Doyle's The Hound of the Baskervilles

Perhaps the most famous of Doyle's Holmes series, The Hound of the Baskervilles is a grim mystery tale set in the omninous Grimpen Mire (actually Dartmouth) in the south of England. Doyle based his tale on the legend of the great black hound of Dartmouth, a favorite story in the area. He expanded this tale to a masterful mystery plot, full of hidden identities, attempted murder, and of course Sherlock Holmes and trusty Dr. Watson hot on the case.

The story opens with Dr. Mortimer suspicious of foul, supernatural play in the death of his friend, the late Sir Charles Baskerville. Mortimer believes that Sir Charles was frightened into a heart attack by the presence of a large black hound, a beast that, according to legend, has plagued the unfortunate Baskervilles for centuries. In true Sherlockian fashion, Holmes begins his investigation. What follows is a wonderful mystery tale, a great story for a cold night with a cup of tea.

Interview with Aravind Adiga, author of The White Tiger

Excerpted from printed Free Press interview (April 22, 2008)

Q: Who are some of your literary influences? Do you identify yourself particularly as an Indian writer?

A: It might make more sense to speak of incluences on this book, rather than on me. The influences on The White Tiger are three black American writers of the post-World War II era (in order) Ralph Ellison, James Baldwin, and Richard Wright. The odd thing is that I haven't read them in years and years - I read Ellison's Invisible Man in 1995 or 1996, and have never returned to it - but now that the book is done, I can see how deeply it's indebted to them. As a writer, I don't feel tied to any one identity; I'm happy to draw influences from wherever they come.

Q: Could you describe your process as a writer? Was the transition from journalism to fiction difficult?

A: A first draft of TWT was written in 2005, and then put aside. I had given up on the book. Then, for reasons I don't fully understand myself, in December 2006, when I'd just returned to India after a long time abroad, I opened the draft and began rewriting it entirely. I wrote all day long from the next month and by early January 2007, I could see that I had a novel on my hands.

Q: From where did the inspiration for Balram Halwai come? How did you capture his voice?

A: Balram Halwai is a compound of various men I've met when traveling through India. I spend a lot of my time loitering about train stations or bus stands or servants' quarters and slums, and I listen and talk to people around me. There's a kind of continuous murmur or growl beneath middle-class life in India, and this noise never gets recorded. Balram is what you'd hear if one day the drains and faucets in your house started talking.

Q: In the novel, you write about the binary nature of Indian culture: the Light and the Darkness and how the caste system has been reduced to "Men with Big Bellies and Men with Small Bellies." Would you say more about why you think the country has come to be divided into these categories?

A: It's important that you see these classifications as Balram's, rather than as mine. I don't intend for the reader to identify with him very much at all. The past fifty years have seen tumultuous changes in India's society, and these changes - many of which are for the better - have overturned the traditional hierarchies, and the old securities of life. A lot of poorer Indians are left confused and perplexed by the new India that is being formed around them.

Q: Although Ashoke [Balram's master in the novel] has his redeeming characteristics, for the most part your portrayal of him, his family, and other members of the upper class is harsh. Is the corruption as rife as it seems, and will the nature of the upper class change or be preserved by the economic changes in India?

A: Just ask any Indian, rich or poor, about corruption here. It's bad. It shows no sign of going away, either. As to what lies in India's future - that's one of the hardest questions to in the world to answer.

Q: Your novel depicts an India that we don't often see. Was it important to you to present an alternative point of view? Why does a Western audience need this alternative portrayal?

A: The main reason anyone would want to read this book, or so I hope, is because it entertains them and keeps them hooked to the end. I don't read anythign because I "have" to: I read what I enjoy reading, and I hope my readers will ind this book fun, too.

I simply wrote about the India that I know about, and the one that I live in. It's not "alternative India" for me! It's pretty mainstream, trust me.

Amitov Ghosh's The Glass Palace

In the spirit of epic novels about the changing tides of family and country, Amitov Ghosh follows Rajkumar and Dolly through the vicissitudes of life in Southeast Asia during the early 20th century. Spanning many decades and the rise and fall of fortunes, The Glass Palace is a massive tale set against the backdrop of a changing world.

The novel opens with the destitute Rajkumar, dreaming of better things and working hand to mouth. In the distance, the booming cadence of British artillery peppers the air. As Revere once said, “the British are coming” and they will not fail to un-seat the Burmese King. As they approach, Rajkumar runs to the palace compound, an area he, and people like him, have hitherto been disallowed from entering, and watches the preparations of the royal family as they prepare to flee. Amongst Queen Supayalat’s women is a beautiful young girl, Dolly, with whom Rajkumar will fall deeply in love. The royal family is soon sent to exile and Rajkumar becomes determined to make his fortune and win Dolly’s love.

From this dramatic opening, Ghosh chronicles Rajkumar and Dolly’s lives and the lives of their close friends. Through them we see the oppression of British colonial rule, the efforts of Indian independence movements to break free from Britain and claim their own government, and the terror of World War II. Ghosh’s deft weaving of fiction and history presents a complete picture of life during these times. Though the dialogue is often stilted and the characters occasionally uni-dimensional, the overall experience of reading The Glass Palace is a pleasant one.

