A book to treasure

 

(What we must ow by Ian McEwan, Jonathan Cape, London, September 2025)

In the first part of this novel, Prof. Thomas Metcalfe, in the year 2119, pores over the past while searching for the Corona or crown of sonnets written by Francis Blundy, the famous poet of 21^st century. His quotidian life and his efforts tell us what has been lost in this century: huge loss of life due to nuclear warfare, inundation of New York, Lagos, Glasgow and many parts of the world, then a big drop in global temperature, untamed viruses, permanent loss of much of flora and fauna, exhaustion of mineral deposits resulting in stoppage of manufacturing making for a very poor quality of life. The digital economy is what propels the world but a few committed intellectuals like Prof. Metcalfe carry on their pursuits.

He eventually finds a time capsule buried in the Barn, Francis Blundy’ cottage, now submerged. However, it contains something other than the sonnet.

Part two of the novel deals with the life of Vivien Blundy, dedicatee of the Corona and her small, promiscuous circle of friends and relatives, just like the Bloomsbury group of early 20^th century. The Corona was read out over dinner in the group and then it vanished. A crime lies behind its disappearance. Its tangles are unpicked slowly but without loss of momentum.

McEwan has described his latest novel as science fiction without science. However, it shows a sure grasp of current science and also of course, of literature and academic life. He moves back and forth over two centuries and his characters leaving no loose ends.

A clever, masterly creation. I read only a few pages at a time – sustained reading is not possible now – but when I left, the novel was alive in my mind and I was waiting to get back to it. Last time it happened was with Emma Donoghue’s ‘Room’, a decade ago. The novel has made a deep impact on my mind.

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A taut thriller

 The break-in by Katherine Faulkner (Bloomsbury Publishing, June 2025)

Alice, an art gallery director and curator finds that an armed young man is trying to enter her posh house where her young daughter is playing under the supervision of her nanny. The man does not stop when Alice calls him out. She panics and strikes him from behind and he dies.

Newspapers report the next day that he lived in a nearby council home and was a disturbed adolescent. Alice acted in self defense or rather in defense of her daughter and she is let free.

She herself is traumatized and tries to find out more details. One clue leads to another; one action invites another and soon Alice's marriage and her whole world come tumbling down.

Simple writing style, short chapters and a limited cast of characters make for a gripping tale of deception.

I was hooked.

Time pass

 The latest novel, We all live here by JoJo Moyes (JJM), 2025 provides a pleasant reading experience.

JJM, an English novelist and journalist is the queen of romcom and chick lit with a few bestsellers and one successful movie adaptation to her credit.

In her latest novel, she portrays the life of Lila for an eventful year. Lila, a novelist, finds that she has become a single parent unexpectedly. Her ex husband has married a young woman in the neighbourhood who is expecting his child. She and Lila are forced to meet each day at the school compound and tongues wag.

Lila has two daughters, one a sixteen-year old, to look after. Her step father is also living with them. Her mother died recently. Lila is coping and also trying to write her new novel. Things become complicated as

• her real father pays a visit and refuses to leave,
• her ex starts putting up outrageous demands as he cannot afford to look after his daughters.
• her step father's gardener starts taking an interest in her and
• Lila meets a gorgeous widower at the school pick-up.

These people have made blunders in the past and they come to surface. They also continue to make mistakes. The widower turns out to be a champion cheat. Lila needs money badly and so accepts the publisher's request to put salacious details in her novel. Her imagination deserts her and she starts writing about her recent brush with the gardener. The decent fellow is deeply hurt. Lila's step father finds an admirer nearby but has a heart stroke.

In the ensuing chaos, Lila cancels her book contract but finally everything works out!

Women's fiction typically has a rush of characters and all the details of everyday life. It also has, usually, a final uplifting message. Readers can easily relate to these characters and also the complexities of our routines. JJM's style of writing is engaging with mild humour and lots of tea and biscuits thrown in. The writing takes the readers along.

it also makes you think about the modern family. It has few people with blood ties. Acquaintances and friends are easily accommodated. A common kitchen/ hearth and roof maketh the new family. Will this family also disappear over time, leaving just individuals surrounded by robots around?

Sthal, a Marathi movie

 I saw this movie yesterday by actually going to a movie theatre. It is located in a big mall and the entire ambience of the place makes you believe that you are in Singapore or US.

The theme of the movie was totally at odds with the surroundings.

The movie deals with Savita, a final year B.A. student in a college in Varora/ Varoda in Vidarbha where Baba Amte's Anandvan is located. Savita hopes to appear for her MPSC examination and become a deputy collector but her parents are anxious to get her married. The school teacher in Varora keeps bringing a number of 'sthal's or proposals. (The movie has English subtitles and sthal is translated as a match. I think a proposal is a better word.)

There is a set formula for looking over the girl. Four persons including the bridegroom to be come over to her house and are treated to tea and 'kandapohe'. The eldest relative asks the girl the same set of 5 or 6 questions and she touches their feet before withdrawing. The elderly relative of the groom hands over to her Rs. 100 or 200 to return the hospitality. Then they take leave, saying they would consult others in the family and then communicate their decision. It has been a rejection so far for Savita while one of her friends makes it to be chosen by a state electricity lineman, a coveted position because it is semi-government and permanent. Another friend decides to elope with her boy friend.

 Savita remains and because she is not chosen, her younger brother cannot offer for his sweet heart who is also married off.

Savita is more keen on her examination but one more sthal comes on the day of the examination and her mother forces her to give up her examination. Then a lecturer in her college who is sweet on her comes to see her but his father demands a dowry of Rs. 5 lakh. His reasoning is simple: he had to offer Rs. 10 lakh to secure the teaching post for his son. The son is powerless before his father.

