The book: Jhumpa Lahiri, Unaccustomed Earth

The edition: Italian edition translated by Federica Oddera

Synopsis: a new collection of short stories on the themes that are dear to Lahiri: the encounters and clashes between American and Indian cultures for migrant families. The second part of the book is a novella in three chapters.

My thoughts: Lahiri is great, and she is getting better. She has always been a great narrator, with a talent for characterization and an eye for human behaviour, and topped it off with a compelling style. But when I read Interpreter of Maladies earlier this year, I was not completely convinced, mainly due to the fact that I’m not too keen on short stories as such. Here the stories are somewhat longer, the characters more real, and in general they offer more hope. My rating: 9/10 (which I rarely give even to novels, and which is much more I thought I would ever rate a short story collection).

Counts as: July Book Blowout book#4

The book: Amitav Gosh, The Hungry Tide

The edition: Houghton Mifflin/Mariner Books, 2005. I did neither understand nor like the cover, but all in all this edition carried an Indian atmosphere around it, maybe due to the blue courtesy pages.

The story: it’s not easy to summarize this book without giving away anything, but I’ll try (please beware: spoilers possible!). At the very beginning, Piya and Kanai meet on a train towards the “tide country,” the jungle-and-river-lattice region called Sundarbans. Piya is a caetologist on her way to study river dolphins on the Ganga River. Kanai is a poliglot translator on his way to visit his aunt Nilima: she has recently found a notebook written by her long-deceased husband Nirmal and addressed to Kanai. On arrival they separate, and from there on into about two-thirds of the book, as Kanai reads Nirmal’s notebook, chapters alternate between what happens to Piya and the story written by Nirmal.
Piya starts on her search. On the very first day she falls in the water and a fisherman jumps in to save her, so she decides to travel with this man, Fokir, and his son Tutul. It turns out to be a good solution because he knows the river very well and knows where to find dolphins. Half through the book, they reach Lusibari, where Kanai is, and he too moves on with them as an interpreter, but he was not really needed, as Fokir and Piya understood each other perfectly even without a language in common.
Nirmal’s story is about his involvement with an attempt at resettling on a tide country island by a group of refugees, among them also Fokir’s mother. It includes also parts on Nirmal and Nilima’s story, on Kanai’s own, on Indian history and, more often, on Indian/tide country mithology.
In the rest of the book: a genocide, an encounter with dolphins, a crocodile attack, a rainbow made by the moon’s light, a tiger killing and another one killed, a trial by ordeal, a typhoon (actually, two), some romance, and some cups of tea.

The first sentence:

Kanai spotted her the moment he stepped onto the crowded platform: he was deceived neither by her close-cropped black hair nor by her clothes, which were those of a teenage boy — loose cotton pants and an oversized white shirt.

The last sentence:

“That’s the difference between us. For me, home is wherever I can brew a pot of good tea.”

My opinion: a beautiful story about understanding, about different cultures and how they clash, but also about ways of crossing between cultures. A rich and compelling writing. A very good book. Rating: 8/10.
I liked the reasoning on words, on different languages, and also on how communication can happen without a common language, while it may still not happen when a common language exists.

How do you lose a word? Does it vanish into your memory, like an old toy in a chest, and lie hidden in the cobwebs and dust, waiting to be cleaned out or rediscovered?

On the other hand, I disliked the way relationships were portrayed. Every relationship was considered to be love/romance. I mean, why can’t some people (I’m talking the author, here) understand that there may be a deep understanding between two persons even without a romantic lien? (My only possible anwer to that would be: in a place such as the jungle, relationships have to be more black-or-white than elsewhere.) At the same time I was disappointed by the Nirmal/Nilima marriage: in the opening of the book they are depicted as two remarkable persons, people to look up to with respect, both for what they accomplished in the tide country, and for the ripeness of their own relationship. But then, here’s how Kanai describes them well into the book:

“As I see it, Nirmal was possessed more by words than by politics. There are people who live through poetry, and he was one of them. For Nilima, a person like that is very hard to understand”

Finally, I’d like to share a passage that really disturbed me:

“The worst part was not the hunger or the thirst. It was to sit here, helpless, and listen to the policemen making their annoucements, hearing them say that our lives, our existence, were worth less than dirt or dust. ‘This island has to be saved for its animals, it is a part of a reserve forest, it belongs to a project to save tigers, which is paid for by people from all around the world.’ … Who are these people, I wondered, who love animals so much that they are willing to kill us for them? Do they know what is being done in their name?”

