Ghostwritten by David Mitchell: Splendifantabulicixcellent!

★★★★★★★★★☆

This is sheer awesomeness on the printed page. An un-put-downable epic contemporary odyssey spanning whole continents and fusing themes as disparate as gas attacks, global terrorism, geopolitics, Eastern mysticism, quantum mechanics, looming apocalypse, ghostwriters, radio jockeys, transmigrating incorporeal spirits, futuristic robots in moral dilemmas: all these  with such alarming surefootedness and erudition, it instantly earns the masterpiece badge. If I had to allude this multi-layered work, I would use the analogy of blood-the ubiquitous fluid seemingly flowing smoothly through our arteries, veins and capillaries in a homogenous liquid form, but once centrifuged, separates elegantly into its constituents in vitro.

For the life of me I cannot believe I let something as seminal as this just pass below my radar for so many years now. Besides the fact that it is so intellectually accomplished and informed, the anticipatory tone in the thread of global terrorism and politics is oddly chilling given that the book’s publishing year is 1999 and consequently, the way things panned out right from the first year of this decade.

Contemporary almost to a fault, I am in a fix whether I should string a bouquet of adjectives for Mitchell’s prose or for being a stylist-extraordinaire as Ghostwritten’s first major triumph is its structure. The hyperlink format of seemingly unconnected characters and narrators scattered across the world linked slimly-almost amorphously [sometimes by a chance encounter, at other times a distant metaphor, or as a faraway acquaintance or just as a passing, unlikely knowledge or suggestion], any lesser author would have bludgeoned the format to ramrod the connections home. Mitchell crafts these connections as delicately as a miniaturist and as unceremoniously as a clerk, making you half-smile in awe at the sheer subtlety.

And then there are the stories themselves, each one mounted with milieu, atmosphere, tone and dialogue so contrastive, it is almost like reading nine separate, self-sufficient novellas. The attention to detail never slips. MItchell, almost like a polyphonic ventriloquist adopts wholly different and convincing voices and leaves you spellbound.

Also noticeable is how much heart he invests in the conflicts of these characters. Be it the disorientation of a criminally brainwashed rookie gas-bomber in Okinawa, or a saxophonist in Tokyo in a dilemma of taking the plunge in love, or your average exec-next-door in Hongkong losing it one fine day, or the desolation and despair of a female trapped in a Tea Shack in a remote Chinese province all her life: with Mitchell’s pen everything from the most personal of hallucination to the most epic sweep of national politics, nothing passes by without creating a ripple of the most personally profound version. Soul-vibrating so to speak. Sharp and effective, as he shifts his scenes later to Petersburg, then to Trans-siberian Express, then to the arid expanses of Mongolia to posh suburbs of London, his delivery no matter how divergent, never falters. And so do his human stories. Peopled by real, complex characters throughout, they all feel like they belong where Mitchell puts them.

I cannot get that transmigrating incorporeal entity flitting from person to person in the parched expanses of Mongolia to find the source of a story integral to its existence out of my head or the Big Brother-esque cyborg conjured by fantastical quantum cognition cybernetics called “Zookeeper” calling up a late-night radio show and laying bare his ethical predicaments and laying on thick the detail and quality of sensitive information and views he has at the snap of his fingers. Even the most ethereal creatures here present with such identifiable ruminations, you are beguiled all the way.

Then another virtue here is that drama’s potency isn’t intruded upon. Ever. Like in the Ireland thread, there’s the welling emotion as we follow the story of a moral physicist-turned-global-fugitive in the wake of her scholastic research and her expertise being bound to service militaristic objectives of Uncle Sam and how acutely she misses her loving blind husband, her bright son and her caring town as she’s running for her life. That care is never messed with. No matter how many stylistic traps he employs, for example here his flitting between different timelines of the same character his care for the human figures and their existential, emotional, intellectual conflicts resonates through, making formidable characters you root for.

The style always complements the emotion and the machinations of real memory, real life reminisces, real life thought-speech, besides adding a distinct personality to every one of the nine stories. Like there is the wizened 30-something bloke from London whose indulgent and hilarious internal monologues on everything from London Underground to ghostwriting in general had me in raptures [Mitchell's humour is on full show when he remains inland], but as the final sequence unfolds with him betting away the only money available to him, I could feel the tension and the stakes as he responded to every spin of roulette. It is that honest and liberated. Plus in true Murakami style, I completely fell for his winsome, unfussy stream-of-consciousness style and jazz-affinity in the Tokyo storyline.

In all, this was one breathtakingly ambitious work that intrigues, charms, challenges, enlightens and completely mesmerizes with its sheer sheer sheer sweep! After Murakami’s Hard Boiled Wonderland and The End of the World and Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, I never thought I would come across anything in this definition-defying genre. Mitchell, as Murakami’s successor proves me wrong, to my relief I must add. I am really keen to see if he himself can better this bold and big absurdist-science-fiction-cum-socio-poitical-contemplative-fantasy-drama-esoterica-medley with his Cloud Atlas, for I cannot think of an equal.

