In defence of a reviewer, reviews and reviewing

This post concerns a topic that is close to my heart, both personally and professionally, and one that I am certain will resonate with reviewers - and writers too - everywhere.

Before I say anything more, here's a link to one of my latest reviews, Salil Desai's 'The Body in the Backseat', touted as India's first 'police procedural'. Some of you may have read it earlier, as I usually post all my reviews on Facebook. At the end, you will see a response by the author. Please read that carefully too. I would like your comments - honest, critical remarks, please, I like to think of myself as someone who can take criticism, as long as it isn't directed at my person; that prerogative is limited to only a few people - on both my review, and on the author's remarks.

http://www.businessworld.in/businessworld/businessworld/content/Criminally-Disappointing.html

Right. To answer any unasked questions - yes, the book really was as dreadful as I made it out to be. It's not the first bad book I've read, and it certainly won't be the last. When BW informed me of the author's ranting, I read his response, but chose to not answer because (i) There didn't seem to be any space left for engagement, as the author clearly didn't want to talk, he wanted to accuse; (ii) The author was as certain of the superior quality of his work as he was of the complete irrelevance of my review, and that isn't a place you can begin a discussion from; and (ii) He got personal, and I do not like personal attacks, especially when they come from people who do not know me. Reviewers, whether of books or films, are routinely attacked by the people whose work they critique, and I am not the first book reviewer an author has taken umbrage at; I share that dubious distinction with people far more qualified and experienced than I. So I didn't really mind - Mr Desai is as entitled to his opinion as I am to mine. Increasingly, though, I am beginning to think that perhaps I should respond, a polite reply answering the various points he has raised, just so readers of the publication get an idea of both points of view.

Matters should have ended there - in fact, I thought they had, and I had put it out of my mind - but they didn't. Because a couple of days ago, Mr Desai's publisher, Gyaana Books, run by Ms Divya Dubey, decided to join the fray, in a thinly veiled attack in a column published in yourstory.in, an online platform for entrepreneurs (http://yourstory.in/2011/12/publishing-entrepreneur-divya-dubey-shares-how-to-do-a-book-review/). So now please, all of you kind enough to read this piece, read this article too.

Once you've done that, you might see why this bothered me. Part of the reason is undoubtedly my irritation at veiled attacks, which to me are tantamount to talking behind my back - if you have a problem with something I have written, why not say it to my face? Why not vent your ire on me, why not give us both a chance to talk something through? And a veiled attack also means (i) The writer safeguards himself/herself by couching the article in general terms, naming no names, thereby disassociating herself/himself from the person/event that triggered it off; and (ii) it gives the person at the heart of the affair no chance to respond (or respond at the risk of being accused of paranoia), while ensuring that all the barbs hidden under the otherwise reasonable tone in which the article is written hit home.

Besides, the hypocrisy of a publisher writing a prescriptive piece on 'how to write a review' is one that is far greater than any hypocrisy that that said publisher has imputed to me. And let me make it clear - as a reviewer, I do not engage with publishers. I am open to discussions with authors - in fact, I welcome them, however vitriolic that response might be (and they're often not; the writer of a book I reviewed recently wanted to talk to me about the critical remarks I had made. She was happy with my review all told, and we are now Facebook friends!).

And so while I definitely do not want to engage with any publisher regarding a review of mine, I choose to respond just to make clear what my role as a reviewer is here - a role as an arbiter of writing, and one that begins where the publisher's ends. Also, the publisher has nothing to do with my review; Gyaana Books might be a small publisher, but had a bigger publishing house published this book, my review would have been exactly the same. As anyone who has read my previous reviews would know. I have given better (better-known, certainly) authors and bigger publishers bad reviews, and never got such a response.

Now, my response, which also sums up my views on reviewing, and my - responsibility, shall we say? - as a reviewer.

First, to take the one (rather perplexing) aspect that seems to have raised everyone's hackles - the issue of giving out a bit of information that added to the suspense in the book, the homosexuality angle. People, it's called a spoiler warning/alert. It's a known, much-used, and perfectly acceptable method while reviewing books and films. You might not like it, you might hate people who use it, you might never use it yourself, but you cannot deny that it's a globally accepted practice. I did the usual and placed the warning right before I began my review, as I have seen done by reviewers all over the world, in various publications. I draw the line at going all the way, which I have actually seen some others do - nowhere did I even hint at the identity of the murderer, or what the motive behind the murder was. Calling me 'unethical', or my writing in 'bad taste' because there were spoilers, which appeared after a clear spoiler warning, is ridiculous - and baffling.

Second, the rules which apparently one should follow while writing reviews, and all of which I have clearly flouted. Who makes these rules? Are there clearly laid-out guidelines issued by a reviewers' forum or a publishers guild stating the parameters within which reviews ought to be written? Or are these rules we make up every time we encounter a review that doesn't meet our expectations? I must have read countless reviews all my life, and every review was as different as the person writing it. I've read reviews that merely rattled off the story; ones that provided an honest opinion; ones that did everything but talk about the book; ones that were more about the reviewer than the work being reviewed; ones that were factually incorrect, showing how little the reviewer actually knew of the work s/he was talking about. We make our own rules, we decide where our responsibility lies, and we give readers our opinion on the work in question.

Two of my rules: I never, ever criticise the author. It would be stupid to do so, since nine times out of ten I do not know the person. My focus is just on the book I have been given to read.
And second, I give my honest opinion on the work at hand. An opinion I am fairly certain of and qualified to provide after decades of reading, writing, and one full decade of working as an editor (and no, regardless of what anyone might say, working in the non-fiction, academic world does in no way mean you do not develop an appreciation of good writing. Some of the best academics manage to combine both terrific writing and research).

