LUCKY JIM by Kingsley Amis

Jim Dixon is a young history professor who smokes too much and drinks too much.  Put the two vices together and you have burned bedding in the home of Professor Welch, of the proverbial absent-minded variety, who holds sway over Dixon’s future.  Dixon has also been known to pull the occasional harmless prank in the pursuit of a woman or to exact revenge for revealing one of his screw-ups or secrets.  Dixon is drawn to two women.  Margaret is not particularly attractive, but Dixon feels a certain obligation to keep her company after an apparent suicide attempt.  Christine, on the other hand, is pretty and fun and becomes his accomplice in the bedding incident, but she’s the girlfriend of Welch’s unpleasant son, Bernard.  I have to give Dixon credit for wisdom in not trying to force Christine’s hand by blabbing about Bernard’s affair with Carol, a married woman.   In fact, Dixon has a number of commendable qualities, including being a decent judge of character and his ability to get in and out of some sticky situations of his own making.  His antics make him seem much more like a student who may not graduate than a professor who may get the boot.  Bear in mind, too, that this book was published in the 1950s, so that the humor is both retro and English.  This is my first Kingsley Amis novel, but perhaps I should have gone for one of his later, more serious novels.  For me, this one dragged, despite the terrific writing with lots of delightful metaphors and dialog that didn’t actually sound overly dated.  For example, his description of Dixon’s hangover as feeling like “he’d somehow been on a cross-country run and then been expertly beaten up by secret police” made me feel Dixon’s pain.  And when he finally has to deliver his much-anticipated lecture on Merrie England, his nervousness and disorientation are palpable, and the mimicries are priceless.

THE LINE OF BEAUTY by Alan Hollinghurst

Nick Guest is a guest—a lodger, actually—in the home of Conservative Parliament member Gerald and his wife Rachel, along with their grown children, Toby and Catherine. Toby and Nick were friends at Oxford, and Toby has invited Nick to move in with his family. Nick’s father is an antiques dealer, and Nick’s previous exposure to this level of posh gentility was limited to accompanying his father on clock-winding visits. It’s the late 1980s, and Nick is gay, so that the AIDs epidemic is lurking ominously on the horizon. Nick is an enigma, knowing that he does not quite fit in socially, but at the same time he somehow sees his host family members as friends. They, however, seem to view him more as a charity case who can help keep an eye on Catherine, who is bipolar. When she’s off her meds, she poses a threat to herself at least and may possibly be destructive in other ways. Nick is dangerous, too, in an entirely different way, blatantly snorting cocaine, right under the noses of the family, and meeting lovers in the garden. I couldn’t believe he would take his living situation for granted to the point that he would risk sullying Gerald’s political career. He overestimates his standing in the family, and in the end he realizes that his view of the family is seriously distorted. Their snobbish hypocrisy is obvious to the reader but not to Nick. There’s a reason his very rich friend Wani, short for Antoine, wants to keep their affair under wraps, and it’s not just for the sake of his Lebanese parents. Certainly, the appeal of this novel lies in its satirical treatment of upper-crusty manners, including a scene where high-as-a-kite Nick dances with Prime Minister Thatcher to a Rolling Stones tune. However, as a reader, you’ll be acutely aware that almost all of the male characters are gay, so that this novel’s world seems a little skewed in more ways than one. Hollinghurst’s sublime prose kept me interested in Nick’s fate, as I held onto the hope that he would stop making so many egregious errors in judgment before his world toppled around him.

