Book Review: Homesick by Roshi Fernando

Title: Homesick
Author: Roshi Fernando
Publisher: Bloomsbury
ISBN: 978-1408826362
Genre: Literary Fiction
Pages: 200
Source: Publisher
Rating: 4/5

When I first started reading, “Homesick” by Roshi Fernando, it came to be like any other book of displaced families and forgotten voices. Of the second generation and third generations, wanting to search themselves and what they stand for. However, though the book did run on these lines, it had a different voice to it.

Homesick is a book of many layers and each layer has a unique and original voice. When I say layers, I but obviously mean the inter-connected stories and at the same time, there is something that tugs at the heartstrings that gives the book the enrichment and understanding it deserves.

Homesick is a collection of seventeen stories – telling the tales of SriLankan immigrants carving out new lives in sometimes warm and a sometimes hostile Britain. The narrative is cohesive and sticks to the larger framework of the book – of alienation and getting to know the new ways of living. At the same time it is contemporary (the issue will always be at hand, no matter what nationality) and complex, being careful about the emotions and voices of characters. There is a silent boy who experiences life through Charlie Chaplin, a man stuck in the aftermath of a war, to a family’s life destroyed by a child’s murder, each story comes together and linked by the theme of cultural displacement and its trauma, so to say.

Roshi Fernando’s writing is crisp and razor-sharp. She does not sugar-coat emotions, though there are moments in the book when she had me laughing or at least smiling at the situation. There is an ambience created by the writer that lingers in the readers’ heads long after one has finished the book. The cast of characters is intricate and appear in more than one story, unraveling themselves, little by little; getting the reader familiar and that is what I love about interconnected stories. The transitions are handled with ease, from one story to another and that is what also makes the book so strong. The questions of identity and belief are still left unanswered, which in a way works to the book’s advantage. All in all, Homesick is an evocative study of what home means and sometimes what is takes to create a new one.

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Book Review: State of Wonder by Ann Patchett

Title: State of Wonder
Author: Ann Patchett
Publisher: Bloomsbury, Penguin Books
ISBN: 978-1408818596
Genre: Literary Fiction
PP: 368 pages
Price: Rs. 1000
Source: Publisher
Rating: 4/5

I found this review quite difficult to write, much as I found parts of the book hard to read. The strange thing is that I’m not sure why I struggled so much with the beginning of this book.

I have read Ann Patchett’s famous ‘Bel Canto’, which I thoroughly enjoyed although I was a little frustrated by the ending. Yet State of Wonder was exactly the opposite. I have seen so many glowing reviews of it over the last few weeks, many of which were by readers whose advice I almost always take. Everyone, it seems, loves this book. So when I picked it up I had high expectations and was looking forward to getting sucked into the world of the Brazilian jungle. Fifty pages later I was getting frustrated, and it felt as though the book was still going nowhere fast.

Although it took me a few days, I persevered, simply because of all the good things I had heard about it. Then, about halfway through, something just clicked into place, and I found myself reading faster and faster as I became engrossed in the story at last. I think part of the problem is that so much of the beginning of the book is taken up by waiting. You know that Marina (the main character) is going to go to Brazil in the end, and that she is eventually going to reach the jungle. The problem is that it takes so long, and while she is bored and irritated, it is all too easy for the reader to echo her feelings. In a way this is testament to Patchett’s talent at drawing you into the world of the book, but it does slow the story down.

Nevertheless, despite the disappointing opening, I am so glad that I carried on and finished State of Wonder. Why? Because the second half of the book more than makes up for the first. There is real emotion in the writing, and the characters are well-drawn and more than a little real. The interaction between scientists and members of the local tribes is fascinating, and Easter, a young deaf boy, is my favourite character by far. The story revolves partly around the science and discoveries that Marina is sent to check up on, and partly around the death of her predecessor Anders Eckman, who was her friend and colleague. She has promised his wife that she will find out exactly what happened to him, and the emotion of this storyline was what made the book all the more special.

Soon after his wife hears of his death at the beginning of the story, a letter arrives that he wrote a long time ago in the jungle, and these letters, which it becomes clear he wrote with increasing desperation as he became more ill, keep surfacing due to the slow and unreliable post. These letters from a dying man to his wife and young sons at home are so poignant that it is impressive that the scientific side of the story managed to be equally compelling.

