Category: Fiction

  • Cough Syrup Surrealism

    Tharun James Jimani

    I’m not sure I really ‘got’ this book. The obvious story line is not really complex – Charlie, a Mallu boy in Chennai, whose dad expects him to become an IAS officer just like him, gets sucked into a world of drugs, music and sex, every fifth page. He also has an identity crisis, and like Peter Pan, refuses to grow up, despite quite a lot of self flagellation and advice from his parents and friends. A nineties kid who refuses to acknowledge, let alone accommodate the noughties, his relationships are anything but simple.

    Mao (a figment of Charlie’s imagination) might get irritated, but I wondered if this was the only level this book was operating at. The narrative (and this is not necessarily criticism) is very Charlie-like. I always had this feeling that there was subtext I was completely missing out on. On many occasions, I plodded through text – the Charlie analogy I’d use is that it’s a bit like smiling at pop culture references you haven’t really got. Charlie’s thoughts – for example, mixtapes and body parts – would make for a great conversation when stoned. I wondered quite a few times whether that condition was a prerequisite to reading the book! I’m not even sure if the author meant for this to work that way, but when we have a title that has cough syrup and surrealism, that thought is bound to cross your mind. (more…)

  • Hawaii

    This is my third attempt at this book – I bought it in 2008! In the first attempt, the geological history of Hawaii in the first 15 pages put me to sleep and in the second, the journey of the first settlers of Hawaii from Bora Bora just became too much of a plod work. This time I was determined to complete it, and I am glad I did – the book is magnificent!

    We use the word saga a bit loosely, but this one truly deserves that description. From the geological explanations of the formation of Hawaii to the Congressional politics of the 20th century, Michener does what he does best! (more…)

  • Spoke in the Wheel

    Amita Kanekar

    ‘A novel about the Buddha’ is the way the book is described. Let’s start from that. It’s probably to dispel any ambiguity about the book’s historical authenticity – it is a work of historical fiction. But such is the force of the narrative that it really becomes easy to believe that this version is probably the correct one! It is also the most novel way of presenting the Buddha that I have read.

    The book has two parallel narratives. One traverses the path of the Buddha’s life, and the other is set almost three hundred after his death, with a monk named Upali serving as the protagonist. (more…)

  • The October Horse

    Colleen McCullough

    I had read the final book in the series – “Antony and Cleopatra” – earlier, so this turned out to be the last book I’d have to read in the ‘Masters of Rome’. That turned out be a good thing because while I liked the entire series, this would be among my top two. An excellent choice of title – borrowed from the ritual of sacrificing the best horse that Rome has. A character compares Caesar to an October Horse during the assassination conspiracy.

    The book spends about one third of its pages mopping up the Republican campaign, (rather its remains after the death of Pompey) another third in Caesar’s efforts to ‘put Rome back on her feet’ and the final third in the aftermath of Caesar’s death. (more…)

  • March of the Aryans

    Bhagwan S Gidwani

    I feel a little conflicted about this book – on one side, it is wonderful to read a perspective on the dawn of civilisation and the kind of denizens our land had, but on the other, this is clearly a work of fiction, and the author himself states that his sources are not any written ones, but oral traditional memory from different parts of the world. It is clearly aimed at debunking the Aryan invasion theory, and tries to show that the Aryans had merely returned to their place of origin after traveling to many parts of the world.

    In addition to demolishing the invasion theory, the author also tries to show that the Dravidian culture was not really independent in origin, but that civilisations on the Ganga, Sindhu-Saraswati, and other regions all had a common point from which they all emanated. (more…)