Book Review: Smilla’s Sense of Snow by Peter HØeg

Title: Smilla’s Sense of Snow
Author: Peter HØeg
Publisher: Picador USA
ISBN: 9781250002556
Genre: Literary Fiction, Mystery
Pages: 512
Source: Publisher
Rating: 5/5

Smilla’s Sense of Snow is a treat to read. There is everything in it which a book can offer – some great writing, mystery, literary fiction, and a sense of dry humour in certain parts. Peter HØeg proves that literature can be both entertaining and artful. Though on the surface, Smilla’s Sense of Snow is genre fiction, it is beyond just being a thriller.

Smilla’s Sense of Snow is based in Denmark and then takes the reader to the Arctic in order to solve a mystery. The book first released in 1993. I read it then and I have read it now and I must say that I enjoyed it more the second time round. Smilla Jaspersen – half Greenlander, half Dane, an unconventional loner and brilliant scientist, is struggling with her emotions (which she doesn’t display enough of) and is devastated when a young boy she had befriended mysteriously falls to his death from the roof of their apartment building. She doesn’t think it is an accident. From there on begins Smilla’s journey and the trail she follows to solve his murder.

The writing is good. The story is wonderfully told. (I do not read books that do not interest me; hence the books that I read are brilliant) The setting could not have been better. However, what stands out the most in this book is the characterization of Smilla. Smilla is an ordinary woman (do not mistake her to be that anyway). She is bold, clever, smart, instinctive and reckless at the same time. She is a rule-breaker (doing it all subtly) and is not afraid to say things the way they are. Peter HØeg has created a woman who will not opt for the role society expects her to play.

Smilla cannot connect with others and she knows that. She feels bad about it but she knows her limitations and that’s what I love about the character. May be that is why she wants to bring justice to the one friend she had made.

The descriptions are dense and required while writing a book that merges the setting and the mystery. One needs to mention the details and Peter HØeg has done a wonderful job of that. Smilla’s sense of Snow is not your regular mystery. It is surprising that at times it takes so much effort to read it, because of the intensity and how it is weaved through Smilla’s perspective and her way through the maze of questions and emotions.

Smilla’s musings are another dimension to the book. I loved reading them (as and when they came along). They added spice and character to the book.

Here’s one of them:

“Deep inside I know that trying to figure things out leads to blindness, that the desire to understand has a built-in brutality that erases what you seek to comprehend. Only experience is sensitive.”

In this world of Lisbeth Salander, I urge you to read Smilla’s Sense of Snow. It is as fresh and compelling as when it was first written. A brilliant feat.

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Book Review: Half-Blood Blues by Esi Edugyan

Title: Half-Blood Blues
Author: Esi Edugyan
Publisher: Picador USA
ISBN: 978-1250012708
Genre: Literary Fiction
Pages: 336
Source: Publisher
Rating: 4/5

It is not easy to write a book with Jazz as the main character that is always lurking as the “backdrop”. In fact it isn’t easy writing about music at all; no matter how tuned you are to it and what your sensibilities are made of. Esi Edugyan manages it wonderfully through his book, “Half-Blood Blues”.

“Half-Blood Blues” alternates between 1992 and 1939/1940, whose major characters are three African-American men who met in Weimar, Germany playing together in a jazz group. The book brings out the world inhabited by these three men and their longings, passion, betrayal over the years, while the music silently plays on.

The tale is narrated by Sid, and he moves in time, back and forth to unfold the story of a talented trumpet player, Hieronymus Falk. The musicians struggle against the growing danger of Nazism and each experience varying degrees of safety (or lack of it) in Europe based on their background and citizenship. One of the most endangered is Hiero, a German of mixed race who is taken by the Nazis one night and never returns. Sid witnesses this and the major focus of this novel is Sid’s guilt as he grapples with what he did and what he did not to save his friend’s life.

The book in itself reads like poetry at times. Esi has a knack of writing and presenting the story in a manner that is graceful, lyrical and sometimes heart-breaking. The novel explores the other side of World War II, the persecution of Blacks and German “Mischlings” in Germany. What I loved was that the book is set against the backdrop of Jazz, which was then banned in Germany because of it being seen as, “degenerate”. So there are two biases – one against a set of people and second against a genre of music, both of which are wonderfully brought to surface by Esi Edugyan.