WORLD'S END by T.C. Boyle

This novel is full of very wicked men of multiple generations.  The few good men are lost in the shuffle, and the women are pretty secondary throughout.  The Hatfields and McCoys have nothing on the Van Brunts and Van Warts of Peterskill, NY.  We pop back and forth between the 1690s and the 1960s, but nothing much changes during the intervening three centuries as far as these two families are concerned.  In the 17^th century, the Van Brunts are tenant farmers on land owned by the Van Warts, and Jeremias Van Brunt balks each year when he has to pay his due.  In the 20^th century, Walter Van Brunt manages to sever his feet in two separate motorcycle accidents.  And, yes, you can assume that alcohol was a factor.  Walter is basically a screw-up of epic proportions, haunted by the ghost of his long-gone father who may have betrayed Walter’s mother and godparents by skedaddling instead of going for help during a riot.  Some of these people are so vicious, the book becomes difficult to read at times.  Violence erupts over political differences, women, obligations to sadistic landlords, and bigotry, particularly toward Native Americans.  Probably the character who garners the most attention is Walter, whose lack of charisma is superseded only by that of his on-again, off-again employer, Depeyster Van Wart.  Depeyster, tortured by the fact that the Van Wart family line may end with him, follows in the footsteps of his ancestors, feeling that his wealth gives him the right to throw his weight around and crush anyone who stands in his way.  Two big questions loom:  Why exactly did Walter’s father abandon his wife and child, and what will Depeyster do if/when he discovers that his wife has been having an affair with a Native American?  The author fully addresses both questions, but that doesn’t mean you’ll like the answers.  My favorite thing about this book is that it mentions the snail darter, and I was a student at the University of Tennessee when this controversy brought the construction of TVA’s Tellico Dam to an abrupt halt.  I had no idea this endangered little fish had such a big fanbase.

ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE by Gabriel García Márquez

Thank heavens there’s a Buendía family tree diagram at the beginning, because this novel spans about 5 generations, and the men are all named some variation of José Arcadio or Aureliano.  The women, although they certainly take a backseat to the men in this story, are much easier to differentiate, and several of the women in the family tree are mistresses.  In one case, two brothers have the same mistress, so that their children are half-siblings.  Plus, in one case, a male character chooses a 9-year-old for his wife, and fortunately her parents make her wait until she reaches puberty to marry.  Then there are a couple of instances where a nephew has a thing for his aunt.  What a family!  The story takes place in the fictional town of Macondo, and sometimes it seems that there aren’t enough non-Buendía residents there to keep the population genetically diverse.  Then we have characters who routinely spend years sequestered in a room reading scholarly documents or sitting under a chestnut tree—voluntarily.  I’m not really a fan of magical realism, especially this sort with flying carpets and people who live past 140 years old.  The fantasy aspects just contributed to my overall inability to feel any sort of connection to the characters.  The whole thing seemed quite absurd and confusing to me.  I wish there were at least one character who stood out for me or who seemed particularly heroic or even particularly tragic, but unfortunately, they all ran together into one indecipherable heap.  I’ve wanted to read this book since Gabriel García Marquez died a couple of years ago, but I can’t say that it was time well spent.  At least I can check it off my list now.

THE MARRIAGE PLOT by Jeffrey Eugenides

Mitchell, Leonard, and Madeleine are Brown University students in the 1980s, and Mitchell is the odd man out.  He’s in love with Madeleine, but she only has eyes for Leonard, who is undergoing treatment for manic depression.  Leonard is smart, handsome, and poor, while Madeleine is smart, beautiful, and rich.  I could never quite fathom what the well-adjusted Madeleine sees in Leonard, as she is not a natural caretaker, and I attribute my bewilderment to a failing of the author for not making Leonard a whole lot more charismatic.  Mitchell, on the other hand, who is considering divinity school but not joining the ministry, seems pretty vanilla until we get Leonard’s take on Mitchell as a young Tom Waits, which turned my opinion 180 degrees to the good.  For me, that’s the point at which Mitchell comes alive.  After college, while Madeleine and Leonard are wallowing in despair in Cape Cod, Mitchell sets out with his friend Larry on a pilgrimage to India, by way of Paris and Athens.  My favorite part of the novel is after Mitchell and Larry part ways, and Mitchell becomes a volunteer at a charity hospital in Calcutta.  Here, I think Eugenides does an excellent job of describing Mitchell’s struggle between his squeamishness over the condition of the patients and his profound desire to do something worthwhile.   Dispensing medications, shunning rickshaws, and chastising his friend Mike for his relationship with a 17-year-old Thai girl, he strives not to be the typical American tourist. Unfortunately, this section has to end, and we have to return to the Madeleine/Leonard story, which seems to be a rehash of Leonard’s battle with mental illness and Madeleine’s questioning of whether she is up to the task of coping with said battle.  Mitchell is the only character whose self-awareness actually grows in this novel, and I would have liked this book more if there had been more Mitchell and less Madeleine.

