BOOKWORM
LOVE, ACTUALLY
Like Every Form of Love by Padma Viswanathan, Random House, $35. I was intrigued by the tagline of Padma Viswanathan’s latest – A memoir of friendship and true crime.
Having loved her previous work, The Toss of a Lemon and The Ever After of Ashwin Rao, that I would read it was a given. But friendship and true crime? How would one pull that off?
Viswanathan does, with consummate skill. She was on a houseboat on Vancouver Island when she struck up a friendship with Phillip, a warm-hearted, working-class queer man. Their lives were so different that it seemed unlikely to her that their relationship would last after she returned to her usual life. But then he told her a story from his childhood that kept them connected for more than twenty years. “Phillip held my interest in the way of a book I might return to, again and again, seeking pleasure and meaning.”
I don’t remember exactly how Phillip told the story. I typed it into my computer when I got back to my boat that night, but I’ve since lost the file. I don’t even remember which computer it was. It doesn’t matter, because Phillip repeated it many times over the years and because it’s not important how he said it but how I heard it...
But she does ask herself if a writer and subject can be friends.
I’m a writer. This means I’m cleft. Part of me lives and loves; the other part is watching and weighing, turning people into phrases, not only saving myself up but saving them up, all my observations, all their stories.
As she delves deeper into Phillip’s story, into his memories, she links what she’s hearing and experiencing to what she’s read.
She quotes many, including C S Lewis: Lovers are normally face to face, absorbed in each other. Friends, side by side, absorbed in some common interest.
And she questions whether she is wrong in interpreting Phillip. She didn’t set out to metaphorize him, she writes. But an account of his life as he recounted it, unmediated, didn’t work.
The book in its final avatar, is raw, and filled with grace, humour and poetry. It is a thing of beauty, this tale of an unlikely but enduring friendship.
EAST WIND, WEST WIND
The East Indian by Brinda Charry, Scribner, $24.99. Tony is the East Indian protagonist of Brinda Charry’s vivid and absorbing tale, part inspired by a historical figure.
Born on the Coromandel coast, in a small village near which the British East India Company would establish a trading post known as Madras, now Chennai, he is destined to be the first native of the Indian subcontinent to arrive in colonial America in 1635.
Tony had never known his father, loses his mother and grandma very early in life, and is a servant and companion of a British trader who facilitates his travel to the teeming streets of London.
From there he is kidnapped and transported to Jamestown, Virginia, where he and his fellow indentured servants – boys like himself, men from Africa and a mad woman from England – must work in the tobacco plantations.
Orphaned and afraid, Tony longs for home.
The cabin, always miserable, was hellish for these few days. It was close and smelt of sweat, the stale food we lived on, and piss (for people had urinated indoors at first when the wind was too wild to risk stepping out).
But he adjusts to his new environment, finding companionship and even love.
A butterfly settled on my nose and then on Lydia’s cheek. She smiled as she flicked it away gently.
Tony eventually realizes his dream of becoming a medicine man, a dispenser of healing compounds, and settles into domesticity with Lydia, a strong fellow traveller in the world of slavery and servitude.
The East Indian gives an authentic voice to an otherwise unknown historic figure and brings his world to life with imagination and empathy.
There must be people living in the United States today who carry his genes and the weight of his legacy.
A NARNIA OF INDIA
Sons of Darkness by Gourav Mohanty, Head of Zeus, $30.99. Many of us, if we were honest, came to the stories in the Indian epics thro-ugh stories our grandparents shared or the ubiquitous Amar Chitra Katha, graduating to C Rajagopalachari’s or RK Narayan’s takes.
There have been movies based on the epic. Kalyug comes to mind, though Mohanty mentions others (see Meet Gourav on page 20).
In recent times, there have been modern takes on the timeless epics, reinterpretations and retelings which incorporated the characters and story lines. Think Shashi Tharoor’s The Great Indian Novel or The Difficulty of Being Good by Gurcharan Das.
Sons of Darkness is not one of these.
It is, as Gourav Mohanty confesses in his tongue-firmly in-cheek author’s note, as if he “took the wonderful characters of the epic Mahabharata and tossed them into a parallel dimension that was pervasively bleak and nihilistic” with the intention of making readers “sit up and gasp on your couch”.
Because, he writes, Sons of Darkness has little to do with the myth-trope of simply re-writing Maha-bharatan reality from a different character’s perspective and more to do with re-imagining a brave new world that is as disillusioned and ultraviolent as our own reality.
The Harry Potter-ish doorstopper of a book at 645 pages, sprinkled with words like vachan and nadi that would have benefited from a glossary, is a wild ride, replete with shields and tattoos, and blood, gore, drama and intrigue befitting an epic.
And wicked humour. Truth be told, Karna had plenty of reservations himself. Though he had once fended off seven bandits with a hunting knife, when it came to using the daggers of politics, he was about as skilled as a toad frying an omelette.