Esi allows the reader to explore the world through Sid’s eyes, where everything is not wrapped up tidy and neat. She creates the historic context, allowing readers to live there for a while with her flawed characters. She makes you think about what it would be like to live in a world where everything seems and has gone wrong, where may be music is the only thing left that one can rely on completely and unconditionally. Music is the only thing that seems to make sense at times.

Esi has a powerful voice though at times I felt disconnected from the book however came back to it to be enthralled for a while. Read it if music and identity interest you together. It is a great combination though.

Book Review: Everything You Know by Zoe Heller

Title: Everything You Know
Author: Zoe Heller
Publisher: Picador USA
ISBN: 978-1-250-00374-4
Genre: Literary Fiction
Pages: 203
Source: Publisher
Rating: 4/5

There is always a good time to take you out of the reader’s block situation and for me that book in the recent past was “Everything you Know” by Zoe Heller. I remember the one and only book I had read by her earlier – Notes on a Scandal, which I was enthralled by. The writing style, the setting and the plot of the book was beyond great.

Zoe Heller’s book, “Everything you Know” is actually the first one written by her and I was not surprised by the beauty of the language at all. It just gave me an idea of the lucidity that came through in Notes on a Scandal. Everything you Know is about Willy Muller and his life. Willy Muller is an unusual character, someone who you might meet and stop and think about. He could be distasteful and yet he is just like you and I in most ways.

Willy Muller is recuperating from a heart attack in Mexico, and trying very hard to write a script of a celebrity’s memoirs – the writer’s block emerges and he cannot write. His girlfriend Penny, one of the plastically enhanced women and not too bright, is with him. One fine day he receives a call from his sister in England, informing him that their mother is dead. He rushes to England and the ghosts of the past haunt him all over again. Willy had to leave England with a bad reputation of being indicted for killing his wife in a domestic fight. He appeals and is set free. His daughters think he was responsible for their mother’s death. The second daughter commits suicide and leaves a diary. But of course Willy reads it and his life begins to unravel – one piece at a time. His answers and his questions merge and he wonders more, seeking answers, finding a way to live.

It is not easy to write a novel of this kind and accommodate everything in less than 300 pages. The writing is in your face and doesn’t let up for a single bit. Knowing the plot, it is depressive at times, but a fantastic read. Zoe Heller uses her craft very intelligently – without giving away too much and making readers think for themselves.

This is just one example of her superlative writing: “If I am a shit, I used to tell myself defiantly in those days, so be it.”

Zoe Heller has a linear style of writing. The jumping of past to present and back is sometimes overwhelming but works for the plot in most ways. The dialogues are perfectly tuned to the plot, the supporting characters play their part when needed fantastically and the plot is something else – from madness to crime to getting a grip on reality. Everything You Know is a great read that tells a lot about the human condition and the answers we seek, when sometimes they are right there in front of us.

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Book Review: The Lover’s Dictionary by David Levithan

Title: The Lover’s Dictionary
Author: David Levithan
Publisher: Picador USA
ISBN: 978-1250002358
Genre: Literary Fiction
Pages: 211
Source: Personal Copy
Rating: 5/5

The Lover’s Dictionary by David Levithan is an ode to love – a subtle love letter to love and its nature. That is what the book means to me. Needless to say that the novel is written in the form of a dictionary – a dictionary of love and a relationship surrounding that love.

The idea is simple: How does one talk about love? Is there a way to talk about it? There are so many ways to talk about it. Love, which pulls us out of the ordinary and the mundane life and promises something so much more than what it can give. Sometimes it does. Sometimes it doesn’t. “The Lover’s Dictionary” is a song to those moments of love, almost every shade and colour, every emotion explored through a relationship and its definitions.

Love doesn’t unfold in bullet points. It needs definitions and conversations. It needs sharing and may be some looking back to see where it can go ahead, and if it should. David Levithan’s book is meant to be shared with people so they can be enthralled by its beauty.

