The Book about the Unremarkable Priest

Gilberth Keith Chesterton, The Complete Father Brown Stories, London, Wordsworth Classics, 2006, pp. 756.

Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874–1936) was an English writer, philosopher, lay theologian, and literary and art critic. He is most famous for creating the fictional priest-detective Father Brown, and writings apologetics (the religious discipline of defending religious doctrines through systematic argumentation and discourse).

The idea for Father Brown came to Chesterton in 1903 when he was taking a walk with a Catholic priest. The priest happened to mention that he was about to support in print a proposal dealing with certain sexual crimes. He then proceeded to acquaint Chesterton with some of the “perverted” incidents resulting from these crimes, who was astounded as he himself had no idea that such “horrors” could exist, particularly since the priest was a quiet and pleasant celibate. When they came back from their walk they had dinner with two Cambridge graduates who, after the priest left, complained that a priest’s life is not a proper one as they are sheltered from the evils of the world, leaving them naive and unable to protect themselves. The absurd irony of the situation inspired Chesterton to create the fictional character of Father Brown.

This juxtaposition between the commonplace and the extraordinary is supposed to be the reason that people are attracted to the Father Brown stories. There is nothing really special about the character of Father Brown, an ordinary priest who does not chase criminals, get into fights or uses any forensic equipment to find the murderers. Instead, the stories heavily rely on Brown’s ability to empathise with various human outlooks and arrive at the criminal’s thought process.

I know this juxtaposition attracted me as well, for the first story starring Father Brown hooked me with its focus on the extraordinary through the commonplace, but I am not sure if this is the reason I stayed with the stories. It took me almost a year to go through this omnibus, though to be honest I covered more than half of the stories in the final two weeks. Nevertheless, considering the time and effort it took me to go through it, and the fact that I was willing to give it, I found many of the stories not living up to my high expectations.

A major reason for this is the uneven quality of the stories. This omnibus comprises of the 5 volumes of short story collections involving Father Brown. While I truly enjoyed the first book in the omnibus, and found the fourth and fifth books interesting but it was a chore to go through books two and three which were, to put it bluntly, generally boring. It was so boring that I had to take a break of months between some stories before I could go back to the book.

Literary descriptions of characters and places have generally left me cold, and while I could appreciate in an abstract way the superiority of Chesterton’s abilities as a writer compared to many other authors I have read, his beautiful descriptions, after a few stories, became a chore for me to get through to reach the plot of the story. It would be especially difficult to plough through it if the story was not captivating enough and my eyes would glaze over. To give just one example of Chesterton’s abilities of description,

“As it was, he jumped up with great promptitude, plunged into his clothes, seized his big knobby umbrella and bustled out into the street, where the bleak white morning was breaking like splintered ice about the huge black building facing him. He was surprised to find that the streets shone almost empty in the cold crystalline light; the very look of it told him it could hardly be so late as he had feared. Then suddenly the stillness was cloven by the arrowlike swiftness of a long grey car which halted before the big deserted flats.”

I would have to be an imbecile to not be moved by this description of a city street in the early morning by Chesterton. I can close my eyes and actually imagine the street as fog engulfs it. However, when I have to go through paragraphs upon paragraphs of the same sort of description of everything, it becomes a somewhat tedious process.

Chesterton in his stories follows no logical setup, unlike other detective stories. He prefers to instead focus on human psychology. Throughout his stories, Chesterton, as a practising Catholic, focuses on moral and spiritual failures. His later Father Brown writings have a more pronounced didactic element than his earlier ones. Funnily enough, I enjoyed his works with the didactic element more than some of his earlier works simply because of the incisive way he discusses human psychology and failings in these works. For example,

“The waiter stood staring a few seconds, while there deepened on every face at table a strange shame which is wholly the product of our time. It is the combination of modern humanitarianism with the horrible modern abyss between the souls of the rich and poor. A genuine historic aristocrat would have thrown things at the waiter, beginning with empty bottles, and very probably ending with money. A genuine democrat would have asked him, with comrade-like clearness of speech, what the devil he was doing. But these modern plutocrats could not bear a poor man near to them, either as a slave or as a friend. That something had gone wrong with the servants was merely a dull, hot embarrassment. They did not want to be brutal, and they dreaded the need to be benevolent. They wanted the thing, whatever it was, to be over.”

Though this paragraph is from one of his earlier works, his later works, in a similar vein, has some of the sharpest commentaries on human failings. Maybe this was the reason I remained with Chesterton’s work as long as I did. For when he wrote a particularly good Father Brown story, due to his profound insight into human psychology, he helped me understand some of the characteristics of my own world regardless of the length of time separating his world from mine, just like all great literature does.

The Boring Hunt

Frederick Forsyth, The Fox, London, Bantam Press, 2018, pp. 311.

Frederick Forsyth is one of the most famous writers of spy thrillers in the world today. I have reviewed one of his books before, in which I discussed the realism that informs every aspect of his books and makes them such a fun read. Technically highly detailed, I remember reading his book The Day of the Jackal and being blown away by the sheer detailed research that went into the book. The book actually made it feel as if the whole assassination attempt was unfolding before my own eyes.