It is not my job to provide 'examples and parallels', to 'gently show the hows and whys'. I am not the author's friend, confidant, or publisher. That is their job. What I have with me is a published book, one that demands to be placed alongside quality - and some not so quality - books on shelves, which forms part of the category of 'Indian writing in English', which hopes to be bought and read. It is my job to state whether the book qualifies, whether (in my opinion) readers should spend a part of their precious time on this book, of all the millions they have to choose from. No, I'm sorry, I do not have a responsibility to the author, or the publisher - I'm sure they can commission their own reviews, should they choose. I do have a responsibility to the publication entrusting me with the review, and to the reader, and I try and do my best there by presenting an honest, unbiased opinion.

So yes, if I don't like a book, I will say so. Unequivocally. I don't hold back the praise when I come across a good book, and I will not make any allowances when I encounter a book that does not meet my standards. And I don't feel the need to apologise for this. As I said, my critique is always focused on the work, NEVER on the creator of that work, and I am always open to being questioned, challenged and argued with - provided it's done openly, and with a certain degree of civility.

There is a very good, reasoned argument behind my refusal to accord 'The Body in the Backseat' the status of a police procedural, which is one of the sub-genres of crime fiction, texts within which can, to use Roland Barthes' terminology, be classified as 'writerly texts', as opposed to 'readerly texts', which this one is - a bit of which I have mentioned in my review - but that can wait for later.

To continue with Barthes' thought - is it possible to be entirely objective when reading, especially for an active reader, even when the text in question is a 'readerly' one? Perhaps not. But does that mean that one should excuse oneself from reviewing a book merely because it has moved one to extreme emotion, whether it be distaste or pleasure? I doubt that - I suspect a large number of reviews would never be written if one followed a rule that stated, 'Thou shalt not review a text that thou hast disliked - or loved.' And why, pray, does this debate never come up when the review in question is favourable? Surely good reviews are just as susceptible to biases and authorial subjectivity?

It is all too easy to dismiss a bad review as an example of 'malevolence', 'wild ranting' and 'hysteria'. It is even easier to strip the reviewer who has given the book a bad review of all independent, objective thought and agency by demonising her as 'a biased judge, a failed writer, a disgruntled non-professional, a malicious human being or simply a green-eyed one'. And sometimes that might just be true - sometimes a bad review might simply reflect an inadequate person, an envious, miserable loser.

But sometimes, all it says is that the book in question is a very flawed one indeed.

Johan Theorin

My passion for Scandinavian crime fic continues unabated, and I've recently come across two new authors in that genre - Jo Nesbo, Norwegian crime fic writer of the Harry Hole series, which are enjoyable, certainly, but doesn't offer very much beyond that; and Johan Theorin, whose crime novels are set on the little Swedish island of Oland.

And in Theorin, I have found an author who can grip the imagination and create convincing characters in much the same way that Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo, in their fantastic Martin Beck series, could. Much of the credit should undoubtedly go to his translator, who has done a far better job than most other translations from the Swedish that I have read so far.

Theorin comes from the little fishing island of Oland, which comprises several small villages which are home to summer visitors from urban Sweden, and stay empty and deserted all through the winter months. There are a couple of larger towns - but they, too, come alive only during summer. While he no longer lives on the island of his childhood, Theorin's books are set here - and in the pages of his 'dark mystery novels with supernatural overtones', the island comes to life. This, I think, is what sets him apart from the other European crime fic writers - they are all, without exception, urban, urbane authors, and cities in their books - Stockholm and Malmo in Sweden, Oslo, Paris, Edinburgh, London - play just as big a role as the characters, whose lives are only too familiar to us city-bred readers. In Theorin's books, though, the slick city pace is missing - the landscape of Oland plays a large role (especially in his first novel, Echoes From the Dead), but what drives (for want of a better word) the narrative forward is the slow, gentle pace that characterises village life in general. Oland is portrayed in such loving, vivid detail - the sea, the wicked rocks that once wrecked ships, the summer cottages, all shut and deserted, the 'alvar' that great expanse of scrub and rocks that one can so easily get lost in, the mists that creep out from the sea, the winter blizzards that can kill - and what is ever present all through is, as Theorin said, the supernatural. Swedish folklore comes to life in places like Oland - myths and ghosts are as much a part of people's everyday lives as daily routines.

In Echoes From the Dead, we are introduced to Gerlof, an old sea captain who is one of Theorin's central characters and the one who gets to the bottom of the crimes committed - again, these cannot be called 'procedurals' in the strict sense of the term - it's hard to write 'police procedurals' when your stories are set in a place with one single police station with possibly five police officers for the entire island. Echoes From the Dead sees Gerlof finally solving the mystery of what had happened to his grandson, who went missing 20 years ago at the age of six. But the supernatural, which was merely an undercurrent here, really comes into its own in Theorin's second, darker novel, The Darkest Room. Socialised as I have been to think rationally and find a plausible explanation for all things not 'dreamt of in our philosophy', I found myself waiting for everything to be neatly tied up and presented at the end before I realised that wasn't the way to read Theorin's books - I had to let go, give in, let the atmosphere draw me in. And once I had done that, the book gripped me, gave me chills, terrified me, upset me, haunted me long after I had finished reading it. I didn't want it to end - and that's not something I can say about a lot of books.