The setting of the book is New York City – a relationship unravels through definitions (as mentioned earlier). The definitions in this dictionary are exhilarating and sometimes leave you breathless. Everyone who has ever been in a relationship or may be not also can connect with it. It speaks to all of us – straight, gay, men and women. The language is evocative. The words chosen to try to define love and its complexities are carefully chosen and unique. There is unapologetic romance on every page and that’s the sort of writer that David Levithan is. You can read the book from any page and may be try and make sense of your life in that instant with reference to that definition given. The writing is that powerful.

Sometimes the “dictionary” entries are only as much as a single sentence and yet so fulfilling. There are genuine insights to love and the possibility of it or not. Here are some gems from it: For example, “balk, v. I was the one who said we should live together. And even as I was doing it, I knew this would mean that I would be the one to blame if it all went wrong. Then I consoled myself with this: if it all went wrong, the last thing I’d care about was who was to blame for moving in together.” Or this: “reservation, n. There are times when I worry that I’ve already lost myself. That is, that myself is so inseparable from being with you that if we were to separate, I would no longer be. I save this thought for when I feel the darkest discontent. I never meant to depend so much on someone else.” Or this: love, n. I’m not even going to try.

The book talks of everything love is – first dates, the flirting, the wooing, the living-In, the break-ups and the coming back together to make it work. David Levithan’s writing is beyond superb. He has the capacity to string sentences like no other writer – that is his unique way to do so and that worked for me on all levels. For me, I could read and re-read this book – again and again and cherish it till I do not give enough of it. It is subtle, surreal, magical and takes you to a love – real, funny, heart-breaking and spectacular. You are missing out on something if you haven’t read it yet and I envy you if you would be reading it for the first time because it is so good.

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Book Review: Ghost Light by Joseph O’Connor

Title: Ghost Light
Author: Joseph O’Connor
Publisher: Picador USA
ISBN: 978-1-250-00231-0
Genre: Literary Fiction
Pages:246
Source: Publisher
Rating: 5/5

There is always a set of readers who appreciate a stream of consciousness narrative and those who do not. For me personally, I love it. It is a great form of writing and I have always enjoyed it a little more than the other forms. It is with this spark I started reading, “Ghost Light” and was surprised to know that the SOC narrative was used in this one.

Ghost Light is a brilliantly written small book of many wonders on every page. When I say wonders, I am referring to the literary strokes by Joseph O’Connor and I love how he has melded fact with fiction in this captivating love story, the story of Irish playwright J.M. Synge and his lover Molly Allgood, the Irish actress with the stage name of Maire O’Neill.

The novel opens in a dodgy London boarding house in a shady neighbourhood of 1952, where an older Molly is reviewing and revisiting her past with Synge. She lives alone expect for the ghostly presence of her dead-lover and so begins her story. The stream of consciousness voice of Molly (you are sixty-five now) keeps changing from second to third person narrative (as the years in which the novel is set changes from 1905 to 1952 and back and forth) which adds the much needed flexibility to the novel and also at the same time distances the reader from the characters and read the novel in a more objective manner.

The book is full of Irish references – poems, plays, songs and the landscape. As a reader you can almost imagine what is taking place and how. Young Molly has a brilliant narrative and it is interesting to note how it emerges to be what it is in her old age, from the robust and lively girl who falls for an older man. The plot further moves to letting the readers know that how Molly and John had to keep their affair a secret and the measures taken to ensure that their love was not found out by anyone.

What O’Connor also does is brings to forth the fact that in the good old days of 1905, it was very risqué of women to act in a play and Molly but of course was an actor, which is another interesting angle to the book. The book has several parts which are real and the rest are fiction according to the writer. Mr. O’Connor grew up next to the Synge house and the novel is a result of this fascination.

The novel like I said is not for everyone. Only if you think you have the patience for this kind of narrative and structure then you should pick it up, mainly because of the writing. Having said that, the novel has great structure and a grand scope that any reader will immediately take to. The love story is poignant and touches the right chords of the heart. The sense of place is vivid, which is what is expected in a book like this one. Last but not the least the book is truly mesmerizing. A must read.