The heyday of Forsyth’s ability as a writer is unfortunately over. I would not have completed this book if it were not by him. By the time I finished a third of the book, I knew that it was one of his worst and not worth reading. The novel revolves around an 18-year old autistic computer prodigy (the prodigious savant trope that has been done to death by Hollywood) who is able to hack into all non-hackable computer firewalls throughout the world (such a prodigy that not a single character in the book was able to explain, or knew, how he managed to do it). He is recruited by the British government and unleashed against its enemies (Iran, North Korea and Russia). The enemies in turn attempt to find and kill this prodigy while the protagonist, a retired British intelligence agent, attempts to keep him safe.

While the technical aspects of the book remain as detailed as before (except when it comes to computers, then the author lapses into clichés that don’t really explain anything and would have made his younger self blush with embarrassment), there was a lack of suspense, and plot, that I did not expect in a book by Forsyth. The whole book was filled with unnecessary melodrama. For example, in one scene, the protagonist confronts a traitor and he breaks down crying. The protagonist looks away with disgust at this show of weakness and recalls older British values which did not allow such behaviour. At that moment I felt like looking away from the book in disgust, for it did not recall older British values of good writing.

Character development has always been a problem for Forsyth who prefers to focus on the technical aspects but it reaches new heights in this book. The characters were extremely one-dimensional and felt like they had been picked from some cheap B-grade movie. Coupled with this is the author’s habit of digressing and giving vignettes about different real incidents that had happened in the world of spy-craft. While in his earlier books they helped build up the mood, due to the meandering plot, they sorely stick out in this one and managed to irritate me badly. It was not helped by soliloquies by the author on the world situation at large (I broadly agree on the author’s views on North Korea but that does not mean I want a speech on the threat presented by it in the middle of a novel). The ending was another brutal let-down. Highly unbelievable and convenient, I could only think back with fondness about older Forsyth novels whose endings managed to give you chills.

My above review has turned into a rant but the only reason I am so deeply disappointed is because of how much I have enjoyed Forsyth’s books over the years. Unfortunately, the master does not seem to have the abilities to continue entertaining people any more.

Vignettes in the Life of a Professional Monster Hunter

Andrzej Sapkowski, The Last Wish, (tr.) Danusia Stok, Great Britain, Gollancz, 2007, pp. 384.

Andrzej Sapkowski (b. 1948) is a Polish fantasy writer. He is best known for his book series, The Witcher. His books have been translated into about 20 languages. The current book I am reviewing is considered the first book in the series and is a compilation of short stories the author had written before.

I first came to know about Andrzej Sapkowski when I came across the Witcher games. When it comes to fantasy stories I have always been particularly drawn towards dark fantasy. The morally ambiguous world of Gerald of Rivia (the protagonist of the series) perfectly fitted my taste in the genre so I thought I might go and explore the novels from which the games are derived.

 The Witchers, in plain language, are monster hunters for hire. Trained since childhood and genetically modified through experiments they are stronger and have greater abilities than almost all human beings. They inhabit a world which was originally populated by elves and other supernatural creatures but with the arrival of human beings everything changed. With their fast-growing numbers and agricultural techniques, humans slowly took over the land, pushing the supernatural creatures into the periphery or reducing them to a second-tier status within their lands. The Witchers emerged 300 years before Gerald’s birth when this confrontation was still strong and society needed the help of warriors to fight these creatures. By the time of Gerald, the confrontation has winded down and humanity emerged victorious. Though there are still occasional fights for which Witchers are in high demand, overall their place in the world has gone down.

It is in this environment, where the high time of the Witchers is gone, that Gerald goes around making his living by ridding the world of supernatural creatures. Refusing to take sides in any conflict, he prefers to stick to his professional task at hand. As he states to a man who offers him a lot of money to not finish a task he had undertaken,

“But I, Lord Ostrit, do not care about politics, or the successions to thrones, or revolutions in palaces. I am here to accomplish my task. Have you never heard of a sense of responsibility and plain honesty? About professional ethics?”

Or another time when he was offered a large reward to kill a princess by a wizard because she was considered to have evil mutations within her, which in time would make her into a monster. A claim Gerald considered as absurd and therefore refused, stating he only killed monsters for money. When pressed by the wizard that it was the lesser evil he responded,

“Evil is evil, Stregobor,’ said the witcher seriously as he got up. ‘Lesser, greater, middling, it’s all the same. Proportions are negotiated, boundaries blurred. I’m not a pious hermit, I haven’t done only good in my life. But if I’m to choose between one evil and another, then I prefer not to choose at all.”

The stories themselves are mostly based on a reworking of J. R. R. Tolkien’s fantasy world mixed with more European folklore (particularly Slavic mythology). From what I understand, the later books in the series follow the novel format but the current book comprises of seven short stories of monster hunting undertaken by Gerald. They have been appropriately made more violent and, to put it succinctly, sexed up for a contemporary audience.