THE VIRGIN SUICIDES by Jeffrey Eugenides

The Lisbon family has five alluring young daughters, until one, Cecilia, succeeds in killing herself on the second try.  We know that the remaining four will follow suit within a year, and this novel is all about looking back on that year.  Our unidentified narrator(s) track the sisters’ grief and the ever-tightening lockdown imposed by the girls’ parents.  The fact that the girls become increasingly less visible in the community only adds to the intrigue surrounding them, as does the spooky decline of their untended house.  Much of the story is told in a voyeuristic manner, from the outside looking in, with the viewers hoping for a rare appearance by one of the Lisbon girls, with the help of a mostly ineffective telescope.  I totally do not understand the appeal of this novel, except that it is sort of darkly comic.  Also, I can’t fathom how the parents get away with keeping their daughters out of school and basically keeping them imprisoned in their home.  Even in the 1970s there were truant officers and social services.  The parents themselves become so reclusive that Mr. Lisbon stops teaching his classes at the high school, and the family has to raid the shelves of their bomb shelter for food.  I don’t get the title, either, since the most well-drawn of the daughters, Lux, is wildly promiscuous.  I know that Lux means “light,” but the name strikes me more in its similarity to the word “lust.”  The book is largely about the town, especially the boys, for whom the demise of the Lisbon family provides fodder for their adolescent curiosity and imagination.  I suspect that there is quite a bit of symbolism at work here, related to dying things (fish flies and elm trees), virgin sacrifices, the Virgin Mary and who knows what else.  (One of the Lisbon girls is named Mary.)   My favorite scene in the book is a telephone conversation in which popular songs express the sentiments of the participants on both ends of the line.  “On the stereo, Garfunkel began hitting his high notes, and we didn’t think of Cecilia.”  Cecilia, the character, or “Cecilia” the song?  I like the ambiguity, but it’s not enough to make me like this book.  

THE NAME OF THE ROSE by Umberto Eco

Unless you’re interested in esoteric 13^th century debates on religion, such as did Jesus ever laugh and did Jesus own his clothes, then this is not the book for you—or me, for that matter.  I thought this was going to be a murder mystery, and it is, to some degree, but that aspect of the novel is buried in unending discussions of what constitutes religious heresy.  This novel is very long with reams of inscrutable allusions, incomprehensible vocabulary, and lots of untranslated Latin passages.  I can’t help wondering if some of my issues with this book are actually with the translator, William Weaver, but I’m certainly not going to read it again, if, in fact, another translation exists.  The action takes place in an Italian monastery, and the main character is Brother William of Baskerville, who has a Sherlock-Holmes-like knack for interpreting clues in the mysterious deaths of several monks.  William is the mentor for our young narrator, Adso, who tags along on William’s week-long investigation of the monastery, as the body count rises.  Several startling facts come to light, including the periodic visits by a woman, the more-than-brotherly affection between several monks, and the extreme inaccessibility of the library.  There is more than one history lesson here, but I found most of the historical discussions too dense for me to really grasp.  I did gather that Pope John XXII and Holy Roman Emperor Louis IV were seriously at odds, and the monks aligned themselves with one or the other, but I couldn’t keep up with who believed what.  There are the Minorites, the Fraticelli, the Dolcinians, the Catharists, the Cluniacs—just to name a few factions.  At one point, Adso’s response to a monk’s description of one of the sects is “What a complicated story.”  My sentiments exactly.

