Read 74 of 2022. Trust by Hernan Diaz

Title: Trust
Author: Hernan Diaz
Publisher: Picador
ISBN: 978-1529074505
Genre: Literary Fiction
Pages: 416
Source: Publisher
Rating: 5/5

There are books that manage to take your breath away – while reading them and also when you are done with them. Trust is one of them. It consumes you; it draws you in from the very first page, and you as a reader go along where it takes you, no questions asked. Diaz in a way asks you to “trust” the plot, the structure, the story within stories premise and you do (though you are not supposed to, as it becomes clear as you go along).

Trust is a series of novels within a novel – there are four of them to be precise. It starts with “Bonds” written by Harold Vanner, a 1937 bestseller about the rise of a Wall Street Tycoon named Benjamin Rask and his wife Helen – living life to the fullest in the Roaring ‘20s till the crash of 1929 changes their lives.

This moves us on to the other three sections of the book – each a novel within this novel, upending the truth, giving us parallel truths, lies, which ultimately unravels most shockingly at the end of it all.

Diaz’s writing is experimental, playful, post-modernistic with a historical twist in every chapter – merging the style of Edith Wharton with his own unique style of giving the reader an illusion and staying with it till the very end. At the same time, as a reader, I just loved how Diaz becomes the writer who has written the books within this novel. With every chapter you go deeper – unearthing and getting lost deeper in the maze that Diaz most succinctly has created.

Trust by Hernan Diaz is a rollercoaster of a ride, a mad trip, a tale of wealth, love, madness, passion and about how we view the world and how in turn are viewed by the world at large. This book will definitely be in my top reads of 2022. Please read it.

Amnesty by Aravind Adiga

Title: Amnesty
Author: Aravind Adiga
Publisher: Picador India
ISBN: 978-9389109436
Genre: Literary Fiction
Pages: 272
Source: Publisher
Rating: 3/5

I was very eager to read this one, because I loved Last Man in Tower, when I first read it in 2011. I still remember the book as vividly. I don’t know if I will be able to say this of Amnesty, nine years from now. It is not that I did not like the read. It is just that I had great expectations from it, which it did not live upto.

Amnesty is a book about Danny, a young adult in his twenties from Sri Lanka, who has been living illegally in Australia for four years as a cleaner. The book is about one of the residents’ death that Danny cleaned for. Danny might know what happened but does not want to come clean because if he did that might get him deported.

The writing to me was quite disjointed and didn’t sort of add up in many places as a whole. There were brilliant moments but only few and far and in-between. All the tropes are there – of accountability, of being human, of showing empathy,  and of understanding the prejudice that exists towards immigrants. Yet the novel did not take-off from me. Like I said, Adiga does know how to write and build the character, and perhaps also make you a part of their life, but somehow Danny’s story of strife and humanity did not strike a chord with me.

I wish Amnesty had the heart of Last Man in Tower or the cleverness of Between the Assassinations, but I am just being biased. You should read the book if you want to, and decide for yourself. At the most, it definitely proved to be a page-turner of a read.

 

A Thousand Ships by Natalie Haynes

Title: A Thousand Ships
Author: Natalie Haynes
Publisher: Mantle, PanMacmillan
ISBN: 978-1509836208
Genre: Myth Retelling, Literary Fiction
Pages: 368
Source: Publisher
Rating: 4/5

Another Women’s Prize for Fiction 2020 Long-listed title, which I read and thoroughly enjoyed. This is the book that The Silence of the Girls should have been but wasn’t. I am only too glad that this was published and I got a chance to read it. A Thousand Ships might seem like the regular fare of various perspectives and voices about The Trojan War, but there is more to it.

I liked the structure of the book, in the sense of it being an all-female perspective. Right from Penelope to Cassandra to Calliope to Hera and also the lesser-known women of this epic battle. The book’s characters are divided as per houses through which the battle was fought, but they only have similarities. The same grief and loss when men die. The same trauma when women are raped and married against their will. The same anguish of a mother as her child returns as a dead body. The helplessness of a goddess. The book focuses on events which happened before and during Homer’s two epics – The Iliad and The Odyssey.

The story starts with the sacking of Troy. The Greeks entering Troy through the Trojan Horse and raping, pillaging, and killing. Haynes lends structure and character to the lesser-known voices of the war. Women who have no voices in Homer’s poems. Whether they are Priam’s wife and daughters or Penelope’s pain and hurt, Haynes gives us deeper insight into their emotions and feelings. I just didn’t enjoy the constant Helen-bashing that took place at some points in the book.

The chapters are chronological, so there might be some confusion reading the book to begin with. At the same time, you don’t have to read Homer to know what happened. A quick summary of Iliad and Odyssey should be enough to venture into this read. A Thousand Ships is a great read of the retelling of a great myth.