A really original book that has re-written the rules of how mainstream fiction can be written, Ghostwritten is a stylistic tour-de-force and a genuine saga of our times that affirms one’s belief in the mind-numbing complexity and similarity of human experience!

We Need to Talk About Kevin: Unflinching!

★★★★★★★☆☆☆

Voluble and fixated to pathological effect, this over-written experimental lit-fic which just contains letters from a neurotic mother to an invisible husband figure about their kid who’s massacred not one, not two but eleven people never fails to engage with its consistent dogged honesty. Shocking anecdotes one after the other padded by circumlocutory commentaries on life, kids, marriage, society and perspectives, we slowly get a protracted, holographic picture of this Kevin the kid, and it is such an overblown, unforgivingly brutal picture drawn with such tasteful articulation, it makes for a compelling read to see how far the narrator goes with it. And she goes all the way. Thankfully all that verbosity is never used to build superfluous, static, extraneous detail. Also by the end, the larger emotion that emerges isn’t one of bitterness or pretentiousness-two of my fears that were culled the moment you finish the first letter.

And yet it is also quite forgettable a work, for by the end of it the whole book remains nothing but a single, distorted viewpoint. A wordy, overtly justified one sure, but distorted nevertheless. The reader is at a gross disadvantage here, because the only window he has is through the words of an awfully unreliable narrator whose obsessiveness with her grievances and unmet expectations, not to forget the merciless hyper-intellectualising and soul-bludgeoning analysis of what? A KID in single digits of age takes quite a bit getting used to. It definitely evokes a reaction as things, characters and relationships downspiral in Eva, the main character’s rued reminisces and yes, it most definitely challenges, yet Shriver manages to keep it somehow scarily real.

I say that because however misdirected her affections, she’s just a magnified [grossly], literal version of the niggling, needling doubts that almost every uninitiated singleton out there has about parenthood. She makes for a captivating voice as she’s not that far off the scale as any one of us with half a clue of what parenthood entails and how by letting your attention get drawn to the wrong details, things can get screwed grandly. So on one level, you have a smashing, if a tad monotonal, cautionary tale that bulldozes everything nice and good-natured as artifice with little compensation and revels in persuasive power of cold, vacuous academic dissection of behaviour; and on another level you have a never-obsolete lambasting of the proliferation of firearms in the country of Uncle Sam with the fervour and concern of a dedicated journo. Besides these, one also has to applaud a rather courageous attempt to go against all the established theories and psychobabble thrown about and construct a formidably unique character with reasons and motivations all his own to conduct a high-school massacre [becoming a "watchee" from the watcher]. The author has a keen ear for the current state of affairs and the contemporary suburban family milieu only gives her fertile turf to slam, rather accurately, a handsome number of “normal” cultural phenomenons.

Shriver’s a thorough natural with her dialogue which perplexed me why she had to hamstring herself with a single narrator; the book reads like transcripts stolen from a posh suburban American psychiatrist’s office throughout with little relief, and maybe somewhere in this bold stylistic choice lies its own charm. In the threadbare, expansive accounts of a character’s own version of herself, her actions and the reactions she evoked from the people living and breathing around her as she goes through a turmoil-laden two decades and is writing in regretful, pathos-laden retrospect-a rare view inside a psyche desperate to compensate and theorise its misjudgements is revealed. Awfully endearing and scarily identifiable.

The book’s an acquired taste, and I wouldn’t go for an all-out recommendation. But if you are in the mood for something that is against-type and reactionary, pick this one up.

Never Let Me Go (Kazuo Ishiguro) book review

A heart-wrenchingly tender piece of contemplative science fiction that is as nuanced in its perception as it is unsparing in its vision. Unfolding in overlapping flashbacks and reminisces of a fascinatingly sensitive young woman called Kathy, a human clone, as she recollects with alternating anguish and delight the experiences and world she shared with two of her best mates-Tommy and Ruth-while growing up in a sheltered boarding school cum clone-rearing facility called Hailsham, “Never Let Me Go” is so masterful a piece of work, that at any one moment-it works on multiple levels. An incisive allegory, a scary dystopian sci-fi, an immensely intimate tragedy of epic proportions: it manages to be all of this and then some more.

Fabulously conceptualised throughout with its water-tight, internally valid alternate future that feels bone-chillingly close and plausible at all times [and not nerdy-indulgent or gimickily-geeky as this genre is fraught of]. You feel its subcutaneous tendrils creeping every now and then thanks to the deception Ishiguro employs of slipping in the horrifying realities and details of the existence of these cloned mortals rather matter-of-factly in Kathy’s memories and impressions. Since at the heart of it, these are sheltered little kids we are talking of who have been sneakily brought up to accept the fatalism of their existence as the norm, the sheer brutality of it only rears its head in their inventive theories, ingenious plots, distorted fantasies, disjointed accounts, simple world concepts and the final revelations. The whole affair becomes pregnant automatically with an awful amount of intrigue and mystery by its own accord thanks to the over-active imaginations and extrapolations of these kiddos who grow up to little more than semi-adults. So finally when the curtains do fall, you are right there with Kathy and Tommy as the fantasy-wrapped-hopes crash to smithereens. Loss of innocence seldom hurt so much, as they do here, in the book’s excruciating finale(s).

