‘The God of Small Things’ by Arundhati Roy

Profoundly disturbing.  Actually, I think it is one the most disturbing stories I have ever read, not only because of the plot, but mainly because of the way in which it is narrated. The book does have a language of its own.

As Updike wrote in his review of the book, Roy ‘peels away the layers of her misteries’ with delicacy and supreme writing skill. Not only that, when you get to the end, you realise that the there is no real core, but that all those layers were actually the essential  part of the story. It is like an onion: the leaves are the core material themselves.

Superb writing.

Roy, A. (1997) The God of Small Things. London: Harper Perennial.

 

‘Small Island’ by Andrea Levy

If Jane Austen thought nobody could actually like Emma, I have no idea how Andrea Levy thought we could suffer Hortense. Not that they resemble – no one in their sane mind would ever relate them – I’m just thinking of characters’ likability.

I’ve never met a more unsufferable, stuck-up, racist and naive character. What irritates me about Hortense is that her situation in life and her personal achievements have nothing to justify her thinking of herself that high. A bit of reflection and self-awareness would do wonders for her. And that is why I think Levy actually created a brilliant character! Moreover, the flashbacks and the chapters with different narrators in the end form a well-knitted patchwork.

Above all, what Levy really achieves here is to make us totally aware that everything is a matter of perspective –  that there are no clear-cut distinction between oppressed and oppressor and that we all look up and look down at each other in different situations  at different times in our lives. Being ‘small’ or ‘big’ is not a fixed category;  it is just a matter of what it looks like to you from where you are at the moment.

A friend of mine commented that he he’s got tired of this sort of postcolonial writing and to a certain point I agree with him, but Levy’s book is really an ingenious piece of writing. The way she slowly reveals the personality of her chatacters and let us musing on their internal motivations is just on the money. Even Hortense, for all her arrogance, at the end does not look to me more than a completely lost creature with a highly developed defense mechanism of which she is not really aware of most of the time.

Thanks Sara for this one, once again

Levy, A. (2004) Small Island. London: Headline.

 

‘The Reluctant Fundamentalist’ by Mohsin Hamid

I read this one because it is part of Eddy’s syllabus for Contemporary Fiction at Marjon and I thank him for recommending it. The language is deceptively simple but if you pay attention to it you will realise how much work the writer puts on it in order to create multiple layers of meaning.

It has a bit of the vibe of  White Tiger, with an extremely unreliable narrator that lures and seduces you at the same time that tricks you all along because you really don’t know what to make of him. And the end…well, the end is the stroke of a genious…

Hamid, H. (2007) The Reluctant Fundamentalist. London: Penguin.

 

‘The White Tiger’ by Aravind Adiga

Eduardo got this book as a present from Sara, a couple of months ago, and devoured it in three days. Since I decided to take a couple of days free between the last assignment and the next I decided that thsi could perhaps be a perfect choice. If it had engaged Eduardo that much, it had to be good! I as right. It makes for enticing reading because it is so different that it is almost shocking. It is not every day that you listen to a first person narrator and really have the impression that you are in contact with a real person. This is fiction at its best!

How close to reality is the social scenario depicted in the book only some Indians can tell, but for us as readers, it doesn’t really matter that much. What is important is the plot and the execution. It’s straightforward, punchy, crispy, at times moving, at times revolting and wholly surpising if you don’t come from such cultural background. I’ve never been to India, but if one day I go there it will be hard not to have the white tiger stealthily following my steps around.

Adiga, A. (2008) The White Tiger. London: Atlantic Books.

 

‘Wide Sargasso Sea’ by Jean Rhys

My first novel since I started the MEd course. No big news that the reading load for an MA is heavy but last weekend I was thirty for something else than professional reading. I have always wanted to read Wide Sargasso Sea but the novel had never felt into my hands till now that Edward is reading it for his BA.

It is a very short novel but it is concentrated and tense from cover to cover and Rhys creates the young Mrs. Rochester in a disturbing way. Saying that this is a postcolonial response to Brontë is not only stating the obvious but also restricting the text a little bit. Wide Sargasso Sea is much more than just post-colonial or feminist lit; it is a good story told in a very skillful way. Very enticing reading and a lot of food for thought about identity, prejudice, social and class barriers and multiculturalism. Good book, indeed.

 

‘An Outpost of Progress’ by Joseph Conrad

In a couple of weeks we will be posting a new short story in the ELT e-Reading Group and this time one of our members suggested reading Amy Foster. By a strange coincidence a student of mine came to class with a volume of Selected Short Stories by Joseph Conrad and when I mentioned that we would be discussing one of them, he simply gave me the book!

Of course Amy Foster is there, but there are also a couple of others that I hadn’t read before and perhaps the one that impressed me most in the whole collection was precisely the first one, An Outpost of Progress. The narrative is impeccable and it was written with almost cruel irony. In it Conrad touches on many issues that are also the heart of Heart of Darkness – isolation, great expectations & dellusion, the civilising effects of the presence of the others and the wilderness that outgrows and takes over what is supposed to be the human nature.

Few man realise that their life, the very essence of their character, their capabilities and their audacities, are only the expression of their belief in the safety of their surroundings. The courage, the composure, the confidence, the emotions and principles; every great and every insignificant thought belongs not to the individual but to the crowd: to the crowd that believes blindly in the irresistible force of its institutions and its morals, in the power of its police and its opinion. But the contact with pure unmitigated savagery, with primitive nature and primitive man, brings sudden and profound trouble into the heart.

Food for thought…

Conrad, J.  (1997) Selected Short Stories. Canterbury: Wordsworth Classics.