It’s Not About The Burqa: Muslim Women on Faith, Feminism, Sexuality, and Race. Edited by Mariam Khan

Title: It’s Not About The Burqa: Muslim Women on Faith, Feminism, Sexuality, and Race
Edited by Mariam Khan
Publisher: Picador
ISBN: 978-1509886401
Genre: Essays, Anthology,
Pages: 272
Source: Publisher
Rating: 5 stars

Since time immemorial, women have been taught to be silent, or forced into silence, or submission. We have been following that for centuries now, maybe earlier than that. Women are seen or heard through a filter, and for what it’s worth it is 2019 and we should be done with all filters. It’s Not About The Burqa – an anthology of Muslim Women by Muslim Women does just that. It is about voices unfiltered – bare and open, waiting to be heard.

The idea of the anthology occurred to Mariam Khan when in 2016 she read that David Cameron had linked the radicalisation of Muslim men to the “submissive nature” of Muslim women. And this led to Mariam thinking that why was she hearing this about Muslim women from a man, and that too who wasn’t Muslim? As years passed since this comment, she realised a lot of Muslim women voices were buried or drowned. She then decided to come up with this anthology.

What is also funny is that in the Western world, the Burqa is perhaps the only thing with which Muslim women are linked or identified. The title of the book says it all – that this book is much more and beyond that. Might I also add that the title is no way “just an attention grabber”. There is more to it, which is evident right from the introduction. Mariam Khan along with her 16 other contributors, bring you a collection that is trying to change the way you look at women, at Muslim women in particular and try and look beyond the stereotypes and boxes they are carefully placed in every single day.

The issues are several. They have chosen a few, that’s also because it is next to impossible to cover such a wide range of their culture, and the way they live. From an essay by Sufiya Ahmed (The First Feminist) that speaks of how she found her courage in the book given to her by her father, when she realised that the first feminist was actually Khadija – the Prophet’s wife and how that propelled her to making her own choices, to the first one in the book by Mona Eltahawy on how the time of revolutions has come, this anthology surprises, shocks, and in turns also makes you laugh and cry.

There are others that I loved: Not Just A Black Muslim Woman by Raifa Rafiq – handling the minutest minority – Black, Muslim, and a Woman. The honesty of the essay left me wanting more. There was another one on being a Muslim woman and dealing with depression – when you are told day-in and day-out that there is nothing known as depression. This essay by Jamilla Hekmoun had me gripped and choked.

I think what most people forget, and mainly men that women are so much more. This anthology in more than one way is a reminder of that. The essays, and to me each of them gave me a perspective that I couldn’t think of – some I could, most I couldn’t. I could sense the anger, and again, it’s time that the anger and passion comes through, which it does without a doubt in these essays. These women write about the hijab, about sex and the female pleasure, about divorce, the need for open conversations about sex and identity, and mental health among others.

Its Not About The Burqa is a call to everyone – to sit up, notice, and understand that you cannot reduce Muslim women to pieces of clothing. This book will not disappoint at all. You also need to go without any expectations and let all their experiences wash over you and be ready to listen. To listen to voices that do not get heard. To listen to a representation – even as a sample perhaps, widening perspectives and the need to be empathetic and above all the will to accept and understand.

 

The Legacy of Nothing by Manoj Pandey. Illustrations by Yuko Shimizu

Title: The Legacy of Nothing
Author: Manoj Pandey
Publisher: Pan Macmillan India
ISBN: 978-9386215628
Genre: Short Stories
Pages: 126
Source: Publisher
Rating: 2 stars

There are times you are reading a book and really hope and pray that you like it, that it doesn’t disappoint you, till it does, and honestly you then do not know what to do. Should one continue reading it? Endure it so to say, for some time only, like a bad relationship is endured? Should one drop it? I read it. It had a lot of promise, if only the stories were longer and better structured.

The Legacy of Nothing by Manoj Pandey is a collection of ten byte-sized (forgive me for using this phrase) stories. I don’t know if the stories are poems or the poems are stories, either way, it didn’t work for me. The landscape of Manoj’s stories is beguiling. You want to be sucked into it. You want more and end up receiving nothing.

His stories are of migrants, of people who just want to make a living with dreams and hopes of their own, of people who are treated callously in their own country, feeling dejected and alienated. This is precisely why I wanted to love this collection, to soak into their lives, but maybe the form of writing isn’t for me.

The collection starts with how we project ourselves on social media and the lengths we will go to achieve that. The first story “Decay” hits you hard when the protagonist, a struggling musician will go to any lengths to stir a sensation online – even take advantage of a story of rape. Or the one titled “Inadequacy” which is about new age role-plays and how it fits into our current social conditioning (which by the way doesn’t come through at all). “Pretty as Fuck” is about Facebook friends who chat, interact, get to know each other, and then what happens when they meet. There are seven other stories – of a Maoist who finds solace in sips of Coca-Cola (the only one I could feel toward), of a man who changes his sex (The longest story in the collection. I wish there was some empathy while writing this), and more in the same vein.

So, here’s the thing: The stories aren’t empathetic enough toward its characters, or perhaps they don’t want to project that to the reader. Maybe that’s how it is when it comes to these stories and its fine, but as a reader I felt nothing for the characters.

The writing seems rushed and not involving. Everything is just on the surface. The format is new and works initially, only to become jaded and leave you wanting more. The Legacy of Nothing sadly leaves you with nothing at the end of the book.