The Darkest Room is set in northern Oland, in an old house situated next to the sea, which had been originally built in the nineteenth century as a home for the lighthouse keeper and his family. Now abandoned, it is bought by a young couple who want to escape city life, and bring up their small children in the peace and quiet that Oland offers. Within a few months, though, a member of the family dies - and while it looks like an accident, it could well be murder. As the others struggle to cope, a young policewoman, Gerlof's niece, in fact, tries to get to the bottom of it - with, of course, a lot of help from Gerlof, in the form of cryptic statements and grumpy suggestions. And all through the wonderful descriptions of the countryside, the sea, the old house - so vivid that it doesn't take much to imagine yourself there - are the ghosts, the spirits who reach out and communicate, who are as potent a force as the living.

I personally love slow, gentle books set in landscapes other than the usual - and not very interesting - metropolitan cities, books which spend time bringing characters to life, which dwell on descriptions, linger on thoughts and emotions. So it's no surprise that I loved both of Johan Theorin's books - I love how unapologetically different they are, I love that there's no rebellious, 'damaged' police officer at the centre of events, how it describes a way of life that's so completely alien to anything I - most of us, I'm sure - have ever experienced. But I'd recommend these to anyone who's a fan of crime fic, who enjoys good writing and imaginative stories.

And apparently Theorin has completed the third book in his Oland series. I can't wait.

Top 10 books

Following PD, and after having read her marvellous list, I've decided to make my own list of top 10 books on my blog, in the hope that readers will then be inspired to make their own lists - either here, or on blogs of their own. These books are in no particular order - I'm listing them as they come to mind. And, of course, these are in no way the only books that I've loved, read over and over, and been inspired by - I'll be leaving out plenty more that I will later wish I had included. Ten is too tiny a number.

So here goes.

1. The Art of Murder (Jose Carlos Somoza): I read this book earlier this year, and I haven't stopped thinking about it since. In terms of imagination, creation of an alternate (in a manner of speaking) cultural world, and a gripping crime thriller, The Art of Murder is has no equal. It raises deeply disturbing questions about the definition of 'art', the boundaries that we draw - both for ourselves and others - and how far we might be willing to push them. One of the best books I've read in a while.

2. Anne of Green Gables (L.M. Montgomery): The first of a series of six books, this is the one I love most. I discovered Anne rather late, when I was in college, thanks to a friend - that friend and I have long since parted ways, but Anne has stayed with me. This delightful story set in the late nineteenth century of an orphan girl who gets adopted by a brother-sister pair in Nova Scotia, Canada, never fails to make me laugh and remind me that the world isn't such a bad place after all - no matter how unhappy I might be.

3. The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole aged 13 3/4 (Sue Townsend): I discovered Adrian Mole in my pre-teens and found in him a kindred spirit - minus the weird parents - and a couple of years later, when teenage angst set in, this book, and the one that followed (The Growing Pains of Adrian Mole, aged 15 1/2), were very reassuring indeed! It was later, upon reading them all over again, that I realised what a wonderful sociological commentary they were on Britain under Margaret Thatcher.

4. To Kill A Mockingbird (Harper Lee): There isn't much I can say about this classic that hasn't been said already. Atticus remains my hero - and while I first read it as a precocious 11-year-old, when I was really too young to fully comprehend the gravity and complexity of the book, I remember wanting to be Scout, and wishing I had a friend like Boo Radley. Only when I read it again as an adult did I discover how wonderful it is - and since then, I've read it again and again.

5. The Bartimaeus Trilogy (Jonathan Stroud): I know, I know, I'm cheating here - but how can I mention one of these fantastic books and not the others? This is one of the best fantasy trilogies I've ever read - wonderfully written, quirky, imaginative, with one of the best endings of all times - these books make me laugh, give me goose bumps, make me cry - time I re-read them again!

6. The Dispossessed (Ursula K. LeGuin): I discovered Ursula LeGuin very late in life, but since then I haven't stopped reading her. If anyone were to ask me who my favourite author is, I'd have to say it's her. Her science fiction and fantasy are a world apart from anything that had been attempted either before or after. This book, the best and most incisive treatise on political anarchy I've ever come across, stuns you with its prescience. It's gripping, it's rousing - it's not just the best science-fiction book I've read, it's one of the best books of all time.

7. Tehanu (Ursula K. LeGuin): The fourth in the Earthsea series, the quiet and thoughtful tone of this book makes it different from the other, 'action'-oriented Earthsea books. It's quietness in no way takes away from its scathing feminist critique, though. A wonderful read.

8. Stet (Diana Athill): I perhaps love this one so much because I'm an editor working in the publishing industry - but no one can fail to appreciate Athill's first, and wonderful, memoir. She talks about her days as an editor with Andre Deutsch, tells us interesting anecdotes about authors like Naipaul, gives us insights into the workings of the publishing world, all too familiar to people like us - and I was reassured no end to find that she, too, didn't think too highly of Philip Roth!

9. Like Water for Chocolate (Laura Esquivel): Again, a fantastic bit of magic realism. It's not as intense or grim as Allende, but grips you nonetheless. One of the most powerful love stories I've ever read.

10. All Creatures Great and Small (James Herriot): All four books (the others being: All Things Bright and Beautiful, All Things Wise and Wonderful, The Lord God Made Them All) are among the best I've ever read, but somehow I love this one most. Herriot's wonderful prose brings it all to life - the mad characters (Seigfried and Tristan, especially), the animals, the beauty of the Yorkshire Dales - the experience is undoubtedly better if you're an animal lover, but you don't necessarily have to be one to appreciate the wonder of these books.

