Cloud Atlas - A rather late review

A Russian doll of a book. Story inside story inside story...

I bought Cloud Atlas in August 2011 after hearing exorbitant praise from people who are generally stingy with the stuff.  It sat patiently on my shelf for the past 15 months, gathering dust, acquiring the heady aroma of aging paper and giving me occasional twinges of guilt. I had just about forgotten about it when the movie got released and all at once, Cloud Atlas became the talk of the town. Oh the pain, the agony. Having to say no to movie invitations from friends because I had let the book rot on my shelf. So, last Sunday, I opened the book, threw away the odious flipkart bookmark and started.

The story, or in this case stories, are told through writings in a journal, letters to a friend, the manuscript of a novel, an autobiography of sorts, recordings of an interrogation and at the very core, a first person narrative. Set in six different time frames, separated by centuries and generations, Cloud Atlas tells the stories of six interwoven lives.  Each story begins, gains speed and is cut off to make way for the next. Five story lines are left open in this way when you reach the last story at the middle of the book which is the only uninterrupted whole. After that the author starts tying up the threads in the reverse order and the book ends with the completion of the very first tale. In the midst of all this, there is that gossamer strand that connects the narratives. A connection that is left mostly to the reader’s imagination to make of what he will. Reading the book was for most part, anticipation of the appearance of the next connecting link .

David Mitchell has endeavored to narrate six different stories in six different styles and succeeded. The way each character speaks is so distinct, a reader could perceive the shift in the story to a new plane even without the helpful title pages. This success is, to my mind, also in a way its downfall. Even though I admired the craft that had gone into its making, even though I found it an enriching experience; I found nothing in it worth cherishing. It is undoubtedly a very well written book - a well conceived and well executed project. That is all there is to it.

The plots are at best mildly interesting. They do pique your curiosity, but none of them have you jumping up and down howling with frustration when they are abruptly cut off to make way for the next bit. The characters are spelled out for you as there is very little time to do much more, what with six different stories to finish in as many hundred pages. Even then, they end up being puny and unremarkable, being driven down life’s path by an avalanche of events. Each situation that calls for any action from a protagonist is built up in such a way that there is only one clearly defined exit which the character invariably takes.There was no point where the book surprised me. Worst of all, there is no underlying theme or purpose to the connection than hinting at a vague possibility of shared genes or if you wished to speculate wildly, rebirth. It could, for all you know, be an excuse for writing six stories together and not having to call it an anthology.

All that said, I honestly think it would be a better movie and this I hope to confirm shortly. I also have a niggling suspicion that I would have liked it better if it had not been hyped to the skies. Though I am not a fan, Cloud Atlas is definitely one of the best books I have read recently and is worth picking up for its sheer novelty.  But now that I have read it, I think I’ll put it back on the shelf and happily forget about it.

Jaya - An Illustrated Retelling of the Mahabharatha

It turned up as an unexpected birthday present...
Jaya was a book I had read about and seen in stores. I saw it, yes, but never felt curious about it, never took it down from a shelf to look at it. It is the Mahabharatha. What could possibly be new? After having read and heard multiple versions of the epic since childhood, I thought I knew it all. But once I started reading, I finished in two sittings for the simple reason that I could not put the book down. For that I give half credit to Devdutt Pattanaik and half to Veda Vyasa.

The book follows the conventional narrative starting with Vyasa and Ganesha, going through the eighteen chapters and ending at Vaanaprastha. But far from being the dashing, romantic epic tale of political intrigue that we are all familiar with, Jaya is extremely clinical. The chapters are structured into three parts - the story, the analysis and the box of facts. One of my favorite aspects of the book is the tagline at the beginning of each main chapter. How Vaisampayana condenses the gist of the chapter into one dialogue “ Janamejaya, in your family...”

The story is all there, in more detail that I have ever seen in one place. But the narrative is crisp to the point of being curt. It is rather disappointing to find the emotions being almost completely eliminated from the telling. While it makes an excellent study with all facts put in order for the analysis, Jaya has nothing of the enormous entertainment value that Mahabharatha always had for me. For me Mahabharatha, Ramayana or Bhagavatha are primarily stories. I remember sitting enthralled as my grandfather read them out to me with ample dramatisation... The blow by blow accounts of battles and tournaments, the colourful descriptions of palaces and the grandiose white lies about divine births are all part and parcel of the great epic. They are what will make you read the Mahabharatha again, tell it to your children and stop scrolling channels on TV when you see the re-run on some obscure station you did not know you subscribed to.