For example, the story of the princess and the wizard I mentioned above is based on Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. While the Disney version of the story had been made extremely kid friendly I am not sure the original had as much violence as Sapkowski’s version (It’s been some time since I read the original Snow White story). In the book, Snow White (she is named Shrike in the tale) is kept trapped in a tower by the Wizard and her step-mom, besides multiple other princesses in various locations, in fear of their supposed mutations. In time, many of these princesses are killed off. Accordingly, the step-mom sends Shrike to the forest with a hunter to be killed but he takes pity on her and spares her, after taking her belongings and raping her. Shrike puts a brooch-pin into his brain and runs for it. After moving around a bit, and trying to stay alive by sleeping with men for a bowl of soup if necessary, she falls into the company of seven gnomes. They become bandits together and begin terrifying travellers. Eventually, Shrike begins hunting her tormentors who start dying in mysterious ways. She ultimately becomes the chief favourite of a prince, whose father and siblings mysteriously die making him king before he himself ends up dead. When the Witcher story begins, this hyper-violent version of Snow White confronts Gerald as the Wizard asks for his help to take her down.

There are other stories with fairy-tale motifs as well. There is a story based on the Beauty and the Beast while in another tale the author mentions the story of Cinderella in passing, she being a girl who somehow got chopped into pieces at midnight leaving behind just her left glass slipper (not that the original with the step-sisters chopping their feet to fit the slipper was any less gruesome).

But it is not completely doom and gloom in the book. There is a fair bit of action and humour which make it an enjoyable read. Though I won’t consider the book worth reading more than once but I would recommend it to people as something worth reading on a pleasurable afternoon.

Life as a Defence Lawyer

John Grisham, The Rogue Lawyer, Hodder, United Kingdom, 2015, reprint, 2016, pp. 371.

John Ray Grisham Jr. is an American bestselling writer, attorney, politician, and activist best known for his popular legal thrillers. As of 2012, his books have sold over 275 million copies worldwide and have been translated into 42 languages.

Grisham is one of those few mass writers whose books I have fallen in love with. Call me a snob but I tend to be extremely suspicious of any writer who is able to produce a large corpus of work while being able to sell them in large numbers. Mostly I have been proven correct when I have perused the contents of such books, in this regard Sidney Sheldon is the first name that popped into my mind, but I have been proven completely wrong as well, Stephen King is one such writer for those who are curious. Grisham is among those few writers whose works I adore and are also wildly popular.

The author’s current book, like most of his books, takes place in the world of the legal system. Grisham is a very funny writer and has always managed to elucidate the absurdities of the legal world. His current book deals with the life of a highflying criminal defence lawyer by the name of Sebastian Rudd who is famous for taking cases that nobody wants, his clients range from a mafia boss accused of assassinating a judge to an innocent homeowner accidentally killed in a police operation gone wrong. A man who operates in the murkier sides of the law, Rudd operates from a bulletproof van converted into his office as his proper office was firebombed a few years ago. He lives on the 25^th floor of a heavily guarded building, packs a pistol and is always followed around by a paralegal/bodyguard. For entertainment he plays billiards and patronizes MMA fights, investing on future fighters and gambling on their fights. Though willing to defend criminals for money, it is the man on the street for whom Rudd’s heart beats and when given a chance to defend such people he goes out of his way to make sure that they don’t end up victims of the system.

The book is less a proper novel than a collection of vignettes in the life of Rudd which have been loosely tied together. Through them the author has at times tried to comment on the conditions of the American police and legal system. For example, through the story of the home invasion mentioned above the author describes the extensive arming of American police with military style equipment and the fallout of such behaviour. It results in a tragedy in the book as 8 SWAT (Special Weapons and Tactics) officers in heavy armament charge into a house at 3 in the morning thinking it to be a drug den selling drugs online. The problem emerged as they raided the wrong house and ended up killing the wife of the homeowner. It goes to the credit of the author that he manages to deal with such a heavy topic in his book while infusing it with his trademark humour thereby making sure that the plot is never weighted down.

War and Adventure in a Fantasy Land

Joe Abercrombie, The First Law: Book One: The Blade Itself, 2006, Gollancz, London, e-book, pp. 544.

Joe Abercrombie, The First Law: Book Two: Before they are Hanged, 2007, Gollancz, London, e-book, pp. 592.

Joe Abercrombie, The First Law: Book Three: Last Argument of Kings, 2008, Gollancz, London, e-book, pp. 704.

Joe Abercrombie is a British fantasy writer and film editor. He is most famous for his fantasy trilogy called The First Law, which I am currently reviewing.

Fantasy and detective fiction are two genres of fiction I absolutely love. They are what I might term as my guilty pleasure. Recently, I was sick and while waiting to recover I decided to read Joe Abercrombie’s First Law series. Dealing with a Fantasy Land where war is happening between different regions it chronicles the heroics of a small group of adventurers who set out to fight an evil that plans to bring the whole world to its knees, or so the storyline makes us believe at the beginning. By the end the books completely overturn this well-worn cliché in fantasy books and makes you wonder, evil was stopped no doubt but did good really triumph?