And a few I left out - The Left Hand of Darkness (because there would have been too many of LeGuin's books in the list); Angela's Ashes (Frank McCourt); The King's General (Daphne du Maurier); and The House of the Spirits (Isabel Allende).

Literary conundrum

For most of us, a few basic rules apply when it comes to people we choose to have in our lives - as an important part of the our lives, that is - we need to get along with them, trust them, be able to depend on them; a shared ideology often comes in handy; and we have to respect them, as individuals and humans beings. Now here's my question - does this apply to our relationship with fictional characters as well?

I say 'relationship' because for most of us avid readers, whose best friends are probably books rather than people, who have favourite genres, favourite authors, favourite fantasy worlds and characters, who return to the comfort of much-read books very like one would to an old memory - or an oversized, shabby, warm sweatshirt on winter nights - for us, characters are real and close and perhaps as dear to our hearts as real people we love. While growing up, I considered a lot of the Enid Blyton characters my friends, and then came my beloved Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple; I never tire of reading Alice's Adventures ... (which is probably why I'm a bit wary of watching the Tim Burton movie); and I still think when I'm upset - now how would Anne (of Green Gables) deal with this situation?

To come to the point now. On my recent visit to Delhi, I was introduced to more Scandinavian crime fiction writers by my aunt, who has an enviable collection - and among them were books by the duo Roslund-Hellstrom. Edgy, gritty, disturbing, the books leave you shaken. Unlike Sjowall and Wahloo, or Henning Mankell, who have clear notions of good and evil, these books have no definite moral compass; the whole point, as the authors say, is to show that the perpetrators are often as much victims as, well, the victims. I don't want to throw out any spoilers here, but in one of the books the two lead detectives do something that, to me, was totally reprehensible. Sitting and brooding over the book I'd just finished, I realised I was - disappointed in them. And that I didn't want to read any more - because how I can sit through books featuring characters I no longer had any respect for?

Martin Beck would never have done this, I told my aunt. Nor would Kurt Wallander, or even Inspector Rebus. Almost like they were real people, people to be emulated. Except they are, as far as I'm concerned. And now I no longer want to read otherwise good crime fiction because I'm disgusted at the conduct of the central characters. I don't respect them any more. Not the authors, the characters.

So. Is that weird? Or does anyone else feel that way?

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

David Yates, I thought, did a fine job with the fifth film, The Order of the Phoenix, which is a difficult book to translate into film, being the largest and the most unwieldy of the lot - so it was with great expectations that I went to watch The Half-Blood Prince, which happens to be based on the book I love best in the series. Except - it turned out to be a big disappointment.

The first half wasn't too bad, really - the screenplay had been tweaked to open the film in a subway cafe, instead of Privet Drive - and I think a few, like me, might have been disappointed at the omission of Dumbledore's impromptu tea party with the Dursleys; but Jim Broadbent's Horace Slughorn more than made up for it in the very next sequence. The sixth story is really about the coming of age of three, not all that different in very many ways, teenagers - Harry himself; Tom Riddle (the future Lord Voldemort, whose story is told through Harry's forays into Dunbledore's memories through the Pensieve, lessons that Harry had to learn if he was to ever defeat him); and Draco Malfoy, who, while facing the task given him by Voldemort, discovers the great gulf that exists between aspiring to evil and the actual doing of it. It is also the last 'normal' year the Hogwarts students are to have, so the usual activities that make up a school - Quidditch, classes and, for the 16-year-old sixth-year students, teenage romances - abound.

And that last is where the problem lay. Because the - to use a rather reprehensible phrase - 'Hollywoodisation' of the Harry Potter series meant that a decision was taken to highlight the 'snogging', at the expense of more important matters. So half the film dealt with the Ron-Lavender, Ron-Hermione, Harry-Ginny sequences, some of them concocted for the audience's viewing pleasure, while grimmer, crucial details were unceremoniously cut.

The film had some great moments, though - as mentioned earlier, Jim Broadbent excelled as the bumbling, egoistic, well-meaning Slughorn; Alan Rickman's Snape was perhaps even more chilling; Helena Bonham Carter brought the evil, half-crazed Bellatrix Lestrange to life; and one could see very clearly just how comfortable Michael Gambon had grown in his role as Albus Dumbledore. The initial sequence with Narcissa Malfoy, Belltrix and Snape was beautifully done, with Helen McCrory managing to bring out a mother's desperation in the short time allotted to her. But outstanding were the two boys who played Tom Riddle at ages 11 and 16 - Hero Fiennes-Tiffin and Frank Dillane, respectively - as were those Pensieve sequences. The menace, evil, and quiet power that both boys brought to the screen were phenomenal - one only wished there could have been more of them, and less of, well, love potions!

But to my mind the actor who stood out was one who has, strangely enough, been written about the least, strange all the more when one thinks of the key role he plays - Tom Felton, as Draco Malfoy. Over the years, Tom Felton has grown into the role of Draco as surely as the three central characters have grown into theirs; and his portrayal as the increasingly unsure , vulnerable, and confused Draco was powerful, and entirely convincing. His racking sobs as he tried to come to terms with the depths to which he was being forced to sink; his contempt, that of one 'chosen', for his clueless classmates, a contempt laced with fear as he searches for the evil he hoped was within him, only to find it missing; his fury at Harry's discovering him at his most vulnerable - and, at the very end, the pleading in his voice and eyes as he tells Dumbledore, 'I have to do this. If I don't, he'll kill me' - all touch you in way that none of the other, more touted performances do. It's a shame that so fine an actor and so complicated a role has been allowed to get lost in the flurry of accolades heaped on less deserving ones.