MOBY DICK by Herman Melville

Inspired by the movie In the Heart of the Sea, I decided to read this classic that was not required reading at my high school.  I thought this novel would be more about a marathon battle between man and nature, like Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea, but a lot longer.  However, I kept reading and reading and waiting for the big white whale to show up, but Melville kept me in suspense for 400+ pages.  The bulk of the book is actually a history lesson, describing whales and whaling to the nth degree.  Not that that’s a bad thing.  I actually found the anatomy of the sperm whale and its comparison of size, weight, and characteristics to a right whale to be fairly interesting.  Then we have the specifics on how a whale is harpooned from smaller boats and lashed to the side of the ship, where sharks swarm to get a piece of the action.  The biggest butchering task is the decapitation of the sperm whale, since the head contains the valuable spermaceti oil.   I also learned that a storm can disrupt the behavior of a compass needle.  There’s not a lot of action or character development, if you ask me, but the central character is Captain Ahab, who demands that his crew vow to hunt and destroy Moby Dick, the big white sperm whale who is responsible for Ahab having lost a leg.  Ahab’s singular mission is a mad obsession, as his thirst for revenge clouds his judgment, putting the welfare of his ship and crew at risk.  The occasional encounter with another ship breaks up the monotony of several years at sea, for both the crew and the reader.  When the captain of another ship comes requesting lamp oil, Stubb, the 2^nd mate, mistakes the captain’s lamp-feeder for a coffee pot.  Stubb tells the 1^st mate, Starbuck (what a familiar name!), that the visiting captain must be OK if he’s come to make coffee.  Who knew that the guys who started the ubiquitous purveyors of coffee were Moby Dick readers?

A CONFEDERACY OF DUNCES by John Kennedy Toole

Ignatius Reilly is an obese man in his thirties who lives with his mother in New Orleans.   His mother is struggling financially, while the well-educated Ignatius overeats and writes in his notebooks, from which long and painful passages are occasionally reproduced in the novel.  Pressured by his mother to get a job, he stumbles into a clerical position with a pants manufacturer, where he basically does nothing useful and files important documents in the trashcan.  After creating a shambles of the office, he moves on to a job as a hotdog vendor, but he routinely eats more product than he sells.  All of this buffoonery is supposed to be funny and satirical, I suppose, but I found it to be just plain silly.  Ignatius is a cartoonish character whose adventures did not interest me much.  On the other hand, the lives of his mother, her bowling friends, an inept cop, and a vagrant named Jones filled the pages with material that was at least mildly entertaining and afforded me a welcome break from the distasteful Ignatius.  In fact, Jones’s dialog, was probably the most fascinating aspect of the book for me.  The author’s phonetic spelling of Jones’s mispronunciations struck my ear in such a way that I could mentally hear him, loud and clear.  Mostly, Jones just drops final consonants, but some mispronunciations persist today, and this book was written in 1963.  One other character deserves a mention, and that’s Myrna, Ignatius’s gal pal from college, who is now an advocate for social change in New York.  Their correspondence indicates that Ignatius lives to one-up her, while she seems to see Ignatius as a sort of project, even offering him a theatre role as a means of giving him purpose.  Now, who is the true genius in the novel, surrounded by “a confederacy of dunces”?  Ignatius out-dunces all the other dunces, with the possible exception of the people who hired him.