The characterisations are particularly good and complex in the book, especially for a fantasy tale. Told from the perspective of multiple main characters the book allows us to see different situations in different light. The two main protagonist of the books are undoubtedly Logen “Bloody-Nine” Ninefingers and Sand Dan Glokta. Logen is the most famous, or maybe better to term infamous, warrior from the Northern wilderness. He has spent his whole life in war and slaughtered men, women and children in a manner so ruthless that it leaves most battle hardened warriors from the North quaking in their shoes. Though he has lived a violent life, Logen in his middle age has started regretting it. Having lost all his family to war he wishes to make amends but does not know where to begin. A chance misfortune sends him tumbling, both figuratively and literally, out of the North and he ends up journeying to save the “world”. Though his past is always hinted at, it is not until the third book that we get to see his dark and violent side when he returns home.

Sand Dan Glokta on the other hand is a torturer and member of the Royal Inquisition in the Kingdom of Union. He is not a member of this merry band of adventurers but has a different trajectory in the books which overlaps with theirs at times. An intelligent, handsome and promising young colonel in the army, he was captured in war by the Gurkish Empire a few years before the start of the book. He was tortured for 2 years straight in the Emperor’s prison until a prisoner swab was held and he came back home. He described the experience to another character in this manner,

“I spent two years in the Emperor’s prisons. I daresay, if I had known I’d be there half that long at the start, I would have made a more concerted effort to kill myself. Seven hundred days, give or take, in the darkness. As close to hell, I would have thought, as a living man can go.”

The experience left him permanently disfigured and crippled. Intensely loathed by most people due to his disfigurement and cruelty as a torturer, the man is one of the few people amongst his colleagues to have a conscience. Yet at the same time he completely ignores it and throughout the whole book he keeps asking questions of himself, why does he do what he does? Why does he continue living when his life has nothing but pain? Some of the other characters are just as complex and interesting, particularly Bayaz, the first of the Magi.

The story is also compact and does not meander much. The goal throughout the book is to find an otherworldly stone filled with magical powers to fight the Gurkish, who have over the centuries created around 100 people called Eaters who have supernatural powers. The first book starts off slowly as it brings together the different characters of the book. The second book mainly chronicles the adventurers on route to their quest to the edge of the world while the third book chronicles the fallout after they come back. The third book overturns much of the personalities of the characters that we witness until then, and we get to see the dark and violent side underneath the surface for many of them. Though I have to admit, I didn’t particularly like the ending. I enjoy bittersweet endings but the author pushes the envelope on the meaning of the word ‘bittersweet’ for there is not much ‘sweet’ in it. Overall, it is a good series to pass your time without thinking too deeply about it.

The Hunt

 

Frederick Forsyth, The Kill List, Corgi Books, Great Britain, 2013, reprint, 2014, pp. 395.

Frederick Forsyth is an English author, former journalist and spy. He burst onto the writing scene with his classic The Day of the Jackal in 1971, which dealt with a fictional assassination attempt on then-French president Charles de Gaulle by the Organisation Armée Secrète (OAS). Since then he has written many best-selling thrillers. His current book deals with the attempt to track down and kill a radical Islamic cleric whose internet sermons lead to the murder of a number of government functionaries.

One of the main problems I face when I read spy thrillers is the sheer unbelievability of the plot and the superhuman abilities of the protagonist. Buried in an avalanche and injured badly? Nothing 4-5 hours in the field clinic won’t cure. Don’t have the authority to pursue a particular investigation? Just go around and punch a few guys, which will reveal the deeper conspiracy and everyone will forgive your transgression. Somebody asks you for the necessary paperwork before giving you permission? He is actually a mole working for the ‘bad guys’. If a female character somehow displays some initiative and intelligence at the beginning, she will immediately lose it upon meeting the lead hero and will swoon every time he opens his mouth. These are some of the standard tropes involved in the writing of a thriller. The sheer unrealism prevalent in them has put me off thrillers for some time now.

Forsyth has been one of my favourite thriller writers for some years now and is one of the few thriller writers whose work I read anymore. The main reason I enjoy his work is the extreme devotion to details present in them. There are no damsels in distress or superhuman spies in his work. He eschews psychological complexity in favour of meticulous descriptions of real life institutions, laws, technical details about smuggling, money laundering and identity theft. He has also been writing for more than 40 years and in that time there has been a sea change in the geo-political situation throughout the world. The fact that he has managed to keep up and updated his stories to reflect this changed situation is already marvellous. They also regularly contain famous personalities and political leaders. Such a writing style means that, at times, he is able to give information about certain topics in a novel format better than reading multiple non-fiction books could. For example, his The Day of the Jackal, which incidentally is one my most favourite spy thrillers, discusses the French republic under Charles de Gaulle and the problems it faced due to the troubles in Algeria. He beautifully captures the panic and instability brought about by the terrorism of the Organisation Armée Secrète (OAS). Of course, this has resulted in some people branding his books as a how-to-manual for assassinations and terrorist activity, not an idle criticism by the way since they have been used by some mercenaries and assassins to plan their activities. But that is one of the reasons why his books are so wonderful.