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Book Review: The Druggist of Auschwitz by Dieter Schlesak

Title: The Druggist of Auschwitz: A Documentary Novel
Author: Dieter Schlesak
Publisher: Picador USA
ISBN: 978-1250002372
Genre: Non-Fiction, Literary Fiction
Pages: 384
Source: Publisher
Rating: 5/5

The Druggist of Auschwitz is the title of this book, and for most the title is enough to either want you to read this book or stay away from it. For me it was the former. I had to read it. I have been interested in the Holocaust since forever now and that is only to understand how human nature works. The violence it is capable of and sometimes what lengths it can go to.

The author Dieter Schlesak was only 10 years old when the Russians invaded his town of Sighisoara in German Transylvania (now Rumania) in August 1944, and since then he has been trying to understand the Holocaust and how it happened ever since. The Druggist of Auschwitz is an attempt at that – to create something monumental about the possible paralyzing horror that occurred – and in this book Schlesak does a brilliant job by providing both sides of the story, that of the victim and that of the perpetrator.

On one hand in the book, you have the Jew who is safe from the horrors, a collective narrator, called, “Adam Salmen” – who is the Sondercommando of the Jewish “Special Action Squad” under the German Rule. His job is to report on the deaths in the gas chambers and tally them against the list and the cremation ovens. In his spare time, he maintains a diary describing the horrors and his state of mind and emotions.

The other side of the story is of Viktor Capesius, formerly a pharmacist in Sighisoara, whom the author knew personally. He was in charge of the SS dispensary and had control over Zyklon B that was used in the gas chambers. He also participated in the selection process of spring of 1944 of choosing who was fit to work and who wasn’t, and would ultimately meet their death. Capesius did a lot in his role – from stealing money from the Jews and stripping them to their very last valuable to converting their gold teeth to gold for his personal benefit, this book says it all. It also tells the reader of how the pharmacist met his end.

The author uses the druggist as the central voice in the book for exploring the horrors of Auschwitz. There is only a thin fictional gloss to the entire book. Otherwise all of it is true and real and maybe that is what makes it what it is. The Druggist of Auschwitz uses a new way of chronicling the lives of individuals who participated in the world’s greatest horror. The victim’s nature and role and the torturer’s aspect are clearly laid out. The writing is not easy. There will be times when the reader will be tempted to shut the book and not read further. At the same time, the writing style is hypnotic and totally worth a read. The amazing combination of fact and fiction makes it up for everything that you have read earlier about the Holocaust. I would highly recommend this one.

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Book Review: The Third Reich by Roberto Bolano

Title: The Third Reich
Author: Roberto Bolano
Publisher: Picador
ISBN: 978-0330535793
Genre: Literary Fiction
Pages: 288
Source: Publisher
Rating: 5/5

Roberto Bolaño has always fascinated me with his works – absurd, odd, strange, surreal and brutal at times, he ensured that he left a legacy that his fans will never forget and from this emerges his new book, ‘The Third Reich’.
The Third Reich in bits and pieces did remind me of Ian McEwan’s, ‘The Comfort of Strangers’, but barring the basic plot was where the similarity ended. This book was discovered after his death and apparently quite complete, it is his early work. This work has been beautifully translated by Natasha Wimmer. There are traces of immense surrealism in this one, which Bolaño would later use and implement in The Savage Detectives and 2666.

The Third Reich centers on Udo Berger, a German in his mid-twenties, who is taking a vacation with his girlfriend in a beach hotel on the Costa Brava, where he has spent many a vacation with his family as a child. Together with another German couple, they engage in the usual activities – swimming, eating, drinking, sunbathing and making love. However, this vacation is not what either of the couple thought it would turn out to be. All is not well in paradise. They are involved with a local sinister group, called, The Wolf, The Lamb and El Quemado (the burnt one), a South-American immigrant who hires pedal boats on the beach. The four individuals are further taken in by acts of off-stage violence which results in a death and that changes the complete course of events.

The title of the book surprisingly (or not) comes from a game called, “The Third Reich” that Udo plays in a hotel room which becomes something more. I think Roberto Bolaño was obsessed with Germany in many ways. Many of his books deal with German Literature and he also deals with German History in a very peculiar manner.