Knowing that I hadn’t really liked the ending of her previous book ‘Bel Canto’, I was wary of how this one would end. But in fact I thought it was as close to perfect as it could possibly have been. The last quarter of this book in particular was a masterpiece, so my advice is to read this as soon as you get the chance. If you find the opening as tough as I did then please hang in there – the pace picks up later on, and it’s well worth your while to continue to the end. I’m just glad that I had read all the positive reviews and had the courage of my convictions to stick at it all the way through!

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State of Wonder

Book Review: The Gum Thief by Douglas Coupland

Title: The Gum Thief
Author: Douglas Coupland
Publisher: Bloomsbury USA
ISBN: 978-1596915008
PP: 288 pages
Price: $15.00
Rating: 5/5

Another treat for Coupland fans, the Gum Thief is not as bleak or mean as Jpod, and more life-affirming and occasionally wistful than a lot of his canon – akin to Eleanor Rigby, in tone, perhaps. The device of the seriously bad novel-within-a-novel “Glove Pond” is hilarious and it’s a credit to Coupland’s writing that he manages to give it heart and style while essentially remaining a bad unpublishable novel at heart.

What makes Coupland so relevant is his relentless engagement in the here and now, articulated not in the contrived über-post-modern way that some might expect, but in his generosity of spirit towards his characters and the everydayness of their lives. There’s a richness in everyones experience of the world, he appears to be saying, and we don’t often acknowledge that.

Aside from this, every page throws up a moment of either poignancy or laugh-out-loud embarassment. The Gum Thief also manages to have one of the most moving endings of any book I’ve read this year, despite being the final chapter of the supposedly dire novel Glove Pond.

The Gum Thief is a sweet, heartwarming story of unlikely friendship, and dignity in even the most trying circumstances. It is written mainly as an exchange of letters, notes and diary entries between Roger, a divorced, bitter old soak and Bethany, a 20-something Goth, interspersed with a few other voices and extracts from Glove Pond, Roger’s hilariously bad debut novella. What is initially a rather prickly relationship between Roger and Bethany blossoms into something deeper, as they come to genuinely care for one another. Not a great deal happens – the plot seems more about thoughts, memories and feelings than action and dialogue. But only the hardest hearts could fail to be moved by this lovely tale. So, another treat for Coupland fans, and for those who’ve never read him before, a perfect introduction to the man at his most beguiling.

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Book Review: Miss Hargreaves by Frank Baker

Title: Miss Hargreaves
Author: Frank Baker
Publisher: Bloomsbury USA
ISBN: 978-1408802823
Genre: Literary Fiction
PP: 336 pages
Price: $14.00
Source: Publisher
Rating: 4/5

Norman Huntley has always allowed his imagination to run away with him. On a trip to Ireland with his friend Henry, they amuse themselves by inventing an imaginary eighty-three-year-old woman called Constance Hargreaves. They make Miss Hargreaves a poet and a musician; they give her a dog called Sarah and a cockatoo named Dr Pepusch – and Norman writes her a letter inviting her to stay at his home in Cornford, Buckinghamshire.

Never expecting her to accept his invitation (how could she – she doesn’t exist!) Norman is stunned when a little old lady arrives at the train station accompanied by a dog, a cockatoo, a harp – and even her own bath. It seems that Norman’s creation has come to life – and with even Henry convinced it’s all a practical joke, how will he explain Miss Hargreaves to his parents, his sister and his girlfriend Marjorie?

As the story continues, it gets more and more bizarre. I can safely say this is one of the most original and unusual books I’ve read for a long time! Miss Hargreaves is an unforgettable character – endearing and eccentric, yet ever so slightly sinister – and Norman is torn between a fatherly pride in his creation and frustration at the way she’s taking over his life. Somewhere in the middle of the novel, a gradual shift of power from Norman to Miss Hargreaves takes place, resulting in an almost Frankenstein-like situation where the creator begins to lose control of his creation. And yet Miss Hargreaves seems to be aware that there’s something different about her and that some kind of invisible bond exists between herself and Norman.

I was expecting the story to be funny and entertaining – and it is. However, there are also some very moving and poignant scenes, making the book a perfect mixture of dark and light.

There was only one aspect of this book that I could maybe have done without and that was the music. With Norman Huntley’s church organ, Cornelius Huntley’s violin and Miss Hargreaves’ harp, the musical elements of the book became a bit too much for me. However, I’m sure other readers will enjoy the organ playing scenes and they certainly add to the quirkiness and originality of the book.