The title of the current book refers to a top secret kill list maintained by the US government which is reviewed weekly by about half a dozen people, including the US president. The names on the list have been deemed the greatest threat to the US and there is a blanket permission to the US forces to do whatever is necessary to rid them of this world. The novel describes the hunt for the newest name to this list. Simply known as the Preacher, he is a radical Islamic cleric whose internet sermons inspires his followers to kill Western targets. A spate of killings forces the US government to take action. They depute an ex-US marine, simply known as the Tracker, on the job. With the help of a brilliant teenage hacker he attempts to hunt down the Preacher.

As always Forsyth’s journalistic roots are clearly visible as he gives detailed descriptions of the military and terrorist organisations involved in this cat and mouse game. From the procedures through which they operate to the details of the equipment they use, everything is given in loving, and actually interesting, detail. The protagonist finally tracks down the Preacher to Somalia and Forsyth gives detailed information on how the terrorist organisations operate from that region, along with the piracy prevalent in those waters. All of this given in the format of a story, which allows us to better appreciate the problems being faced in the greater drive to maintain order in this world and the sacrifices that it entails.

Though Forsyth’s work will always be a cut above the rest in my eyes, it unfortunately never quite reaches the height of some of his former novels. The story is very predictable from the start and moves along predictable lines. Character development has always been something Forsyth has never focused much on as he prefers to give detailed information about the preparation involved in such missions. However, it is even more lacking in this book. When the author kills off the Tracker’s father, at the hands of one of the Jihadis inspired by the Preacher’s sermons to give him some personal reasons for the hunt, it seems absolutely forced. All in all, a person of Forsyth’s calibre could have done a much better job of writing this work.

A Blast into the Past

J.K. Rowling, John Tiffany & Jack Thorne, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child: Parts One and Two, Kindle edition, 2016, pp. 241.

Joanne Rowling, who writes under the pen name J.K. Rowling and Robert Galbraith, is a British novelist and screenwriter best known for writing the Harry Potter fantasy series. The books have won multiple awards and sold more than 400 million books to become the best-selling book series in history. It has also been the basis for a series of super hit movies.

John Tiffany is an English theatre director and has directed many international successful productions such as Black Watch and One.

Jack Thorne is an English screenwriter and playwright who has written for radio, theatre, film and most notably for TV shows.

The reviewed book is a rehearsal script for a play which was performed in London in June 2016. It is a two-part stage play written by Jack Thorne based on an original new story by Thorne, J.K. Rowling and John Tiffany. A continuation of the Harry Potter series of fantasy books, it is officially considered as its eighth instalment. The book begins nineteen years after the events described in the seventh Potter book. It follows Harry Potter, now a Ministry of Magic employee, and his younger son Albus Severus Potter, who is about to attend Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

In many ways the Harry Potter books have a special place in my heart, for my love for fiction was, to a large extent, fostered by them. While I was growing up reading books for entertainment was not a very popular thing in my neighbourhood. Though we used to read comics but books were a big no. My elder sibling did have a small store of a few Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew, Enid Blyton, fairy tales, etc. But these books, after a certain age, are not ones you feel like revisiting. The first ‘proper’ fiction which I read happened to be Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (the fourth book in the series). A neighbour’s relative while visiting had brought the book and happening to see it, I borrowed it. I sat down to read it and was hooked. I finished the book in a single sitting lasting 14 hours and after I was done, reread it again. After 2 days I returned the book and became a lifelong fan. For the next few years I slowly collected the rest of the books in the series and read them. But for a long time they were the only piece of ‘good’ fiction I owned and therefore I would reread them again and again. I have reread every single book in the series at least thrice and some more than a dozen times. It was only towards the end of my schooldays that I began reading other fiction. Though it would be incorrect to denote the Harry Potter books as the only reason for my turn towards books but it was one of the major reasons for it.

Therefore, when I turned towards this new addition to the series it was both with excitement and mixed feelings. I have actually had the book with me for more than a year but only chose to read it very recently. People who have read until now might be a bit surprised considering how I have characterised myself as a big Harry Potter fan. There were a few reasons for it. Firstly, I just don’t read as much fiction anymore. From once reading 50-60 fiction per year I have severely cut down on it. Nowadays I mostly stick to non-fiction. Secondly, in many ways the Harry Potter novels closed with a very satisfying ending and I did not know how to react to one more book in the series. Thirdly, the new book is not a novel. It is a rehearsal script for a play which is not even written by J.K. Rowling but “based” on a new story by her. To understand the problem please allow me to elaborate.