The analysis is what I liked. After rushing through the story, one or two paragraphs the author dedicates to spelling out his thoughts on the motives and machinations of the characters. He looks at them as normal people and tries to explain their actions based on human emotions. All the characters portrayed in Jaya are capable of love, hatred, anger, jealousy, avarice, pride - the full range. They do the things they do for specific and personal reasons. How those actions are publicized is shown either as the character’s own endeavor or that of the people who wrote the stories to suit their respective era’s audiences. It is a refreshing change from morality being stuffed down one’s throat, albeit with the best of intentions.

The box of facts at the end of each chapter is reminiscent of the NCERT text books of our time. The blue boxes with the extra juice - the facts that could not be crammed into the lesson but which would give one perspective if one chose to read. In this, the author speaks of different versions of the tale told in different places, the nuances of names or shares some trivia.

The thing about Jaya is that it manages to be different even when it says nothing new. Devdutt Pattanaik presents different viewpoints on the same scene without sounding biased towards any particular theory. The book comes across as almost academic. It is a breath of fresh air for those who have read the epic, formed their opinions and debated them time and time again; because there are at least a couple of things you wouldn’t have thought about. I really cannot decide whether it is a good thing that I would almost rush through the story to reach the analysis part...But Jaya is not something I would recommend to someone reading the epic for the first time. First time needs to be with all the masala; at least in my opinion.

One last word regarding ‘Illustrated Retelling’... The book is illustrated, yes. But frankly, the illustrations are nothing out of the world. While they give a graphic novel feel to the entire business, I still prefer the old Mathrubhoomi  publication’s version or Artist Namboodiri’s drawings for M.T Vasudevan Nair’s Randaamoozham (again Mahabharatha from Bhima’s perspective).

The Great Indian Novel - A long and ranting review

Anyone who knows me will also know about my book buying policy - I read and then if I like it, I buy. But getting a job(offer) seems to have turned my head a little. So, on 20th March 2010, I decided to live dangerously and buy two books I had not read. I have to confess, I cheated just a wee bit and ran wikis on both. I walked into Odyssey and bought 'Love In The Time Of Cholera' and 'The Great Indian Novel' each costing Rs.299. This was the time when Shashi Tharoor was gaining a lot of media coverage, which I gather, was largely due to our politicians' inability to process the concept of one of them possessing a 'vocabulary' and due to Mr.Tharoor's regrettable tendency to air his own opinions, which is just not acceptable in Indian politics. But these are the observations of a person who gave up on 'who said what' among politicians five years ago; so treat them accordingly. My interest in the novel was a result of recommendations from friends whose opinions I generally concur with. The wiki told me that it was a spoof of the Mahabharatha based on the Indian freedom struggle. The quoted bits were funny and I found the concept intriguing. Hence, lulled into a false sense of security, I took the plunge.

I started reading in the first week of April and I finished yesterday. It so happens that I was reading 'Freedom at Midnight' at the same time and drawing parallels was easy. Wikipedia was accurate in saying that the book is basically the Indian freedom struggle mapped onto the Mahabharatha. What it failed to mention was that it is an insipid work that does justice to neither. The book begins well with Ved Vyas and Ganapathi sitting down to write the story of our nation and one forgives the mis-characterizations because the concept is still new. But as the Dandi march becomes the great Mango march, Bose becomes Pandu, Nehru becomes Drithrashtra, Gandhi is caricatured excessively and bits of verse start appearing with distressing regularity, the reader, or at least this leader started losing patience. It is as though Mr.Tharoor sat down to write the novel with the idea that readers' interest is guaranteed to be captured by - humour, conflict, sex etc and therefore proceeded to endow his work with copious amounts of all the above. I have no objection to any of these elements, but there is a limit after which all this goes from engaging to boring to painful.

The way I see it, the author has had to employ a minimum of original creative effort. The stories are both ready-made. The characters are sketched in great detail in the epic and the real people are equally well known. An Indian with a basic knowledge of history, who has read Amar Chitra Kathas or been exposed to hindu grand parents or if younger, television; will have no difficulty in identifying the characters. Though some of the comparisons are apt, most of them seem to have been chosen for convenience. Drona(Jayaprakash Narayan) and Duryodhani (Indira Gandhi) are portrayed very close to their Mahabharatha selves, but Karna(Jinnah) and Bhishma(Gandhi) are only pale likenesses and Yudhishtira(Morarji Desai ) and most of the others sorely disappoint. Knowing that the Indian readers will not easily forgive these mis-characterizations or the liberties taken with the story itself,  the author has tactfully inserted a disclaimer at the beginning. But, regretfully, Mr.Tharoor, that is just not enough.