You can’t not be an environmental activist, but again, you can’t be one. You can’t not protect tigers, but you can’t leave humans in danger. In a way, it’s a book about helplessness, too.

The book: Anita Nair, Mistress

Introducing the book: this is a book about art, about life, and about emotions. There are nine basic emotions that kathakali uses to convey any story, they say: love, contempt, sorrow, fury, courage, fear, disgust, wonder, and peace. Nair does the same, building each chapter around one of these feelings, and telling her story through them.

The story in the book: Radha has a past she still longs for, and a present she would like to flee from with a husband she despises. Her husband Shyam has a present he is proud of, and a past he uses as excuse and explanation for what he is. Koman, Radha’s uncle, is the great-and-often-misunderstood artist, looking down to everyone except a few chosen acolytes (which include Radha but not Shyam). Their fragile balance is broken by the arrival of Chris, a foreigner and an artist himself, officially there to interview Koman, but in fact also to look for his past. Through this situation Nair also weaves Koman’s story, from his parents down through his whole life.

My opinion: this was one of those books that get me engrossed in the story, finely narrated, great setting and everything. But unlike other engrossing books, here I didn’t completely like any of the characters. I feel sorry for Radha because she is unhappy, but she doesn’t ever even try to make it different or to make her marriage work - as if waiting for blissful happiness to come by magic. I feel pity for Shyam, because everyone despises him while he is pushed by deep love - but he is still a gross, vulgar newly rich, which is evident not only in his unrefined tastes, but also in the ways he tries to convey his love to his wife. As for Koman, I am with him up to a point, but at times his views are completely oscure to me. So it’s a good book, but I cannot really get in the shoes of any of the characters, and this makes me awkward. Vote: 8/10.
The opening words:

So, where do I begin?
The face. Yes, let’s begin with the face that determines the heart’s passage. It is with the face we decode thoughts into a language without sounds. Does that perplex you? How can there be a language without sounds, you ask. Don’t deny it. I see the question in your eyes.
I realize that you know very little of this world I am going to take you into. I understand your concern that it may be beyond your grasp. But I want you to know that I would be failing my intentions if I did not transmit at least some of my love for my art to you.

The scene I like the most: it is part of the story of Sethu and Saadiya. She is of Arab descent and lives in a village where women are segregated in their houses and have their own alleys to move, so that stranger eyes do not look upon them, while Sethu is a Hindu disguised as a Christian. Still, their eyes meet and they fall in love, a forbidden, Romeo-and-Juliet-like kind of love. At night they start talking to each other in the darkness, from the opposite sides of a garden. This is the first time they speak to each other.

That first morning, when no one was looking, I dropped a handkerchief that I had spent the provious night embroidering and then held to my cheek all night as I slept. You picked it up and placed it in your pocket. Later, you said that all day you drew it out and breathed deep of my fragrance. And that you slept with it against your cheek. The next day you held it up and said, ‘One of you dropped it here. I kept it so I could give it to you.’
I rushed forward before anyone else did and stretched out my hand. ‘It’s mine.’
You gave it to me and even though our fingers didn’t so much as brush each other’s, I felt your fingertips trail my soul.
That night your voice said, ‘I know your fragrance.’
I whispered, ‘And I yours.’
On that little square handkerchief with scalloped edges, our fragrances married and when I held it to my face, I felt a great yearning. For you were my husband and I your wife and this fragment of white cloth our nuptial bed.
‘I couldn’t sleep all night thinking of you,’ you said.
‘I couldn’t sleep all night thinking of you,’ I said.
‘What are we going to do?’ you asked.
‘What are we going to do?’ I asked. What else could I have said anyway?
‘I have never felt this way about anyone,’ you said.
‘I have never felt this way about anyone or anything,’ I said.
‘Are you a parrot or what?’ Your voice was querulous.
I stared at the darkness till I remembered a heroine from Vaapa’s story. It was her words I spoke. ‘I am the mirror of your soul,’ I said. ‘I see all you see. I think your thooughts. I feel as you do. I am you.’
‘If this isn’t love, what is?’ you said.
‘If this isn’t love, what is’ I agreed.