THE UNBEARABLE LIGHTNESS OF BEING by Milan Kundera

This book is for readers who like a hefty dose of philosophy with their fiction.  The author addresses the reader directly on such issues as God’s digestive system and the fact that dogs were not ousted from the Garden of Eden, as humans were.  He also spends a few pages talking about how events happen only once, so that if we set goals or plan for the future, we are striving toward something we have never experienced.  Achieving the goal may not actually bring us the satisfaction or happiness that we anticipated.  (Many people would say that retirement is one such goal.)  In any case, the story takes place mostly in Czechoslovakia during the late 1960s when Russia invaded the country and stamped their brand of communism on it.  Tomas and his wife Tereza actually move to Zurich before getting out of Czechoslovakia becomes impossible.  However, Tereza decides to return to Prague, and Tomas follows her, despite the fact that he has several mistresses.  One of those is Sabina, who lives in Geneva.  She is also the mistress of Franz, but she loses interest in Franz as soon as he leaves his wife and family for her.  Tomas, a surgeon, writes a newspaper article, deemed by the authorities as subversive, and goes through a series of demotions, until he eventually becomes a window washer.  This line of work, and the widespread knowledge of his tumble in status, actually fuels his extramarital sex life.  Perhaps I would have enjoyed this book more if I had read it when it was current.  It may be a modern classic, but it’s certainly an offbeat one.  The catch phrase of the novel, “It must be,” becomes Tomas’s excuse for his philandering and his career plunge, as well as the political situation.  This acceptance of fate seems human, but I expected something a little more out of the ordinary.  One thing I did like about the book is that we learn the fate of Tereza and Tomas well before the end and then get to see how it plays out.  I don’t think I would normally want to know in advance what’s going to happen (“it must be”), but then this isn’t a normal book, and the ending is much more palatable when reached in this way.

GET SHORTY by Elmore Leonard

This book was fun but not nearly as much fun as Killshot.  Still, it has its moments.   Chili Palmer, a collector for a loan shark, goes to Vegas to track down a customer, Leo, a drycleaner, who supposedly died in a plane crash.   Leo's luggage was on the plane, but he stayed too long in an airport bar and missed the flight.  Now he's living large on the airline's insurance payout, which really belongs to his estranged wife.  Chili's next stop is Los Angeles, where he hooks up with a B movie director (Harry), an aging actress (Karen), a self-absorbed movie star (Michael), and a trio of drug smugglers fronted by a limo service whom Harry has signed up to back his next picture.  Harry thinks Chili might help him get Michael into his pet movie project, Mr. Lovejoy, but Chili thinks Leo's story has more Hollywood potential.  Several intricate double-crossings make for a pretty entertaining ride, and Chili becomes more and more appealing as the plot thickens.  He's cool and smart and trying not to burn any bridges as he makes his moves toward getting what he wants.  He also has pretty good timing, cultivates some valuable friendships, and knows a setup when he sees one.  You gotta like the guy, trying to go legit and doing some Hollywood schmoozing with a style all his own.

WHITE TEETH by Zadie Smith

Is this book a modern classic?  Sometimes the critics and I don't see eye to eye.  The ending to this book almost justified the 500 pages I had to read to get there, but not quite.  Archie Jones routinely makes life-and-death decisions by flipping a coin.  As bad decisions go, though, his are equaled by those of his long-time friend Samad Iqbal.  Samad longs to send his twin sons to Bangladesh so that they can become good Muslims and escape decadent Western influences.  Alas, he can afford to send only one and makes the ill-advised decision to send the studious son Magid, rather than the wayward son Millat.  Naturally, Magid embraces science there, eschewing religion, while Millat joins a fundamentalist Islam group here in the good old U.S.A.  The linchpin, though, is the Chalfen family, who host Millat and Archie's daughter Irie, along with their own son Joshua, in a school-imposed detention that reshapes everyone's lives.  Marcus Chalpen is a genetic researcher whose FutureMouse will prove to the world that genetic engineering can overcome the apparent randomness of fatal diseases.  I don't want to give too much away, but the finale brings together a volatile amalgamation:  Millat's jihad, Archie's mother-in-law and her band of Jehovah's Witnesses, the scientific community, and Joshua's animal rights group.  We can expect sparks to fly, but the surprise lies elsewhere.  The author treats the fragility of life in an interesting way, I must admit.  It literally turns on a dime, and a life saved can make a huge, unforeseen impact.  That impact may be positive or it may be negative or it may just stir the pot—or the plot, in this case.