A rehearsal script means that the whole book consists only of dialogues and to really appreciate it we have to go and see the play. I have only once before read something of this sort. It was a novel adaptation of Agatha Christie’s Poirot play Black Coffee. I hated the experience as reading the overdramatized story was downright painful. In a play I might have liked it, in a novel I hated it. Secondly, most of the writing was done by Jack Thorne. My experience with book continuations written by other authors after the original author stops has been generally dreadful. For example, I read the continuations of the classic mafia novel the Godfather by Mario Puzo. Written by Mark Winegardner and called The Godfather: The Lost Years and The Godfather’s Revenge I hated them. The author completely changed the personalities of multiple major characters because of which it felt like I was reading up about strangers instead of some familiar friends with whom I had got acquainted during the course of Godfather.

Harry Potter and the Cursed Child turned out to be a mixed bag. It did not manage to either disappoint me as badly as I feared nor reach the heights of the original series. The story begins with Albus Potter reaching Hogwarts. A quirk of fate results in him becoming best friends with Scorpius Malfoy, son of Draco Malfoy one of Harry’s worst enemy during his student years. He then ends up getting sorted into Slytherin and finds out he doesn’t quite have the talents his father is famous for. This leads to his increasing bullying in Hogwarts and his estrangement from his father. Albus becomes fixated on saving Cedric Diggory, the boy who died in the Triwizard Tournament in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, when he overhears Amos Diggory talking about his son’s death with Harry. He and Scorpius therefore use Time Turners to go back into the past and change the outcome which unfortunately has unforeseen results in the present.

At the outset, the plot is a little bit thin. Albus after hearing Amos talking about his son with Harry only once decides to go out of his way to rectify the past? But if we ignore this glaring problem with the plot and start imagining how it would look in a play, well you could see some of the magic again. The book is also extremely funny at times. Nonetheless, I wish Thorne had not mutilated Ron Weasley’s character. He has been turned into a buffoon to provide the laughs in the play. Though funny, it goes completely against his personality. All in all, as a Potter fan I enjoyed taking a ride back into nostalgia land.

Delhi and its Past

Ahmed Ali, Twilight in Delhi: A Novel, Delhi, 1940, Rupa, Reprinted 2007, pp. 275.

Ahmed Ali (1910–1994) was a Pakistani novelist, poet, critic, translator, diplomat and scholar. He was born in Delhi, British India, and taught at the leading Indian universities including in Lucknow and Allahabad from 1932–46 and joined the Bengal Senior Educational Service as professor and head of the English Department at Presidency College, Calcutta (1944–47). During the Partition of India, he was the British Council Visiting Professor to the University of China in Nanking as appointed by the British government of India. When he tried to return to India in 1948, he was not allowed to by the Indian Government. This forced him to move to Karachi, in Pakistan. Later, at the behest of Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan, he joined the Pakistan Foreign Service in 1950. He went to China as Pakistan’s first envoy and established diplomatic relations with the People’s Republic in 1950. Ali started his literary career at a young age and became a co-founder of the All-India Progressive Writers’ Movement with the publication of Angaaray (Embers) in 1932. It was a collection of short stories in the Urdu language and was a bitter critique of middle-class Muslim values in British India. A pioneer of the modern Urdu short story, Ali’s works include multiple collections of short stories. He achieved international fame with his first novel written in English, Twilight in Delhi, which I am currently reviewing. It describes the decline of the Muslim aristocracy with the advance of British colonialism in the early 20th century.

A moving portrayal of a culture and way of life that has long since come to an end, Twilight in Delhi is the story of Delhi more than the story of its characters. In the edition I read there is a beautiful introduction written by the author, shortly before his death, in which he traces out the story of the publication of this book as well as the sad story of a man who had been permanently separated from the city which he loved.

Though before I begin to review this book I have to point out and quote this line from the Oxford University Press of Delhi who wrote this in the blurb of the ‘Golden Jubilee’ edition of the novel, with all excuses to the author who was annoyed by it, “it describes a culture and … way of life in the predominantly Muslim areas of the city”. There are some people who manage to write the story of a whole city and flesh it out in ways that make you appreciate it in all its flavour. The different sections of its population, languages, foods, culture, everything is made familiar to you. Ahmed Ali’s book, while beautifully evocative, manages to do that about only one particular section of the people therefore, unfortunately, I wholeheartedly agree with the blurb written by the Oxford University Press.

If we were to look for a plot there is not much of it. The story revolves around Mir Nahal, an aristocrat who lives with his family in Delhi. The first two-third of the book deals with his son Asghar’s desire to marry a girl who is somewhat inferior to them in her family status. The rest of the book deals with the drift that emerges between the son and his wife. All the time momentous changes are taking place and the power of the British Raj keeps on increasing in direct proportion to the decline in the way of life enjoyed by the aristocratic end of Delhi society. It begins just before the capital of the Indian empire is shifted to Delhi in 1911 and ends sometime in the late 1910s.