It is, as Mohanty promises, like entering a vast immersive universe, a Narnia of India.
WAIT FOR IT
One Day I Will Astonish the World by Nina Stibbe, Penguin, 25.99. Susan and Norma, best friends for years have drifted apart and now Susan is wondering if she has made the right choices in life, love, work and friendship.
The story of the wonderful and sometimes surprising path of friendships.
SEEKING ANSWERS
I Have Some Questions For You by Rebecca Makkai, Viking, $37.99. A successful film producer and podcaster is content to forget her past. But when she is invited back to the school to teach a course – the same school where her roommate was murdered – she is drawn inexorably into the case she thinks of as closed. A stirring investigation into collective memory and an examination of a woman’s reckoning with her past.
THEN AND NOW
Connected History: Essays and Arguments by Sanjay Subrahmanyam, Verso Books, $39.95. When you connect the dots – history, current political realities and geo-political imperatives of the past and the present – you arrived at new ways of looking at the same mirror.
All the dots connect, and Sanjay Subrahmanyam explores topics as diverse as how empires come to be, the idea of India, the rise of the West and literary landscapes of V.S.Naipaul and Salman Rushdie.
A LONG SHADOW
My Sweet Girl by Amanda Jayatissa, Berkley, $23. Adopted from an orphanage in Sri Lanka, Paloma has had the best of everything – schools, money and parents so perfect that she fears she’ll never live up to them.
But she’s about to discover that no matter how far you run, your past always catches up to you.
Dark secrets that threaten to jeopardize her very existence, dead bodies that then go missing... interwoven with questions of identity.
My Sweet Girl is an engrossing read.
WHAT SPELLS TROUBLE?
Queen of the Tiles by Hanna Alkaf, Simon & Schuster, $23.99. When Najwa Bakri walks into her first Scrabble competition since her best friend Trina’s death, she’s hoping to heal and move on with her life.
But then begins a fierce competition to replace Trina, who was the reigning Scrabble Queen. And then Trina’s Instagram account starts posting cryptic messages suggesting someone was behind her death.
Will Najwa be able to put the tiles together to solve the mystery?
For readers 12 and up.
YOUNG SLEUTHS
Minerva Keen’s Detective Club by James Patterson, Little Brown and Company, $22.99. James Patterson, who has sold millions of books and whose creation, detective Alex Cross is one of the most well-known detectives, created a children’s book imprint Jimmy Patterson, whose mission is simple: “We want every kid who finishes a Jimmy book to say, ‘Please give me another book’.” With this, he has created the most spine-tingling, creepy-crawly, giggle-producing kids’ detective club ever.
Members have to be curious, creative, and good at spotting clues. Does that sound like anyone you know? Does that sound like... you?
Come join the club!
A MONSTER IN MY HOME
Monster Vs. Boy by Karen Krossing, Charlesbridge, $21.99. No one in the ramshackle house knew that a monster – who was smaller than a bear cub – lived in Dawz’s bedroom closet. She called herself Mim.
Dawz doesn’t want to see the monster no one can see. But the two are connected in ways neither can explain.
DO BIRDS USE GPS?
The Outdoor Scientist by Temple Grandin with Betsy Miller, Philomel Books, $13.99. What are the aerodynamics of skipping stones or the physics of making sandcastles?
Do birds use GPS to navigate their migratory routes?
Inventor and world-renowned scientist Dr Temple Grandin introduces young readers to scientists who unlock the wonders of the world.
Budding scientists, inventors and creators are sure to love the forty projects included in the book.
Adults who loved Temple Grandin, the movie with Claire Danes playing the scientist, will also love the book!
TEEN REVIEW
By KANISHKA DUGGAL
Renegades by Marissa Meyer, Feiwel & Friends, $ 22.35. “She wants vengeance. He wants justice.” A world torn apart by violence and villains comes back together with the help of Gatlon City’s most beloved heroes, the Renegades.
The passion of the council’s founding members has restored it back to peace. Or has it?
The opposing organization, the Anarchists, are plotting revenge against the unrightfully claimed leader of the Renegades, Captain Chromium. Is a society so dependent on superheroes sustainable?
Did they do right by banishing the Anarchists’ beloved Ace Anarchy? The story is full of twists, turns, and conflict. A character from each side is pursuing their forbidden love, yet fighting for what they term as right.
I found this book an incredible beginning to this captivating trilogy. The unique bond between every character and little knowledge of the unknown makes this book a thrilling read. I felt incredibly tense and joyful throughout the novel; so many emotions and events took place!
What is right and what is wrong, we know not, might as well take a dive into the world where perspective is just what drives you on the side of the Renegades or the Anarchists.
• Kanishka Duggal is a youth volunteer at Brampton Library.