While Yates captured the wild cliff face and the green cave where Harry and Dumbledore go to hunt for a Horcrux beautifully, complete with the terrifying Inferi, the climax, which never fails to move me to tears when I read the book, left me cold because of the ridiculous omissions - couldn't Yates have spent five minutes (cutting out the superfluous and entirely unnecessary scenes concerning the attack at the Burrow, for instance) showing how the students were taught to Apparate? How on earth is one to believe that Dumbledore, in his weakened state, could apparate Harry back to Hogwarts? And why, pray, did Dumbledore not stupefy Harry? Are we to believe that all Harry did through Dumbledore's final moments was gape open-mouthed at the proceedings, without even, at the very least, running for help? And speaking of help - where were the Aurors who were supposed to be patrolling the corridors and grounds, and who were shown at the beginning? Isn't it crazy that a group of Death Eaters could calmly kill Dumbledore, tear up the Great Hall, stride out of the front door, pursued by a lone Harry who had finally found his feet? David Yates' biggest mistake was doing away with the battle at the end, between Aurors and Death Eaters - the film leaves too many unanswered questions without it. And it's also sad that Dunbledore's death was not made more of - Hermione discussing Harry's snogging Ginny and whether Ron would approve bang in the middle of a talk about Horcruxes trivialised the gravity of the situation.

Given the hype that surrounds every major film release, it becomes very difficult to separate a film from its promotion, and to watch the characters on screen and not remember the actors. On reading the interviews, reviews, etc., one can forgiven for thinking that the films have just three actors - Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson and Rupert Grint (in that order of appearance). Too much rides on their shoulders, and here, at least, they fall woefully short - Daniel is, to quote the delightful Luna Lovegood (played to perfection by Evanna Lynch), 'exceptionally ordinary', Rupert clowns his way through, and Emma really hasn't much to do, except stare in a lovesick fashion at Ron and cry. Perhaps they have become a tad too confident of their ability to play these characters? Or perhaps the media conflation of these three with Harry, Ron and Hermione means they don't need to work too hard at their roles? Or perhaps they're plain bored. Any of these could explain the careless performances, made all the more apparent by the superb supporting cast, even those given very little screen time. Watch Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince only for these 'other' actors - both the established great actors and the younger, newer ones - and not for the three who usually hog the limelight.

The Harry Potter films are losing their charm. Or maybe it's my disillusionment with the whole series, brought on by the disastrous seventh book, speaking. Either way, give me Narnia or His Dark Materials any day.

J.R.R. Tolkein, The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrun

This is the latest marvellous offering from Christopher Tolkein - two unpublished and unknown poems written by J.R.R. Tolkein sometime in the 1930s that were based on a corpus of poetry called the Poetic Edda, dealing with Nordic mythology. The poems are flanked by detailed commentaries written by Christopher Tolkein, and are preceded by an Introduction by J.R.R. Tolkein himself, taken from a lecture he delivered to the English faculty at Oxford University, titled 'The Elder Edda', which includes a fascinating discussion on how, as pagan religions in Scandinavia and Iceland gave way to Christianity, the wonderful world of old Norse mythology and folklore died out, coming to exist merely as disjointed fragments of what was once a rich oral tradition.

Lovers of fantasy fiction who are ardent admirers of Tolkein's works will love this, not least because it sheds a lot of light on the etymological and creative origins of Middle Earth, and some of it's much-loved characters. I just reviewed this book for BusinessWorld online, on their books site, so shall desist from rambling on here; but those interested in reading my review can visit the site at http://www.bwbooks.in/index.php/book_reviews/BOOK-REVIEW-The-Legend-Of-Sigurd-And-Gudrun.html.

And those of you nice enough to read the review, do come back and let me know what you thought!

On films

I must be among the very few not celebrating the return of Bollywood films to the multiplexes - I've been enjoying myself, actually, watching the good English films that the plexes were being forced to screen in the absence of suitable mindless fare - but now it'll be back to waiting impatiently for the odd good English film that pops in for about a week or so amid the gaggle of Hindi blockbusters. It wouldn't have been that big a deal had we still been in Delhi - most English films do make their way to the various PVRs, regardless of the presence of Bollywood; unfortunately, most Kolkata people, despite their many cultural and intellectual pretensions, are singularly unable to appreciate good films - for most, the 'best film' they have seen in 'a long time' is Dev D. English movies are, for most, merely an opportunity to make out in a semi-empty hall or, for those groups of badly-behaved, horny men so peculiar to Bengal, to catch sight of Kate Winslet's lovely legs.

But K and I've had a lovely time catching all the Oscar-nominated films, which begs the question - HOW did that very ordinary (at best) Slumdog Millionaire pip these fabulous films to the post? Granted, Danny Boyle did little else but lobby for nearly a year before the Academy Awards - but seriously, did everyone leave their brains behind when they cast their votes? Slumdog didn't have the depth, pathos, or the disturbing quality of The Reader; it had none of the joie de vivre, social relevance, energy or sheer brilliance that made up Milk; none of the slow narrative power, cinematography or wonder of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (and this despite Brad Pitt, who, despite special effects, resolutely remained Brad Pitt all the way through, allowing Benjamin not a chance to get under his skin); even Revolutionary Road, which proved disappointing (primarily because of all the expectations riding on it), had way more intensity and powerful moments than Slumdog could ever dream of. I guess all one can be thankful for is that they handed out the Oscars for acting to the people who truly deserved them.

