Thursday, April 06, 2006
It has been long enough!
Two books read recently and both loved one more than the other - just like a mother and her two children.
When We Were Orphans - Kazuo Ishiguro
My second Ishiguro and reaffirmed my initial ...ummmm... what do I call it? My initial reasons for liking him. I always worry about extremely popular authors. First time if you do like their first book you read (god help if you dislike the popular!) there is always that niggling worry about not liking anything else that will follow by the author.. especially successive work. So was rightly concerned because I had liked lots of things about 'The Remains Of The Day'.
This book is a simple enough story or so it seems. In the first few chapters itself, you have uncovered many layers - Christopher Banks, his life, his life in China and interspersed with history. For a large part of the book, it seemed like a regular story, which may have a moral at the end of it. The neat little twist was a pleasant surprise and had I read the book in a sitting (or 2 days - which I did not and spread it over a couple of weeks instead) I would have seen it coming.
Another thing that struck me that how events from childhood are inevitably coloured and are much more grandiose than the actual event. Like in My Family and Other Animals, only when he revisits China does he realise some of the squalor and mustiness that even his memories did not record.
His language is typical, like reading a novel with glasses made of Wren and Martin but I am also told, that also has a history, link for which I cannot find. Next on the list for the same author is 'The Unconsoled'. So should I read it of skip it?
Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas - Tom Robbins
This is the child (or book in this case) that I prefer between the two for this post. I dont know what about this author that I like so much but his books seem somehow timeless. The last book I read seemed appropriate in the light of the situation then and even so much now!
Gwendolyn Mati a stock broker (read scam between the two words) is worried about her future (and incidentally even the country's) now that the US Stock Market has fallen and fallen and gone beyond depths imaginable. Her future, her doubtfully earned money and her stock related happiness - all is at stake. The whole book is set between the evening before Good Friday and Easter Sunday and all she can possibly do in between.
Thrown in for additional seasoning is a tarot card reader who unfortunately can tell if you have a genuine orgasm or not, a born again(!!) monkey who resorts to turning tricks again - even humans are not as pious, mostly.. and of course her permanent boyfriend and intermitten lovers.
Written superbly with wit, disapproval and some amazing little nuggets of wisdom - of stock market rises, happiness, money, orgasms - I guess it talks about satisfying all your basic needs. And since my roommate has taken this book along for this is the only book she deigns funny and serious and readable on a flight, none of these lines I can share rightaway.
The Easter weekend is around the corner and a correction due in our markets expected not one day too soon.. I cant but help draw parallels.
When We Were Orphans - Kazuo Ishiguro
My second Ishiguro and reaffirmed my initial ...ummmm... what do I call it? My initial reasons for liking him. I always worry about extremely popular authors. First time if you do like their first book you read (god help if you dislike the popular!) there is always that niggling worry about not liking anything else that will follow by the author.. especially successive work. So was rightly concerned because I had liked lots of things about 'The Remains Of The Day'.
This book is a simple enough story or so it seems. In the first few chapters itself, you have uncovered many layers - Christopher Banks, his life, his life in China and interspersed with history. For a large part of the book, it seemed like a regular story, which may have a moral at the end of it. The neat little twist was a pleasant surprise and had I read the book in a sitting (or 2 days - which I did not and spread it over a couple of weeks instead) I would have seen it coming.
Another thing that struck me that how events from childhood are inevitably coloured and are much more grandiose than the actual event. Like in My Family and Other Animals, only when he revisits China does he realise some of the squalor and mustiness that even his memories did not record.
His language is typical, like reading a novel with glasses made of Wren and Martin but I am also told, that also has a history, link for which I cannot find. Next on the list for the same author is 'The Unconsoled'. So should I read it of skip it?
Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas - Tom Robbins
This is the child (or book in this case) that I prefer between the two for this post. I dont know what about this author that I like so much but his books seem somehow timeless. The last book I read seemed appropriate in the light of the situation then and even so much now!
Gwendolyn Mati a stock broker (read scam between the two words) is worried about her future (and incidentally even the country's) now that the US Stock Market has fallen and fallen and gone beyond depths imaginable. Her future, her doubtfully earned money and her stock related happiness - all is at stake. The whole book is set between the evening before Good Friday and Easter Sunday and all she can possibly do in between.
Thrown in for additional seasoning is a tarot card reader who unfortunately can tell if you have a genuine orgasm or not, a born again(!!) monkey who resorts to turning tricks again - even humans are not as pious, mostly.. and of course her permanent boyfriend and intermitten lovers.
Written superbly with wit, disapproval and some amazing little nuggets of wisdom - of stock market rises, happiness, money, orgasms - I guess it talks about satisfying all your basic needs. And since my roommate has taken this book along for this is the only book she deigns funny and serious and readable on a flight, none of these lines I can share rightaway.
The Easter weekend is around the corner and a correction due in our markets expected not one day too soon.. I cant but help draw parallels.
# posted by Janaki @ 2:05 pm 
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i just finished reading Ishiguro's never let me go last night and posted about it. Its so simple and so complicated at the same time. When we were orphans is waiting now, but i think i wil punctuate the two books with something else
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