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Literary Review
"Quick reviews"
Suchitra Behal
TOBY HOWK could have been any young boy, growing up in any ordinary neighbourhood with an extraordinary family. His is a family of accomplished women. An aunt who is a famous and rich textile designer; her mate who is a barrister and whose relationship with Toby's aunt is something that he never questions and finally the most important woman in his life — his mother, a young, beautiful and unconventional artist. Life goes on at its usual pace as Toby, a loner by instinct, performs well in school and lives life with his mother for company. But Toby realises that his mother has found a lover — someone who she is not willing to share with him. Angry, intrigued and finally jealous, Toby, manoeuvres his way into his mother's lover's life only to be confronted by nothing.
The final blow occurs when his mother tells him that the man whom she now loves is Toby's father. The puzzle should fall into place but still does not, not till the father is found murdered in his mother's bed. This is an eerie psychological thriller, one that uses the concept of Oedipal passion to weave a tale of murder and longing.
The Deadly Space Between, Patricia Dunker, Picador, price not stated.
ONE of the most amazing facts about newer fiction titles is their inability to relate to readers who may have a traditional taste in matters literary. But what is interesting is that a lot of it mirrors the life of the today generation. There is a sense of alienation that drives them to seek solace in drink, drugs or other powerful alternates. Unfortunately for most of the authors writing this not only provides easy structures within which to loop their stories but also an easier solution to the question of finer nuances of language. And so you have a story set somewhere in the West. A young girl, upset, drunk whenever possible, mooning over the tragic loss of her brother at the tender young age of 24. Death is always unnatural and when a younger person dies the trauma is even greater. The young girl engulfs herself deeper in self pity and moves in a perpetual daze between friends' lodgings, easy pubs, not-so-familiar beds and finally, on the nudging of a female friend, takes off to a seaside village looking for ways to pick up her life. Only she and the author don't seem to try too hard and both vacillate from ridiculous, empty sounding conversations to long stretches on the motorway. Morose silences shuffle in the space of commas and full stops and one wonders if the demise of a book so young too can be as tragic as the tale.
Negative Space, Zoe Strachan, Picador, price not stated.
THIS is a compact publication, much in the tradition of a coffee-table venture. The photographs are excellent, the anecdotes even more so, specially since even a lay person can relate to the many forces that influenced the growing up years of Sachin Tendulkar. But then who wouldn't want to read about a figure so famous in his own lifetime that many of his cricketing contemporaries liken him to god?
Despite the glossy production, despite the wonderful anecdotes, despite the compilation of test score records, in the end the book remains what its format forces you to place it in — a coffee-table book. On the surface it's a big book on the little man of cricket and yet it leaves you with a feeling of wanting more.
Sachin Tendulkar Masterful, Peter Murray and Ashish Shukla, Rupa, Rs. 395.
THIS is an unusual name for a book. It has a subtle east meets west blend to it. And as you read through the short stories all tightly bound and linked together, you find it binds you to the pages. There is "Deepak Mishra's Secretary". A lovely story set in contemporary Nepal. A story of love, betrayal and a sense of the inevitable. "The Good Shopkeeper" takes one through the by lanes of Kathmandu where a poor office worker looses his job to recession. In "The Limping Bride" a recently widowed father gets a proposal for his only son. He should rejoice except his son is a drunk, with no work and the girl beautiful but lame. Samrat Upadhaya has a rare gift — he looks into the box and writes out of it. He has a voice that is strong, contemporary, interesting, sensitive but never strident.
Arresting God in Kathmandu, Samrat Upadhya, Rupa, Rs. 195.
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