But now it's back to sadly going over the movie listings and finding not a single one I'd like to see; growing ever more depressed at reviews of films that were long released but would never grace a theatre near me; asking hopefully for DVDs that take forever to appear in shops, if they ever do; and longing for that nice cheese popcorn that Inox serves.

But I suppose Star Trek will come to Cal theatres, right? I mean, even Cal people would want to catch Captain Kirk and Spock in action! And who doesn't love Wolverine?? And the Terminator - especially now that Christian Bale's playing John Connor? Right?

One can only hope.

Fred Vargas

I've been deep into crime fiction, one of my favourite genres of literature (yes, I said literature. So there.) of late - and European crime fiction at that. Americans, I find, can write good thrillers and potboilers, which become all too predictable after the first three or four books, but when it comes to police procedurals, complete with imagination, ingenuity, detailing, characterisation, it's the Europeans who rule. And I have recently discovered yet another writer of police procedurals - a Frenchwoman, an academic, who goes by the decidedly unfeminine name of Fred Vargas.

Vargas' books are set in Paris, and her main character, Commissaire Principal Jean-Baptiste Adamsberg, is clearly modelled on the detective who set the whole concept of urban police procedurals with a flawed, damaged even, policeman at the centre in motion - Chief Inspector Martin Beck, of the wonderful and canonical series of ten books written by the Swedish pair Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo. Like the Martin Beck series, where the city of Stockholm plays as huge a role as any character, Paris, with its quirks, its alleyways, its cafes and the various arrondisements into which it is divided, is a constant presence in the Adamsberg books. Like Beck, Adamsberg has a disturbed personal life; again, like Beck, he goes on to head a murder squad; couldn't care less about rules or his appearance or the image he portrays; is intuitive; solves pretty much every case assigned to him; is, by all accounts, an attractive man. That's where the similarity ends, though - but more on that later.

That Vargas is an academic is made abundantly clear in her plotlines, which very often have academics with esoteric specialisations and references and quotes from medieval tomes peppered liberally throughout - sometimes they even form the pivot around which the plot turns. Like her detective Adamsberg, who is prone to daydreaming and functions for the most part with 'his head in the clouds', Vargas' tales often take meandering turns down flights of fancy, with whole paragraphs devoted to disjointed and vaguely confused thoughts invested with the task of propelling the narrative forward. Adamsberg, we are told, is a gentle yet restless man - his voice has a peculiar soothing quality that lulls the listener to tranquillity and pushes them to confiding in him - a trait that comes in very useful during interrogations - yet he cannot stay still for a moment, preferring long walks to desk work, and constant activity at particularly pressing moments, when he most needs to think. His train of thought follows no apparent logic - intuition, of the almost mystical, clairvoyant kind (unlike Beck, whose flashes of insight were always rooted in reality, in fact and experience) is what leads him to an understanding of how, and why, the crime was committed.

Adamsberg's counterfoil is Inspector Danglard, his second-in-command - as addicted to logic as Adamsberg is to woolly chains of thought, a firm believer in the routine his superior holds in mild disdain. Danglard, with his alcoholism ('Tell me what you need me to do before four in the afternoon - I don't function too well after that'), his five children (two sets of twins, and one, the blue-eyed boy, 'was clearly not his', but his wife had dumped him on Danglard anyway) who he adored and who kept him sane, his unhappiness at his lack of physical attraction, which his impeccable clothing did nothing to compensate - is, somehow, a far more believable and endearing character than Adamsberg - as are the various other members of the Murder Squad - the intrepid Violette Retancourt and the wide-eyed Estalere, for instance. However, unlike the Martin Beck series, where Beck is a part of a team, whose other members are just as important - sometimes even more so - than the central character, Vargas tends to devote more space to Adamsberg dreamy soliloquies, which tend to grate at times - especially when some of the perpheral characters turn out to have much more heart than the principal one. This, perhaps, is one of the biggest flaws in Vargas' writing - that she has created a central character who is very difficult to identify with, or even like.

This flaw in a way also diminishes the rigor of police work - the dull routine slogging, which forms the bulk of police work, so carefully and intricately detailed by Sjowall and Wahloo (and by writers like Ian Rankin, P.D. James, Peter Robinson, Henning Mankell) is pushed to the background, and Adamsberg and his imaginative forays down paths where the proverbial angels fear to tread dominate - and so, at the end, you're at times left dissatisfied, unable to connect the dots that led to the denouement. Rigour is also sacrificed at the altar of what has clearly become the modern-day version of witchcraft - hacking. Hackers, the twenty-first century shamans with their codes and encryptions and viruses taking the place of spells and rites are now increasingly being turned to in the solution of murder mysteries - why follow clues or deal with forensics when you have someone to sit before a computer and almost intantly - CSI-style - provide you with all the answers you need, generously supplied by people too stupid to know better than to confide their deepest, darkest secrets to their computer's hard drives. I'm not sure, being almost a Luddite, if this is at all possible - all I know is that taking this easy short-cut has sounded the death knell of ingenuous police procedurals. It isn't just Vargas, but otherwise brilliant writers like Stieg Larsson who succumb to this temptation - thereby substantially eroding the charms of the good, old-fashioned detective novel.