ANNA KARENINA by Leo Tolstoy

Why is this book considered to be great?  It covers a lot of ground, but it should, because, after all, it's over 800 pages.  It basically examines the lives of three couples.  Stiva cheats on his wife Dolly, but, at the urging of Stiva's sister Anna, Dolly forgives him and tries to get past his infidelity in order to keep her family intact.  Dolly's sister Kitty eventually marries Levin—a forward-thinking man who manages a large farm.  Levin seems to me to represent the conscience of the novel, and, I presume, the opinions of the author.  The title character forsakes her stilted husband and beloved son for Vronsky, a handsome count, who charmed Kitty and almost derailed her union with Levin.  Anna's plight is the glue that holds the story together.  She becomes a pariah, stuck in limbo with a baby daughter that she doesn't love.  Her paranoia reaches epic proportions, as she imagines that Vronsky has another woman (or perhaps more than one), and her notion that he will cease to love her becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.  Her life goes into a downward spiral, as she becomes more and more insecure, despite having had the chutzpah to buck the system in the first place--by leaving her husband to live with her lover.  Tolstoy addresses a variety of political, religious, and social issues of the day, including evolution, divorce, the powerlessness of women, and education of the peasant workers.  Late 19^th century Russia was still ruled by noblemen, but many of them were beginning to explore ways in which society could be restructured in order to improve agricultural output.  The version I read was a fairly recent translation (Pevear and Volokhonsky, 2001) and was very readable, but, honestly, 800+ pages is a long time to spend with these people.

SNOW by Orhan Pamuk

The poet Ka, after years of political exile in Germany, is back in Turkey to cover the political situation and a suicide epidemic in Kars for a German newspaper. He also wants to convince the beautiful Ipek, recently divorced, to marry him. A snowstorm has cut the impoverished town off from the rest of the world, leaving it vulnerable to a possibly violent clash between the secular government and the Islamic fundamentalists. Over the course of Ka's stay, an actor stages a couple of theatrical productions in which the bullets may be real. A newspaper reports deaths before they happen. A charismatic Islamic revolutionary named Blue is in town and may be responsible for the murder of the Institute of Education's director, an event which Ka witnessed in a café. Blue may be the lover of Ipek's almost equally beautiful sister, Kadife, the leader of the headscarf girls, who have been prohibited by the state from covering their heads at the public colleges. A lot happens in a 3-day span, but I still felt as though I were trudging through snow myself. I frequently had to reread passages because my mind started to wander. This is not an easy or fast read, and I don't think it's just because it's a translation. Reading this book requires a lot of thinking, and many of the situations, except for being snowed in, which happened here in Atlanta in January, seem so alien. Ka has walked into an intrigue-filled battleground, and the line between the good guys and the bad guys is very blurred. In fact, he could be a hero or an assassination target himself. The conflict over religion is not that foreign, either, nor are the stereotypes, such as the belief that the intelligentsia are all atheists and the fundamentalists are all poor. Ka is accused by the boys at a religious school of being an atheist, but the snow makes him think of God. In fact, he is churning out poetry all of a sudden, after a long drought, and claims that the inspiration is not coming from within. Actually, his faith, or lack thereof, seems to vary, depending on the listener. One thing we know for sure: he's not comfortable with happiness. Ipek finally agrees to accompany him back to Frankfurt, but Ka seems to do everything in his power to prevent that from happening. In fact, many of the characters are self-destructive, including Ipek, who harbors a secret, futile passion.