The novel is delightful. It depicts the war-game scenario to the open, signaling its peculiarities in a poetic, stylistic manner. The book is strange and at the same time it does what it has to – entraps the reader into it. I would highly recommend this book to Roberto’s fans and also to the ones who have never read him.

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Book Review: Humiliation by Wayne Koestenbaum

Title: Humiliation
Author: Wayne Koestenbaum
Publisher: Picador USA
ISBN: 978-0-312-42922-5
Pages: 184
Genre: Non-Fiction
Source: Publisher
Rating: 5/5

Wayne Koestenbaum’s, “Humiliation” is a unique book. At first I did not know what to expect from it, however the more I read and finished it, the various aspects of humiliation became clearer and I came to realize the very core of being shamed in public. The way I look at it, Humiliation has at one point or the other been a part of everyone’s life. We have all been humiliated, sometimes intentionally and sometimes unintentionally. From a simple aspect of asking one’s salary in public to commenting on someone’s clothes when surrounded by friends, is also an act of humiliation. As Wayne Koestenbaum talked and discussed Humiliation through the book, the more I cringed, laughed and empathized at the same time.

Humiliation is a collection of 11 fugues and all of them but of course are connected by the one theme. Humiliation is an interesting account of Koestenbaum’s mind and his perceptions of the topic and there are times that the book illuminates us on the very concept of it. Why do some people take pleasure in humiliating another human being? And more so, why do some people take pleasure watching or being witness to that? What is it within us that leads us to enjoy another person’s misery?

The most interesting part of the book for me was the “Jim Crow Gaze” which is about the indifferent stare that people give the ones who are being humiliated. The fact that they do not care, the indifference of it all, makes it even more humiliating as you cannot see one friendly face in the crowd. That hit home like no other part mentioned in the book and I guess that is because we have at some point either taken on the Jim Crow Gaze or have seen it upon us.

Humiliation also speaks of the act in different cultural contexts as well, however I wish more was written on it, however it was not. Koestenbaum discusses the Holocaust, the act of insulting a man in a wheelchair in the washroom and the concept of Pride being attached to the act.

The book successfully managed to bring out the anger within me at various points. While the author recounts and as the reader goes along, the reader cannot help but react or think strongly – that is one of the side effects of writing about a topic which everyone has been party to – directly or indirectly. Koestenbaum has touched on the day-to-day instances of the common man and also spoke of humiliation from a celebrity’s perspective – Michael Jackson, Judy Garland, Prisoners of War, Lynndie England and Nixon.

Humiliation also has strong undertones – of sex, politics, power, office politics and school politics alike. It does not shy away from touching on any topic. The book is frank and Wayne does not believe in mincing words. The book is not something that can be read on a beach, neither it is a flight read. Humiliation requires time and patience and more time after finishing the book, to think about it.

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Book Review : The Hundred Brothers by Donald Antrim

Title: The Hundred Brothers
Author: Donald Antrim
Publisher: Picador
ISBN: 978-0-312-66219-6
Genre: Literary Fiction
Price: $15.00
PP: 188 pages
Source: Publisher
Rating: 5/5

The Hundred Brothers by Donald Antrim is nothing like I have ever read before, and neither would you have if you ever get the chance to read this book. This book is strange – it is not even weird strange and it takes time to get your teeth into this one, however once you do, it will be very difficult to get yourself away from it, till you have finished it. What is the book about? Well, here goes:

The story is about one hundred brothers (literally, minus one though) who come together for dinner one night. The objective is to possibly find the urn which contains their fathers’ ashes. One of the brothers is our narrator. He quickly descends from trustworthy and seemingly normal to crazy. But why and what happens to him, is something you have to read and find out for yourself, or else that would be a spoiler and I would not want to do that to you.

The Hundred Brothers quite literally speaking is a stream of consciousness – while a lot is happening, nothing really does happen. Donald Antrim has touched on almost every masculine behavior and thought pattern that there is to cater to for the reader – from pornography to homosexual references to sports to hunting to bullying – all the male archetypes (almost) are mentioned and that’s what to me made the writing fascinating.