If you liked this, you might also like:

Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude
Roy's The God of Small Things
Mason's The Piano Tuner
Jhabvala's Heat and Dust

Sunday Salon: The House of Seven Gables

I tried reading this book when I was in high school, but I had trouble wading through the sentences. Hawthorne's language, though not complex or challenging to me now, seemed nearly impenetrable at points when I was 16. I loved The Scarlett Letter, which we read in Jr. English class, but that was a group read and discuss sort of thing, so it got me over the language hump.

I'm on a gothic/grim/slightly scary literature bend right now. No doubt it has something to do with the cold weather and the proximity of Halloween. I've never been that into scary literature before, but this year it's just the right choice. I finished Erika Mailman's The Witch's Trinity after reading a review on BookBrowse, and then launched into The Hound of the Baskerville. (Don't you think Baskerville would be great name for a beagle?)

So. I finished those two and Seven Gables started staring me down from my bookshelf. Because I have a huge weakness for forward, pushy books, I grabbed it and dove right in. I love Hawthorne. I don't know if he is much read outside of the high school English classroom these days, but he should be.

In other news, Hound brought me up to 50 books this year, and I have 25 more to read before I reach my goal of 75. Must get reading. I think when I finish Seven Gables, I might give Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde a whirl.

How do you win a Man Booker Prize?

October is literature's award season, but with all the buzz about Nobels and Man Bookers, how do you actually win one?

Obviously, you must first write a book, but while you write you may want to keep the following tips in mind.

(According to the article at the BBC website)

1. A literary best-seller needs to transport the reader to a remote time or place, but the novel can't just be preoccupied with plot, it must describe the plots and characters in a unique, beautiful way.
2. The book should be salable, and if it's been endorsed by Oprah (or in the case of the Brits, Richard and Judy) that's all the better.

Sounds pretty easy, right?

White Tiger Roars and Wins the Booker

Aravind Adiga's The White Tiger wins the coveted Man Booker Prize. The White Tiger is Adiga's first novel.

The book is desribed on the Man Booker Prize site as "a 'compelling, angry and darkly humorous' novel about a man's journey from Indian village life to entrepreneurial success. It was described by one reviewer as an 'unadorned portrait' of India seen 'from the bottom of the heap.'

In a Q&A on the site, Adiga talked about the inspiration for The White Tiger:

"The novel began as an experiment of a kind. Visitors to India from South Africa or Latin America often asked me why there seemed to be so little crime in India, given the vast (and growing) disparity in wealth between the classes -- a condition that had led to much higher levels of crime in their countries. Why was it, I began to wonder, that even though rich people in India keep so many servants, and the servants have such regular and intimate access to their master's households, that the servants in India, by and large, stay so honest? What keeps the class system in place -- and what are the conditions under which it might start to crumble? I began to think of a servant in Delhi who would, cold-bloodedly, steal from his master -- and do something even worse to him. And imagining what that servant would think, and feel, and do, I began making notes that turned into this novel."

Winner of the 2008 Nobel Prize in Literature is Announced

"Writing for me is like traveling," says Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio, winner of the 2008 Nobel Prize in Literature.

More from the Nobel site:

"Le Clézio's talent was recognized from the beginning; his first published novel (Le procès-verbal) written when he was 23, received the Renaudot prize. The early novels are highly experimental in style and intellectually challenging. They present a bleak picture of modern western urban existence, as one of alienation, aggression and enslavement to materiality (Les géants). Then, in the late 1970s, Le Clézio's style and thinking underwent a radical change, partly as a result of his experience of living with the Emberas Indians in the Panamanian forest between 1970 and 1974. Le Clézio is an expert on early Amerindian mythology and culture and produced the first ever translation of Indian mythology into a western language in Les prophéties du Chilam Balam. His experience in Panama developed his thinking about the limits of western rationalism and its dangerous devaluation of emotions and spirituality, and also of the natural world. His novels became more focused on story and character as the means to analyze the limits of western culture. More recently, as part of his exploration of the interaction between past, present and future, he has turned to his own family history and made it the subject of his novels."

John Connolly's The Book of Lost Things

John Connolly's absorbing novel is part fairy tale, part fabulist fiction that ruminates on the power of imagination. Using the language and the characters of popular stories, Connolly leads us through a magical world, a world peopled by characters and scenes from popular imagination; yet, nothing looks quite right.

__

David's mother has just died and his father has remarried another woman, a person David detests. To escape the pain of his loss and the growing suspicion that his father has replaced him and his mother with Rose and the new baby Georgie, David recedes into the world of his books - that have interestingly begun talking to him. David fears that if he says anything he may be 'put away,' so he silently watches and listens as the world begins to change.

--

David soon finds himself in a magical land, a place where the violent Loups (part man, part wolf) gather in the distance to plot the takeover of the kingdom, and the old king lives, dejected and aging, in a lonely palace with only the book of lost things to keep him company. In order for David to return to his own world, he must make it to the palace to see the king because only the king can help him return home. As he journeys through this mysterious country, he sees death, destruction, and pain, as all creatures - good and evil - battle to keep their houses safe and their bellies full. Readers will recognize many beloved tales - Snow White, Little Red Riding Hood, Sleeping Beauty, Rumpelstiltskin - but in this place, the grim, dark dimensions of these stories take precedence over 'happily ever after.'