THE GOD OF SMALL THINGS by Arundhati Roy

The imagery and lyrical language evoke the Indian landscape beautifully, but for me the prose was too choppy, and the same goes for the plot. The author tells the story in bits and pieces ("small things") non-sequentially with insufficient clues sometimes as to whether the main characters, Rahel and her fraternal twin brother Estha, are children or adults. Also, the death of their cousin Sophie bisects their childhood into before and after. Sophie's funeral takes place at the beginning, and the rest of the book tells of the events leading up to her death and to the banishment of Estha to live with his father. One of the repeated themes in the book is that we talk about the small things and leave the big things unsaid. This truism and numerous other phrases and images, including descriptions of Estha's and Rahel's hairdos, are repeated throughout the book in different settings. From the title I would think perhaps that this is the story of the small things that compose the characters' lives, but the horrific defining events are actually quite big things. The book is supremely sad, and I'll never look at a movie theatre snack counter in quite the same way again.

THE ACCIDENTAL by Ali Smith

I thought that an accidental was a sharp or flat in a piece of music whose key would not normally have that note as a sharp or flat—metaphorically something outside the norm. In this case a stranger, Amber, inserts herself into the lives of the Smart family while they are renting a summer home in Norfolk, England. She knocks on the door with the apology, "Sorry I'm late," and Michael and Eve each think that the other has invited her. Eve's teenage children, Magnus and Astrid, both soon become attached to this mysterious woman, and their lives are transformed. At the beginning of the book we find that Magnus has been a party to a prank that led to a fellow student's suicide. His guilt is so crushing that he can barely function, and yet the rest of the family chalks up his anti-social behavior to normal teen angst. At first I thought that this aspect of the family dynamic would make for an overwhelmingly depressing novel, but I was mistaken. Amber is the focal point, as she blurts out blunt truths that the family interprets as outrageous jokes, thus lightening the tone of an otherwise bleak story. I really enjoyed this book, particularly the sort of cyclical aspect to the ending, but I have 2 complaints. First of all, it is too much like the movie Six Degrees of Separation, although Amber never claims to be acquainted with or related to the Smarts or anyone else for that matter. My second complaint is that after I finished reading it, I felt that I must have missed something as far as the author's intentions. When the Smarts return home from their vacation, they are in for a couple of big surprises that give them all a chance to make a new beginning. Does Amber have anything to do with one of the surprises and therefore exert an influence on their lives beyond what we already know? That isn't clear, so that I have to assume that the author intended for us not to know, but I'm still wondering if I missed a clue.

A FINE BALANCE by Rohinton Mistry

There's a sentence in the book that refers to the fine balance between hope and despair. Set in India in the 1970s, the book addresses other dichotomies, such as male/female, haves/have-nots, and lucky/unlucky. The four main characters are Dina, Maneck, Om, and Ishvar. Dina is a 40-something widow in India renting out a room in her ramshackle flat to Maneck, a college student. She also employs 2 untouchables, Ishvar and his nephew Om, as tailors to help make ends meet. Gradually, this foursome becomes a loose family, as Dina throws caution to the wind and offers living space on her veranda to the tailors. She succumbs to this inevitable arrangement to save them from the constant peril and uncertainty of living in the slums or on the streets. I think that this book could be reduced in length by a few hundred pages without serious harm, but I will say that I became immersed in the lives of the characters after spending so much time with them. Oddly enough, hope and despair do not align naturally along caste boundaries. Maneck has no real barriers to success, financial or otherwise, but he is somewhat morose and constantly at odds with his father. Dina occasionally has to stoop to relying on the good graces of her brother, who treats her like a servant, but at least she'll never be completely homeless. Om and Ishvar, on the other hand, despite their sewing skills, are invariably on the fringe, precariously teetering between an almost tolerable life and unimaginable suffering at the hands of those in power. Maneck sees life as a game of chess, but the tailors cannot comprehend a stalemate, much less the no-way-out concept of checkmate. Ishvar, the least showy character, is the one who keeps trudging forward, hoping for a better life for himself and Om, but thwarted at every move.