A lot of times “The Brothers Karamazov” flashed before my eyes while I was reading the book and why not? They both are about brothers and a crazy family. There is the gradual crescendo of horror from humour and every brother, including the narrator has glaring faults in which we also recognize our own. The setting, obeying the Aristotelian unities of time and place, seems to grow and evolve in a nightmarish fashion. The love and hatred between the brothers is searing.

Antrim has a way of establishing a rational and simple universe, and then subtly and ironically, disseminating it bit by bit, gradually to show us what lies beneath the surface. His writing is twisted to the point that the reader does not want to move on and yet is compelled to do so. His allegories are mischievous and mysterious at the same time.
There are no chapters in the book – it goes on, the premise is huge, magnanimous almost – making the reader wonder, how did he ever get this idea? What propelled him? And then there are the dynamics between the brothers – the way the writer intended it to be portrayed. I do not want to classify the book or the writing to any form. It is best left untouched, however make note of one thing: Read this book and read it one sitting. Let it play with your head. Let it take you on a very strange rollercoaster and by the end of it, you would be wondering why it ever ended. It is that good.

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Book Review: Amulet by Roberto Bolano

Title: Amulet
Author: Roberto Bolano
Publisher: Picador
ISBN: 978-0330510493
Genre: Literary Fiction
PP: 184 pages
Price: £7.99
Source: Publisher
Rating: 5/5

Amulet is different, confusing, and disconcerting and quite haunting. Although it probably is most readily classified as a novel, it does not easily wear that label. It is a first-person narrative, but there is no real plot. Instead, what the narrator — Auxilio Lacouture, a woman poet originally from Uruguay but now in Mexico City (and a character in another of Bolano’s works) — relates is more of a memoir of her years as a kind of groupie in the vibrant literary world of Mexico City in the mid-1960s to late-1970s. But this “memoir” is not chronological or linear, and it continually veers between the impressionistic and the realistic. Rather than “memoir”, maybe it is better thought of as an all-night oral account (and accounting) of her “literary life” delivered by Auxilio to a small group of fringe literati in a cheap and shabby university apartment.

The central event in Auxilio’s story is the police crackdown on the student movement and occupation of the National Autonomous Mexican University in September 1968. While the riot police cleared the campus of students and dissidents (an actual historical event, with fatalities) Auxilio cowered in the women’s room on the fourth floor of the Philosophy and Literature building. Again and again Auxilio returns to this event, with evident uneasiness about having hid out in a bathroom stall.

Auxilio fancies herself the “mother of Mexican poets,” and during the course of her bohemian life in Mexico City she has come into contact (or claims to) with a number of Latin literary figures and artists, including “Arturo Belano” (an obvious alter ego for the author Roberto Bolano, an alter ego who has appeared in other of Bolano’s works). Other actual historical figures of Latin American arts who make an appearance in Auxilio’s story include Leon Felipe, Pedro Garfias, Remedios Varo, Lilian Serpas, Carlos Coffeen Serpas, and Ernesto “Che” Guevara.

Auxilio’s account of her life in Mexico City is almost surreal — a conflation or confusion of memories and time, as if she and everyone else is addled by psychotropic drugs, alcohol, or poverty and hunger — or is it all a dream? Is this confusion something universal, or is it peculiar to Latin America, or peculiar to Bolano?

The “amulet” of the title appears at the end of the book in connection with a vision, or dream (again, there is confusion), which involves “a mass of children” or “young people” who were the “prettiest children of Latin America, the ill-fed and the well-fed children, those who had everything and those who had nothing,” all of whom are “walking unstoppably toward the abyss.” Don’t worry, I have not fully revealed the ending or fully described the amulet. Indeed, the entire book might be regarded as an amulet in juxtaposition to the political and social violence that swept and upset much of Latin America in the 1960s and 1970s.

Amulet is the fourth of Bolano’s works that I have read and I can safely say that he is one of the best writers’ I have read in a very long time. Amulet is a small gem, worthy of being known by so many lovers of good reading. Go read it.