Savita's father is not poor. He owns and cultivates a few acres of land and grows cotton, a cash crop on it. He also wants his daughter to appear for the examination. He tries all the means at his disposal but is unable to raise the amount of dowry and consumes an insecticide. The continuous fall in the market price of cotton adds to his woes. He does not die and Savita's ordeal continues.

The mechanics of the examination and the commercial give and take lead to complete disillusionment of Savita and she rebels in one ceremony. The details are not shown. She raises her fist and the movie ends.

What is extraordinary about this movie is that there are no established actors in it. It is shot in the place and real people act in it. They do not act but live their life before the camera. The locale, the village atmosphere, other people - everything is hundred percent genuine. Most remarkable is the person who has played the role of Savita's father.

The movie unfolds slowly and viewers become a part of the story.

The shortcoming is its weak, obscure ending. It leaves viewers frustrated.

Farmers' distress and suicides is a theme that has been explored in a number of Marathi films. Sadanand Deshmukh's novel 'Baromas' is on the same theme and it has been compared with John Steinbeck's Grapes of wrath. With so much in the background, the movie's ending is not justified. Surely, some indication of a rebellion, protest, change could have been shown.

What change is possible for distressed farmers? There is no future in farming. Their sons must come to cities and become delivery boys for Zomato and Swiggy. Some could take up ITI courses and become plumbers, electricians, carpenters. They have to leave their stereotyped thinking of going for permanent jobs behind. Even Savita must forget about her MPSC examination and be ready to give tuitions in a city.

These are changes which are happening all around us. Newspapers are reporting them everyday.

Then why is the artist community still celebrating the loss of an outdated way of life?

A good old mystery

 Set in England in the post world war 2 period and on the lines of Agatha Christie but far more cerebral, An English Murder by Cyril Hare is an absorbing book. It uses her favourite plot: characters gather together for a special occasion and then start falling dead one by one. Who is the killer and what is the motive?

The occasion here is Christmas. Relatives and friends, five in all, of Viscount Warbeck gather at his country estate. One of them, Sir Julius Warbeck, Chancellor of the Exchequer comes with a police+ sergeant tasked to keep him safe. There are two ladies and there is a historian, Prof. Bottwink who is a Hungarian and a Jew. He helps to shed light on the mystery. There is no sleuth.

The style of speech and writing is very didactic and much is made of 'Englishness'. The long winded sentences put me to sleep several times because I read it as an audio book. Nonetheless, it is an interesting book.

Its tone is intellectual because its author was an English barrister and judge. He was Alfred Alexander Gordon Clark (1900 - 1958) who used the pseudonym Cyril Hare for his writings. His Tragedy at law, 1937 is better known than the present book published in 1951. Tragedy at Law is often described as the best mystery novel with a legal background and it is also reputed to have never gone out of print so far.

Cyril Hare has created two famous detectives: Inspector Mallett and Francis Pettigrew. He wrote non- detective short stories some of which have been acclaimed and a collection of his detective stories, Best detective stories of Cyril Hare is available.

A Russian film, A very English murder was made in 1974 based on An English Murder.

I know that there are some fans of detective stories and novels among my readers. They could certainly give the book a once over.

Cultural difference

Up sluggard, and waste not life;

in the grave will be sleeping enough.

Benjamin Franklin

Who will argue with the above? However, Hindus burn their dead and believe that the soul is immortal. So the idea of sleep in the coffin is alien to Hindus.

The above quote about the peace of death reminded me of a famous 'shloka' by the Sanskrit poet Bhartruhari. He uses exaggeration to make the point of indignities of poverty being worse than death.

The shloka has a poor man requesting a dead body in a burning ground for the dead to get up and exchange their places. Allow me to lie down and enjoy your peace for just a little while as poverty has robbed me of it, he says. The dead person listens, ponders and says that poverty is a fate worse than death and so it does not respond; continues to lie down as before.

Keep the aspidistra flying, part two

 It was the first English novel I read, fifty five years ago. Well, I had struggled with E.M. Forster's A passage to India before that, without success. I understood and was mesmerized by Aspidistra. It gave a peek into an alien world, alien because I had presumed it to have endless prosperity for everybody. That it had poverty and that people struggled with it, was a powerful revelation.

The strong, honest writing caught me by my throat. Words, phrases in the book became etched in my mind. It also set the bar high.

There are gradations among artists. Only a few are as honest in their writing as is Orwell. His life is clearly reflected in the novel. Because he showed promise at an early age, his father, a policeman in British India sent him to a reputed public school in England. It was difficult to adjust to its world. He worked hard but acutely felt the difference in background as compared to other students.

He decided to be a writer and lack of money was a big problem. He went back to Burma - part of British India. He was in Paris for two years and then he came to England and worked as a private tutor, school teacher and bookshop assistant, all the while contributing articles and reviews to periodicals.

He published Down and out in Paris and London, a reportage in 1933. He passionately believed in socialism - an alternative society where an even, need-based distribution of resources would remove the indignities of poverty. He fought in the Spanish war in 1937.

Later of course, he became disillusioned with the totalitarianism associated with socialism in Russia and that brought out The animal farm and 1984 - his best-known novels. He was a great essayist too, throughout his life.

To me however, Burmese days and Aspidistra (Orwell himself was not too fond of them and had ridiculed the plot twists he had designed in the former) remain abiding favourites and they are my answer to why Orwell was one of the greater writers of 20th century.