One major irritant that prevails through the entire length of the book is the humour. There is so much of it (as the author presumes it to be) and so often, one gets heartily tired of it within the first 50 pages. Long pages have been devoted to Pandu(Bose)'s INA activities but seemingly with the (sole) purpose of leading up to his induction into the mile high club and subsequent comic(?) death. I thought I had seen the worst in forced humour when I got through the fifth part of Hitch-hikers Guide to the Galaxy, but no, I judged too early. Everyone must have had that Indian railway experience - the one where the compartment is full and there is this guy who keeps telling witty anecdotes in an extremely loud voice. In the beginning you laugh voluntarily because you have nothing better to do in the jam packed compartment and any entertainment is good entertainment. But twenty minutes later, your response is not as spontaneous as it used to be and the wit, who by the way, is sitting right next to you, starts nudging you painfully in the ribs at the punchline... Picture it - joke, "Har,har"*nudge*"jolly funny eh?" And he takes your grimace of pain for a smile and launches into the next one... If this book were a man, he would be that man.

The other (in no way minor) irritant is the poetry which keeps cropping up every few pages. This poetry or verse seems to be written in keeping with exactly one (other than compulsory wittiness) rule - it should rhyme. After being treated to-

"When the shell hit she would have sworn she felt 

A life-seeking tug at her swollen breast;

A split-second, perhaps, and then came a pelt 

Of death-dealing shrapnel that tore open her chest"    

"One has a wish to curl up and whine

Just at the glimpse of another short line

In great despair we pull out our hair

At the sight of these paras on the pages fair

I'm sorry, I know to bear this is tough

But that was equally horrible stuff."

Now a few good things. The author's major task has been to sort out the events into a credible time-line for both the stories which he has done passably well. The reflections on India in the post emergency period are very insightful. The concept is original. This is (all of) what I found good in the book. The book cover and front page are devoted to comments by eminent persons who found the book brilliant to the point of calling it ''the best work of Indian fiction'. This makes me wonder if Chetan Bhagat had time traveled and handed each of these persons copies of his books to read before they read this one. 

My rating : I did not like the book.

A little secret : I am not a book-burning sort of person, quite the other kind actually. So, I covered the book with glass paper and put it at the bottom of my pile of books by Asian authors with Musharaff's 'In the Line of Fire' above it.

Five point someone

At long last I read Chetan Bhagat's "Five point someone". I am sorry to say I was rather disappointed. I have been hearing about this book for quite some time now and the opinions expessed were always in praise(though in varying degrees). The much hyped window into IIT turned out to be just another college story. The reason for its success may be that till then no one thought of writing a book about their time at IIT. The book I will rate at the same level as Opal Mehta... as far as writing is concerned. To anyone even remotely connected with engineering education, the story has nothing new but to others, it might hold some novelty value.

Silence of the Lambs

The book is the sequel to Red Dragon by Thomas Harris that first featured Hannibal Lecter. I had picked up a hardcover copy cheap from a second hand store many of which have lately mushroomed in various parts of Calicut. After finishing the first quarter I was heartily sick...the book was complete in every gruesome detail. I put aside the book for about a week. But curiosity got the better of me and I finished the rest of the book in one sitting. The plot is good, the story is fast moving once you notice that it is moving and Hannibal Lecter is a masterpiece. You cannot help being repulsed by the character but at the same time intrigued. Another thing about the book is that it is not 'many little stories making one big story' but 'many little stories each going their own way and one is ending'. Go straight ahead and read it...but individuals without iron guts beware.

Life of Pi

The book by Yann Martel is one I have been intending to read for a long time but never quite got round to.

The book tells the story of the life of 'Pi' ( Piscine Molitor Patel) or rather a part of it. Pi is the son of a zoo-keeper who decides to emigrate with his family to Canada. The ship on which the family was traveling with a cargo of zoo animals sinks in the pacific ocean and Pi is on a lifeboat with a zebra, a hyena, an Orangutan and a bengal tiger for company . The books tells the story of his survival. After the first few pages, the book is quite fast moving ( I started on page 46 at 7.30 today morning and finished the book at 12.30) .The narrative is gripping and rich in detail but the charm I felt, lay greatly in the ending. The author springs a surprise which makes us pause and reconsider...

I liked the book.