The Adamsberg books are typically French, though, with their emphasis on the pleasures of a good cup of coffee or a glass of wine; the importance attached to people's clothes and styles of dressing - Adamsberg, who for the most part goes around looking 'like a pig's breakfast', is regarded as a curiosity because of his total disregard of what he wears; his sandals once moved a junior sufficiently to exclaim, in tones of great horror, 'You're surely not going out in those!'; sexual relationships are a necessary, but hardly all-consuming parts of characters' lives; and the French disdain for and amusement at English people and Canadians are all too apparent.

Vargas' books are interesting and informative, although sadly lacking in humour of the sort that was so apparent in the Martin Beck books - but then, aren't the French supposed to take themselves very seriously? - and well worth reading if you're a fan of police procedurals; however, if you like this genre to be rooted in solid police work, and if you like your detectives to be real and endearing like Martin Beck and his murder squad, or gritty like Rankin's Rebus, or as dogged and stubborn as Mankell's Kurt Wallander, you'll probably come away wanting more.

The White Tiger - Aravind Adiga

We've all known for a few years now that the Man Booker prize is no longer what it used to be - in fact, it's a given that the book actually winning the award will be less deserving than the other four shortlisted works of fiction put together. That's certainly been the case with the ones I've read - the last Booker winner I picked up, Alan Hollinghurst's The Line of Beauty, was a predictable and too-long ramble, made readable - memorable, even - only by the sheer beauty of Hollinghurst's prose, and the subtlety with which he evoked the atmosphere of 1980s Britain. But there is nothing, absolutely nothing, that redeems this year's winner, Aravind Adiga's The White Tiger.

Allegedly 'blazingly savage and brilliant', and a work that exposes 'India's rotting heart' (much to the chagrin of jingoistic Indians, who spent the better part of newsprint condemning Adiga for having pandered to 'Western' conceptions of a backward and corrupt India while not uttering a word about the literary merit - or otherwise - of the book), the book tells the story of Balram Halwai, a man from one of the innumerable poverty-stricken villages dotting India's rural landscape, this one in the heart of UP, who lands a job as chauffer to one of the local landlords' sons, and with him arrives in New Delhi where he learns of the darkness that lies beneath the sophisticated, glamourous cityscape, as well as that which lies within his own heart. Balram's story - and his life - appears to be a allegory for an India that is furiously developing and growing at the expense of the greater number of its citizens, and those Indians who, seduced by the consumerism that this 'development' brings in its wake, give in to the soulless hedonism that money can buy. In itself a great concept, in the hands of an experienced - and good - writer, this could have been the masterpiece it's masquerading as. In Adiga's, on the other hand, it turns into a shallow, confused, unbelievable ramble along paths that Adiga has certainly never trodden.

There's no denying that the 'seamy underbelly' of India that Adiga wishes to expose does exist. What is in dispute, however, is his knowledge of it. His description of Balram's village, Laxmangarh, for instance - the river, the sewage, the tea shop with its huddle of young men, the main road down which the bus arrives, passengers greeted by emaciated rickshaw-pullers, the Hanuman temple, the pigs, the buffaloes - is that of a generic Indian village, a description culled from books and films focusing on the same sights. How many Laxmangarhs, one would like to know, has Adiga visited, or even lived in? How many Balram Halwais has he interacted with? Adiga's Delhi, too, is the Delhi experienced by an NRI, who flies in for short visits, and hangs out at the places most frequented by those of his ilk - the Gurgaon malls, Connaught Place, and - no, that's it. Just how limited his knowledge of Delhi's geography and even the lifestyles favoured by rich yuppies, among whom Balram's master, Ashok, and Pinky, Ashok's wife, feature, is revealed when one considers two instances: in The White Tiger, all Ashok and Pinky do on their days out is spend an inordinate amount of time at the mall; and on Pinky's birthday, they decide to go all the way from Gurgaon to a TGIF outlet located in CP. Anyone who's spent even a year in the city knows that CP's dead by 11 PM, and that TGIF, Vasant Vihar, is way more happening than a lot of Delhi pubs. And which politician, pray, lives on Ashok Road, that beautiful avenue given over to headquarters of political parties and a few colonial bungalows that serve as residences of high-profile judges?

Adiga's corrupt politicians are larger-than-life, his evil landlords straight out of a 1970s Bollywood movie. One is only too aware of the fate that befalls the bulk of the country's poor - but Adiga's descriptions are strangely devoid of emotion, or empathy. While devoting large sections to rigged elections in rural areas, he misses out one crucial reality in rural India of present times - the panchayati raj. One could be forgiven for suspecting that Adiga's knowledge of India is gleaned from Bollywood, news footage of elections held about 10 years ago, preferably somewhere in Bihar, a few months spent in Delhi, and a few conversations held with bored chauffers and south Delhi residents. No wonder, then, that the book fails to connect with anything remotely real, including the imagination of discerning readers. I mean - where in India could you begin a brand new life, complete with a new identity and a whole new business enterprise on a mere sum of seven lakh rupees, a sum that Balram ends up selling his soul for? And going by Adiga's own reckoning, wouldn't the rich and the powerful have spent every resource they owned to make sure that he paid for that most heinous crime of all - dared to think for himself, stand up to, and hurt a member of, the upper class?