It is not the plot of the book that is its strength but the description of the way of life maintained by the upper sections of Muslim society in Delhi. From pigeon flying to visiting courtesans, from various alchemical practices to marriage rituals, everything is lovingly described along with its history and importance. Delhi is tenderly sketched by the author in his work. For example, this is what the author has to say when the British transferred the capital to Delhi in 1911 and laid the foundation for a new city, “Outside the city, far beyond the Delhi and Turkoman Gates, and opposite the Kotla of Feroz Shah, the Old Fort, a new Delhi was going to be built. The seventh Delhi had fallen along with its builder, Shah Jahan. Now the eight was under construction, and the people predicted that the fall of its builders would follow soon. Its foundations had at least been laid. From that eventful year, 1911, which marked, in a way, the height of British splendour in India, its downfall began.”

The book is filled with beautiful couplets strewn throughout the text. Some of which even I recognised from its common Hindi usage. This gives a very rhythmic feel to the book.

The parts I really liked however were the ones where the author talks about the cultural exchanges taking place. For example, the time when Asghar, after moving into a new house with his wife, slowly takes on more and more English manners and habits. Though the old generation would at times rebuke him for forgetting his heritage but he preferred to imbibe the new customs. This showed the slow acculturation that took place towards English goods and manners at the time. However, the author also shows the popular resistance to the imbibing of these habits as well. In one such example, when Asghar is walking back lost in his own thoughts, in the year 1919, a few street urchins passed him by. Since he was wearing English clothes they began to mock him and shouted in his face, “Bol gai My Lord kukroo-koon (My Lord has been frightened like a defeated cock)”.

It is not just the imbibing of English habits through which this ‘clash of culture’ is taking place. The very act of making Delhi the capital transformed it completely. “A new Delhi meant new people, new ways, and a new world altogether.” In this new world being created in Delhi, people from other parts of India especially Punjab were playing a pivotal role. “They brought with them new customs and new ways” and the world of its older residents was being swept away.

Or the time when Asghar’s wife, Bilqeece, was diagnosed with T.B. Along with western medicines and charms Bilqeece’s mother also tried to get medicine from a Faqir who “had once given a dose of medicine to the cousin of her brother-in law’s father-in law, and the effect of the medicine was that he had vomited, and the T.B. germ had come out and within a month he had started walking about.” It was only in the latter half of the 19^th century that the germ theory began to be accepted by the scientific community. Yet here we are seeing how by the late 1910s (the novel was written in 1940 so we can’t completely accept this timeframe) the germ theory is already being reinterpreted and readapted by the general population and specifically traditional medicinal practices into their cures.

There is a section which I particularly enjoyed because of the disparity it showed in the beliefs and culture of the present Delhi with the past. In it Mir Nahal, who we must remember was part of the aristocracy of Delhi and also quite well to do, had, after retiring from work, taken to alchemy and medical practices to pass his time. Therefore, his older faqir and alchemist friends began to come over more often now that he had time. One day one of them brought over another person with him known as Molvi Dulhan (Bride). “The latter belonged to that order of mystics who dedicate their lives to God, without leaving the world. He wore a red sari, bangles on his arms, kept long hair like a woman, put collyrium in his eyes, and scented oil in his hair. For he had become the bride of God, as his name Dulhan signified.” In today’s Delhi, or even India, I doubt such a person would be invited so freely into the house of any upper class person.

Though a beautifully evocative book I have to admit this is the not the type of novel I generally enjoy. I borrowed this book from a friend who gave up on the book after reading a quarter of it as it was ‘boring’. After reading it I can understand quite well what she was referring to. I like books which have a definite goal or end that it is moving forward to. This book is the documentation of a few years in the life of a certain family of a city. It can be said to have neither a beginning nor an end but can be equated with a boat which is prodding along a river with no end goal in sight. This can make it quite hard for a lot of people to enjoy it.

The Book about Blaze’s Tragedy

Stephen King writing as Richard Bachman, Blaze, Pocket Books, New York, 2008, pp. 373.

Stephen King is an American author of horror, supernatural fiction, suspense, science fiction, and fantasy. His books have sold more than 350 million copies, many of which have been adapted into feature films, miniseries, television shows, and comic books. King has published 54 novels, including seven under the pen name Richard Bachman, the book I am about to review is one of them. He has also written 200 short stories, many of which have been collected in book collections.

I had known about Stephen King for many years but had resisted reading his books. My personal experience with books has been that if somebody is too prodigious in their output of books the quality suffers an equal decline. Such writers tend to make some elementary changes to the name of the character and locations in their works while the structure and plot remains the same. However, I am happy to be proven wrong in King’s case as the quality of his writing is generally top class.

This is actually the third King novel which I have finished reading though this was the first that I began. When I first began reading it there were certain sections towards the first half of the novel which I found just too painful to read, therefore I stopped. I came back to the book after around a year and could not connect to it quite the same way I connected the first time. Now I wish I had read it the first time.

A thriller with some supernatural elements, Blaze is the story of Clayton Blaisdell a.k.a Blaze. A strictly small-time crook, with mental disabilities due to a childhood accident, he is the brawn of a two-person unit whose brains is George Rackley. After pulling off innumerable cons George decides to pull off one big score which will allow the two of them to retire permanently, kidnapping the infant heir to a family fortune. Unfortunately, before the two could pull off the score George dies. Regardless, Blaze decides to pull it off. Unable to plan properly due to his disabilities, Blaze still kidnaps the baby and holds him hostage as the cops and FBI chase him down.