__

This is an absorbing novel, though a little scary, and a perfect read as it starts to get cold and creepy around Halloween.

Sunday Salon: The Book of Lost Things

I think the day David, from The Book of Lost Things, stood in his sunken garden and looked up to his house to see the Crooked Man mysteriously reading a book in David's bedroom was similar to today. It's gray outside and the wind has become human, weaving it's long, dexterous fingers through the leaves of the trees, playing music on my neighbor's wind chimes, and sighing deeply as it rolls heavily over the rooftops. It's the sort of day one could imagine seeing a ghost or something sinister. I'm sure Heathcliff looked for Cathy on days like this.

I'm reading this novel for book club and I was unsure about whether I would like it until David found Jonathon Tulvey's books in his new bedroom. David's mother just died and David, despite his intense, best efforts, was unable to save her. When his books start talking to him, he begins to feel that something very strange in deed is going on. His father has just remarried, to a simpering woman name Rose, and David hates her. They move to Rose's house, a large mansion that's been in Rose's family for generations, and the talking books and weird things really start to heat up. When David sees the Crooked Man in his upstairs room and learns of Jonathon Tulvey's fate, he has no idea that these whispering books and odd events are actually adding up to something quite dangerous, something that will eventually put him face to face with The Book of Lost Things.

I'm half way through now and this book is SO good. Wanted to post my first Sunday Salon, but now I'm diving right back in.

Booking Through Thursday

What was the last book you bought?

Andrea Barrett's Journey of the Narwhal and John Barth's Tidewater Tales

Name a book you have read MORE than once

The Great Gatsby, Fahrenheit 451, 1984

Has a book ever fundamentally changed the way you see life? If yes, what was it?

Yes, Atlas Shrugged. I read Ayn Rand's (other) massive tome when I was 15. It made such sense and was so absorbing, I believe it permanently altered the way I see everything. Though things have tempered a little since I was a self-absorbed teenager, I believe the main gist of the novel is true.

How do you choose a book? eg. by cover design and summary, recommendations or reviews

Summary, but I can't lie because a good historical image on the cover usually gets me every time.

Do you prefer Fiction or Non-Fiction?

Mainly fiction, but I love biography - though I haven't read much recently - and British history.

What’s more important in a novel - beautiful writing or a gripping plot?

Both are equally important, but beautiful writing always sways me more than gripping plot. I think gripping plot is easier to create than beautiful writing.

Most loved/memorable character (character/book)

Anne of Green Gables (both)

Which book or books can be found on your nightstand at the moment?

Julia Leigh's Disquiet (out in November) John Connelly's The Book of Lost Things, Laura Claridge's Emily Post

What was the last book you’ve read, and when was it?

Andrew Davidson's The Gargoyle. I finished it last Saturday.

Have you ever given up on a book half way in?

Yes, but I HATE doing it. I'm fighting the inclination to stop Goldengrove right now.

Andrew Davidson's The Gargoyle

When Marianne Engel walks into the protagonist's hospital room, it is unclear if she is a miracle of long life or an escapee from the psych ward. The narrator, a former porn star, has just suffered massive burns from a car accident, and he's in the worst shape of his life. His beautiful face has been transformed into a scared mess and his pain is horrific. This guy has problems, and the last thing he needs is a crazy woman with wild, red hair telling him that they used to be lovers in their past lives. Or does he?

Marianne begins to shower him with feasts and attention, telling him marvelous stories about different lovers from Iceland, England, Japan, Italy, and medieval Germany. She explains mysterious things about the narrator - like where the scar over his heart came from - that he cannot explain for himself. According to Marianne Engel, they have been lovers for centuries, since Marianne was a nun in an Engelthal convent in medieval Germany. When the narrator recovers enough to be allowed out of the hospital, he moves in with Marianne, the talented, but crazed, sculptress of gargoyles. Here, as the narrator fights his demons and Marianne fashions hers out of stone, they begin to discover what they could mean to each other.

If you can make it through the first 30 pages of intense, occasionally disturbing, descriptions of the narrator's experience in the burn ward, you're in for an absorbing, suspenseful reading experience. The plot and tension evolves through the cynical, derisive tone of the burned narrator and the nostalgic storytelling of Marianne Engel. It becomes clear that this novel can operate on different levels, as the reader constantly asks if Marianne Engel is completely crazy or, marvelously, telling the truth. Davidson maintains the tension and mystery throughout the novel, until the reader is forced to contemplate at the conclusion: why couldn't it be true?

The Gargoyle began to garner attention before it was published when a bidding war erupted between two publishing houses in Canada over rights to the manuscript. Davison would ultimately receive 1.4 million dollars in the sale, which is an incredible sum for a first time, no-name novelist. Davison can now afford to write full time and lives in Canada.

If you like this, you might also like:

The 13th Tale by Diane Setterfield

Possession by A.S. Byatt

The History of Love by Nicole Krauss