surprises in equal measure. At it’s heart is the question which Elfride asks: “Am I such a- mere characterless toy- as to have no attrac- tion in me, apart from- freshness?”.

As a postscript, it’s interesting to note that A pair of blue eyes draws upon considerable autobiographical material, as discussed in my Penguin classics edition’s introduction by Pamela Dalziel. Like Stephen Smith, Thomas Hardy was a young man of humble origins keen to better himself, an aim which was aided by a male mentor (Horace Moule in Hardy’s case). Hardy met his first wife Emma Gifford ( a clergyman’s sister) on an architectural trip to the wilds of Cornwall in 1870, although they didn’t marry until 1874 owing to her family’s disapproval. I look forward to finding out more when I read the Hardy biography by Claire Tomalin.

Some high-calibre distractions…

I’ve been a bit negligent with my reading and consequently my blogging recently. In my defense, I’ve had some very high-calibre distractions.

First, there was this:

(The cricket test versus the Indians at the WACA) . The result was regrettable but it was an absorbing match spanning four days. The Adelaide test is now in full swing, so this distraction looks set to continue. (NB: the photo is from the gallery at the ABC).

Second, there were two new DVD purchases to watch:

Of course whilst my reading slowed down this week, I still had time to visit a bookshop where I bought:

From the top:

1. Is Heathcliff a murderer? Puzzles in 19th-Century fiction by John Sutherland- a look at 34 seeming anomalies, enigmas and mysteries from19th century novels by authors including Austen, the Brontes, Dickens, Eliot, Hardy, Trollope and Thackeray. In the blurb, The Spectator is quoted as describing it as “the most engagingly boffiny book imaginable” and it has the added bonus of encouraging me to read the novels discussed.

2. The reasons I won’t be coming by Elliot Perlman- a book of short stories by an Australian author I’ve been meaning to try for ages.

3. In the stacks: short stories about libraries and librarians edited by Michael Cart- published in 2003, I found this collection on the remainder table. Considering the theme and the authors included (Italo Cavino, M.R James, Alice Munro and Jorge Luis Borges to name a few), it sounds promising.

4. Regeneration by Pat Barker- the first volume of an acclaimed trilogy set during WW1. This is thematically linked with some books on my mental reading list for March- All Quiet on the Western Front and Mrs. Dalloway from the fiction shelves and two non-fiction works, The living unknown soldier and Singled out: how two million women survived without men after the first world war.

5. Lastly, Oliver Twist is my next Dickens read after Pickwick, and #3 and #4 in the Isabel Dalhousie series are some light reading for February.