The book’s twin triumphs remain its unfussily natural characters who are all-heart. Though exploring the perspective of a replicant or a clone comes with an automatic sympathetic arc, not once does Ishiguro [clearly at top of his game] feel the need to wallow in easy sentimentality. The construction of mood and atmosphere is as meticulous as the neurotic dissection of conversations and gestures. Even at its most predictable, it never loses its vice-like grip and Kathy’s intuitive, warm characterisation makes for a thoroughly engaging narrator. In fact all the main characters throb with so much life [even though they are Kathy's remembered versions], it is hard not to care for them. Even the fringest of teacher here or a care-taker there commands attention. And then there is the subtlety, the grace and the sheer delicacy in how Ishiguro goes about it all. The humour, the griefs, the contradictions, the caring and sharing, the misunderstandings, the misfires, the regrets, the growing-up lessons, the awareness and finally the grasp of what really “matters” and what it’s all about: he gives you an honest glimpse at everything that makes us human in this sweeping little fable chronicling the life and times of, ironically enough, [potential] sub-humans. Superb!

Salmon Fishing in the Yemen (Paul Torday) book review

Salmon fishing paul torday

Loved this! Quirky contemporary magic-realism meets bouncy political satire in this book about [hold your breath] introducing salmon and salmon fishing in Yemen. A howlingly inventive premise that unfolds ingeniously in the form of professional memos and letters and press releases hurtling from one inbox to another, and as you flip the first few pages, you are totally sucked in by this fab format where each of these characters’ distinctive first person voices and perspectives make them and their world real. Instantly. The pace with which the different angles to the same story unfold is breakneck and not in a while I have read something as unputdownable as this. The best part is that the debutante author Torday knows this, and keeps up this form by letting the subplots unfold in detail through these written interactions: heart-wrenching letters [of an anxious project manager to her fiance posted in Iran], scathing personal emails [between a fisheries scientist called Alfred Jones-our protagonist-and his ambitious-arsey-other-half], excerpts from autobiographies [of deluded comms manager of the PM] and sincere diary entries by Mr Jones. It is wonderful to be rewarded as a reader with multiple vantage points as the respective characters struggle and wiggle within their own. The sheer ambitiousness and cheek of Torday as he ropes in everyone from the British PM to the Al-Qaeda to villagers in remote Sana’a makes this one hell of a journey. With a loaded sheikh from the Middle East backing this outrageously implausible project, he even manages to make a pitch-perfect West-vs-East, Materialism-vs-Faith commentary. Then there is the political angle-the attitudes, the vested interests, the inner machinations of the political and the pseudo-political minds: absolutely glorious!

And it is perfect in its form. In fact probably its first triumph is that he makes the whole fisheries project and its development is wholly credible because right down to the minutiae [quite literally, you will learn all about the various stages of salmon development], it is water tight [no pun intended]. Then another experimental conceit in form is just a quarter of the way into it, you have interviews of the main characters by elusive interrogators and it keeps one hooked on exactly how it panned out when it did. The climax is sensational and totally hysterical. It morphs more solidly into a political satire than you realise it has, but overall, it remains a fabulously multi-layered, delightfully imaginative romp with a terrific everyman protagonist with enough human insight and subversive cerebral density to make it memorable long after you have closed it.

The Beach (Alex Garland) Book Review

The beach

Swashbuckling played-straight adventure novel that delivers what it promises: a no punches pulled, full-on thrilling island escapade experienced by an adrenalin-fuelled, identifiably self-absorbed, angsty 20-something. The excitement of discovery and initiation into an unspoiled, remote utopia with its frugal society; the assuredness felt on finding one’s bearing and one’s friends, and the disillusionment later in the price one has to pay for all that–it’s all there, in this growing-up romp. And Garland has a way to make it work despite packing in an inordinate amount of danger that requires leaps of faith of varying levels. For once, the characterisation of Richard the main guy is solid. A vietnam-movie and video-gaming buff who has a way with turning the most banal and routine of things he’s placed in into a thrilling action sequence with his imagination, along with his neurotic, forever-reasoning alter ego, and his attitude to face the situations and dilemmas head-on, physically and mentally–all this makes him a compelling and immensely accessible narrator and ensures there isn’t a dull moment even when the book’s at its most superfluous and simmering. The action sequences are gory, the group politics on this secluded “beach” with its predictable motley of campers [[I am being harsh here, anywhere remote with a bunch of castaways leading an organised existence ultimately would need to fall into some hierarchy for sustenance], the incident count is high, the stakes higher, the physical ordeals genuinely demanding [Garland's descriptions are so unflinchingly exacting, you feel the extreme danger in your veins] and all of this together easily rockets this into literary-adventure-fiction glory.

For me the over-arching themes were our selfish obsession with territory, of ownership, of criterias for inclusion and exclusion, of surrounding ourselves with “own things” to fuel our egos, and then [on a more pleasant note] our unquenchable desire to arrive at that remote, blissful utopia which could inject unending happiness and content into our hearts. Keeps us going, pursuing, dreaming, pursuing some more…