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Miss Hargreaves: A Novel (Bloomsbury Group)

Book Review: When God Was A Rabbit by Sarah Winman

Title: When God Was A Rabbit
Author: Sarah Winman
Publisher: Bloomsbury USA
ISBN: 9781608195343
Genre: Literary Fiction
Price: $25.00
PP: 296 pages
Source: Publisher
Rating: 5/5

This is the story of Elly and her brother Joe growing up in the 1970s. The book is in two parts and narrated by Elly. The first part begins with her birth in 1968 and follows her ordinary family through a series of extraordinary events – child abuse, cancer scare, sudden wealth, nativity play tragedy, brutal kidnap. You would think such big themes would make for a heavy read but they are dealt with in a light and subtle way.

Winman introduces lots of lovely, quirky characters: Jenny Penny, Nancy, Arthur, Ginger as well as elements of fantasy – god the rabbit, Hollywood stardom, coconuts. I loved the eternal optimism and openness of the parents and that, despite the curveballs thrown at their marriage, they stick together through good times and bad. So much better and more realistic than the usual tendency to break up good marriages for dramatic effect.

The second half of the book starts in 1995 when Elly is 27 and we see the person she has grown up to be. She is bright and successful in her career but she has struggled to make lasting friendships and relationships. The tragedy of 9/11, when Joe is living in New York, is dealt with convincingly and sympathetically and ultimately brings the characters together as they realise their dependency on each other.

This book crept up on me. It is light and easy to read and yet it had me gripped to the end. This is the sort of book I would aspire to if I was ever to sit down and write one. Winman’s use of similies was original and breathtakingly accurate and there were moments where I had to stop to absorb the genius of what I had just read. Some people will hate this book, will wonder how anyone can find humour in such darkness, but I loved it and admire the author’s courage and originality. That she could throw so much into one novel, turning tragedy into comedy whilst moving the reader to tears, demonstrates what an extraordinary book this is.

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Book Review: Psychiatric Tales: Eleven Stories about Mental Illness by Darryl Cunningham

                                                                            
Title: Psychiatric Tales: Eleven Stories about Mental Illnes
Author: Cunningham, Darryl
ISBN: 13:9781608192786
Genre: Graphic Novel
Publisher: Bloomsbury USA
PP: 160 pp
Price: $15.00
Source: Publisher
Rating: 5/5

I’ve been looking forward to this book for some time, and it’s as impressive as I’d been hoping. In one sense, the book is a fascinating handbook, focusing on different kinds of mental illness in each chapter. These include dementia, self-harming, depression, anti-social personality disorder, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, suicide, and great figures in history who’ve suffered mental illnesses. But it also follows Darryl Cunningham’s own journey, starting as a health care assistant and then training to become a mental health nurse until the strain of the course threw him into severe depression and he had to stop.

But all the years of working as a carer gave him a deep insight into the lives of people suffering different conditions and provided him with real-life work anecdotes that make him able to portray them as real people, not just clinical conditions. And it also makes the reader care about Cunningham as a health worker, realizing the hard-core things these carers deal with, and the emotional beatings they go through. But the book’s not a request for us to pity the writer; his straightforward, almost dead-pan voice at times focuses us as readers on the universality of mental health problems, and emphasizes the need to be able to talk about these things in a way that doesn’t stigmatize people for being ill, in the way we wouldn’t if someone had, say, a broken leg. A deep sense of empathy is the thing that came through most clearly to me in this book, and the last chapter clinches it, when Cunningham allows us to see his own struggle with depression and the hope he gives to other people who suffer it.

The artwork in this book reads very easily and clearly, and provides an excellent introduction to graphic novels for readers who are not very familiar with the medium. Cunningham’s solid line-work and shapes draw inspiration from a long tradition of woodcut illustrations, and his clever compositions give the story its great impact.

This accessible book could become a classic text for people learning about mental illness, and would fit just as easily into a school library or doctor’s office as in a comic book shop. The book raises a lot of important issues and would make an excellent assigned reading to start off discussions about different kinds of mental illness, the role and treatment of health carers, living with someone who suffers one or more of these illnesses and public perception of mental disorders. Or it may simply provide much-needed comfort to readers in discovering they are not alone in a world where they don’t seem to fit in.