THE ELEGANCE OF THE HEDGEHOG by Muriel Barbery

Renee is the frumpy 54-year-old concierge in a posh Paris residential high-rise. Paloma is an ultra-precocious 12-year-old who resides in the building with her wealthy, educated, superficial family. These two narrators ultimately find themselves kindred spirits, joined by new resident Monsieur Ozu, a Japanese gentleman who has aroused the curiosity of everyone else in the building. Both Renee and Paloma are leading a clandestine life, but Monsieur Ozu recognizes almost immediately that Renee, despite her impoverished upbringing, is a closet intellectual with a finely-honed appreciation for the arts. She quotes Proust and Kant, recognizes Mozart's Reqiuem when it is blasted from Ozu's bathroom, and prefers Dutch painters over French. Paloma's chapters are journal entries of "Profound Thoughts." She is the top student in her school but keeps her smarts in check so as not to draw too much attention to herself. She is also matter-of-factly planning suicide, unless something to live for appears in the meantime. At times, both Renee and Paloma wax philosophical, making the book a bit of a snoozer in the beginning. However, after the three main characters discover each other, I became hooked. Will Renee overcome her reticence and break out of the shackles of her class and position? Will her new friendships give Paloma the raison d'etre that she's seeking? Renee is the Cinderella character that we're hoping has found her prince, and Paloma provides her own brand of cynical humor. Her mother immediately carts her off to the family psychiatrist when Paloma tells the family that she hears voices, just to get them off her case. The scene where she cuts a deal with the shrink is priceless.

THE WHITE TIGER by Aravind Adiga

Balram Halwai, the son of a rickshaw-puller in India, is feisty and ambitious. He succeeds in his quest to get a job as a rich man's chauffeur, and we know from the beginning that he kills his boss and becomes an entrepreneur. This set me up to want to find out why he did it and how he got away with it. Balram tells his story in the form of a (very long) letter to the premier of China who is coming to visit Balram's city of Bangalore, ostensibly to find out how to bring technology and entrepreneurship to China. Balram begins by describing the paradox that is India—the high-tech outsourcing companies surrounded by slums with open sewers and contaminated drinking water. Then he proceeds with the story of his life, including his father's death from TB at a public hospital with no doctor. This sounds incredibly bleak, and it gets worse, but Balram's voice is laced with dark humor and sarcasm, and I found myself ashamed to be laughing. I love that Balram justifies the murder of his boss by observing that we often honor our murderous leaders with statues. The author seems to enjoy pointing up all the dichotomies that exist in India. For example, graft and election fixing are rampant in a country that considers itself a democracy. The rich are corrupt, while their poor servants are scrupulously honest to avoid the wrath of their masters. Sadly, the book offers no hope that India will ever be able to dig itself out of this situation, and certainly the author is not suggesting that the country needs more Balrams. The irony is that Balram escapes poverty by emulating the every-man-for-himself attitude of the men in power.

THE SECRET HISTORY by Donna Tartt

Donna Tartt's The Secret History is a book about a murder, but more in the vein of Crime and Punishment than Presumed Innocent. Richard, our narrator, joins a group of five young men and one woman in the study of classic Greek at a small private college in Vermont. He goes to great lengths to conceal the fact that he's there on scholarship, as this fact might alienate him from his blue-blood classmates. We learn on the first page, though, that the group will murder Bunny (short for Edmund), one of their own. The way that this plays out is sort of a horror story, as Bunny, virtually blackmailing the others in the group, seems unaware that he's digging his own grave and leaving his friends with no other solution. The aftermath of the murder is even darker, as Bunny's friends have to feign grief while staying at Bunny's parents' home during the weekend of the funeral. The fear of discovery and the degeneration of trust within the group are, of course, much more difficult to bear than the problem that the murder was intended to solve. Remorse seems to be generally lacking. I did not love this book, partly because it's overly long, but also because it's impossible to imagine how these students, drunk most of the time, ever became Greek scholars. However, there are some interesting forces at work. Richard is a hanger-on, blinded by misplaced admiration for the other members of the group and mesmerized by their charismatic professor. The price he pays for trying to fit in is very high indeed.