The book can be divided into two halves. One half gives the story of Blaze’s attempt to kidnap the child while the other gives the story of Blaze’s childhood and everything he has suffered in his life. This gives the book a feeling of an inevitable tragedy. We know that Blaze’s disabilities and his history makes it almost inevitable that his story will end in a bad way, yet we (at least I) could not help but root for him, hoping that it might finally work out for him.

In his introduction to this novel King says that he wrote this novel when he was 25 (he is 69 now) and at the time it had been really sentimental. When he published it again in his late fifties he rewrote the whole novel to remove the sentimentality and replaced it with what he calls a “flat, dry tone”. I personally believe that the impact of the book is a lot more because it does not delve into the sentimental zone. It tries to present the story of Blaze’s life through his eyes in a very matter of fact way. His childhood ‘accident’, abuses he suffered, the tragedies he went through. It gives the book, to some extent, the feel of a hard core thriller, with very little excess to complain about. And yet, it still had enough heart wrenching scenes that I closed the book and came back to it after a long time because I found it unbearable.

It was also fascinating to see how King weaved in the supernatural element in this story. Due to Blaze’s mental disabilities we are never completely sure whether these elements are true or a hallucination created by his mind (until the end I guess). This lends a bit of surrealness to the whole book. I guess in the future I will be reading quite a bit of Stephen King.

The Murderous Doppelganger

Agatha Christie, Lord Edgware Dies, e-book, 1933, pp. 256.

Agatha Christie (1890-1976) was an English crime novelist, short story writer and playwright. She is particularly known for her novels centring around the fictional detectives Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple. The Guinness World Records lists Christie as the best-selling novelist of all time. Her novels have sold in total 2 billion copies and she remains the most-translated individual author.

Many of Christie’s novels, including this particular one, were written during the golden period of detective fiction in the 1920s and 1930s. An era of classic murder mysteries of similar patterns and styles, surprises in the novels would be limited to the details of the plot and, primarily to the identity of the murderer. Books from the era mostly contained whodunits, locked room mysteries, members of the upper classes and a sprinkling of racism. Light-hearted, straightforward and confident in its treatment of the material, they are a treat to read. Amongst the practitioners of this form of writing, Christie is one of the best by a long shot. Her books containing beautiful simple prose, absolutely no unnecessary flap and some of the best mysteries I have come across have made her my most favourite detective fiction writer.

I first came across Christie in my schooldays. Since then I have read around 40 of her books and I plan to someday finish off all of them. The present one is another amongst the long line of Hercule Poirot mysteries she has written. As a rule of thumb, I usually avoid novels which form part of a long series or by authors who have written too many books. I have noticed that works such as these tend to become stereotypical or clichéd, with the author rehashing the same storyline or plot devices to continue the story (though in recent times I have been proved wrong due to the beautiful work written by some such writers, Stephen King comes readily to mind). In some ways it is true of Christie’s work as well. Her books by and large deal with people of the higher classes, has at least one pair of star crossed lovers whom Poirot or Marple bring together and the setting is mostly that of a locked room mystery. It is in fleshing out the way the crime took place and her psychological profile of the criminal that Christie wins hands down. Always writing for the masses yet never dumbing it down for them or being too clever with her work, she gives a simplified beauty to the plot that I find particularly alluring. The whole is always greater than the sum of the parts of a Christie novel.

The plot begins when Lady Edgware, an American actress and wife of Lord Edgware, requests Poirot to help her get a divorce from her husband so she can marry another man. She remarks loudly for everyone to hear that unless she gets the divorce she will be forced to kill her husband. A few days later Lord Edgware is killed in his study. Just before he was murdered a woman calling herself Lady Edgware had called at his house. It seems like an open and shut case except for one fact, Lady Edgware was at a party on the other side of the city at the time the murder took place. Baffled by the crime Poirot tries to find out who killed Lord Edgware and why?

One of the biggest problems with detective fiction is the fact that it survives on innovative ideas. And when one of the innovative ways of committing murder becomes popular it tends to percolate down and gets adapted by the new, and sometimes inferior, stories being written. We cannot fathom the shock and surprise felt by a reader of a Sherlock Holmes or Hercule Poirot story when they first came out. Such stories have become such a mainstay of our culture now that we find the original story boring or obvious. The same is with the current Poirot novel to some extent. 50 pages into the book, when the murder is revealed, I immediately guessed who committed it and how. It was not because I am some kind of mystery genius but because as an avid mystery fan I have come across echoes of this story before. And this is where the greatness of Christie comes in. Even though I thought I knew who the murderer is, Christie made me doubt my judgement every second of the way. A blogger whose posts I enjoy once wrote that due to the percolation of successful mysteries from older successful books into newer works, the old texts cannot be enjoyed anymore. On the evidence of Christie’s work, I heartily disagree.