The disconnect reveals itself in Adiga's style of writing - as a first-person narrative, the book veers widly between two extremes - exaggerated 'Indian English' ('See, when you come to Bangalore, and stop at a traffic light, some boy will run up to your car and knock on your window ...'), and youthful, urban American colloquialisms ('Don't waste your money on those books. They're so yesterday.), strangely out of place on the lips of a supposedly semi-literate man. Until you remember that Adiga has spent a large chunk of his life abroad - clearly, this is an author who cannot quite distance his character's voice from his own. The language is banal, the syntax barely there, and punctuations virtually absent - or is a semi-literate chauffer, though well-versed in yuppie lingo, not supposed to know his commas from his semi-colons? Editorial slips-up rule - why, for instance, does Balram encounter his fellow-chauffer 'Vitiligo Lips' everywhere he goes, even when Ashok demands to be driven to TGIF on a sudden whim late at night? Perhaps Vitiligo Lips' master is stalking Ashok? Perhaps Adiga - and certainly his editor - should have paid a wee bit more attention to the details?

Adiga's complete ignorance of north Indian cultural norms comes through in his treatment of north-eastern women - defined as 'slant-eyed Nepalis', they apear to be the stuff that most north Indian men's fantasies are made of. And why is that so? Because of their eyes, of course - their beautiful eyes that drive men wild. Again, one doesn't need to have lived in Delhi for a decade to know that most 'slant eyed women' - derogatorily called 'Chinks' or Chinkies' - hail from the north-east of India, in Delhi either for higher education, or for jobs; and one knows all too well why these women are viewed with either suspicion or naked lust - no, it's not their eyes, but the commen stereotype of them as 'cheap, loose, fast and easy', all because the matriarchal societies and culture from which a lot of them come ensures that they're comfortable with their bodies and with men, dress in 'Western' clothes, and do not consider themselves inferior to men, least of all those from north India. For Adiga to to lump them all under the category 'Nepali' and romanticise the sexual aggression they encounter on a daily basis is offensive, and his ignorance of cultural codes, especially coming from a writer who claims to know every bit of India, down to its murkiest depths, laughable.

As a first novel, and left to itself, the book would have gone relatively unnoticed, a mediocre effort on the part of a first-time novelist. But awarding it the Booker, and hailing it as one of the greatest things Indian writing in English had to offer in recent years, was ridiculous (on a recent visit to Crossword, one of the young boys at the counter asked us if we'd read the book - 'I read about 150 pages, and it was nothing special! Why would this win such a big award?' he asked in bewilderment. Our feelings exactly.). Adiga's second novel was given a quiter launch - the first chapter, printed in the Sunday Brunch a month and a half ago, read better than The White Tiger. But was it tempting enough for me to pick up yet another Aravind Adiga and spend four more hours of my life reading through it? I don't think so.

Addendum to Deathly Hallows

I know it's possibly bad form to return to a review that's already been written, but in this instance, there are far too many questions and issues that have come up at a later stage for them to not be discussed. While I don't want to change any of what I said in my previous review, the lot more thinking that I've done on Deathly Hallows, the discussions I've had with friends and on various forums, and, most importantly, my second reading of DH - which allowed to me to notice sundry details and mull over missing links and gnash my teeth over irritating parts way more satisfactorily than the first, frenzied reading had - have all left me feeling very disappointed, frustrated, and badly in need of answers. So this post will not be anywhere near as positive as my first review was.

What was most inexplicable and disappointing was the treatment meted out to Voldemort. In previous books, the Dark Lord had been an ominous, menacing, chilling figure - powerful, evil, completely devoid of a conscience or any human frailty - apart from megalomania, I suppose. He was evil, but also supremely intelligent, 'terrible, but great', as Ollivander had once remarked. Despite not having any choice but to dislike him, one couldn't help admitting that the man - wizard, rather - had style. Not any more, though. In DH, he was little more than a pompous, screeching, petulant tyrant, constantly missing his target, constantly goofing up, content to leave everything in the hands of his bumbling followers while he chased fairly tales that he had not even taken the trouble to get to know well. Tyrants seldom trust, or have confidants, and Voldemort was no exception - so why was he content to leave the matter of hunting Harry down in the hands of his Death Eaters? Voldemort was privy to the darkest magical secrets, and was in the habit of planning ahead - so why, then, did he allow the connection between his mind and Harry's to open up all over again, when he knew full well that doing so would allow Harry to glimpse his every move? He had been practising Occlumency all this while, so why would the greatest Occlumens of all times grow careless at this, the most dangerous period? Voldemort never left anything to chance, so it seems a bit absurd that he would actually believe that no one but he knew the secret of the Room of Requirements at Hogwarts. The very fact that that particular room in question was crammed full of things that desperate students over the years had hidden and then forgotten should have told him that he was not the first to use it - and that he wouldn't be the last, either.

I believe Rowling resorted to the cheap trick of reducing Voldemort to little more than a 'glorified snake charmer', as one of my friends put it eloquently, to highlight the contrast between the stoic, fairy-tale hero, Harry, and the ignorant, pitiful, bullying big bad, Voldemort. Which is why Voldemort was constantly depicted as screaming in rage, in frustration, while Harry, even in moments of intense grief and tension, kept his head, and his gravity. By juxtaposing Voldemort's high screams with Harry's very masculine silences, and his desire for physical labour to work out his anger and grief, Rowling seems to be almost emasculating Voldemort while elevating Harry to the level of the fierce warriors of yore. But by doing so, she took away from a lot of the series' mystique, and appeared to be catering to popular tastes, especially those of pre-pubertal children. It is quite incomprehensible how the greatest dark wizard of all times could be thwarted at every step by three teenagers - it took a wizard like Dumbledore to defeat Grindelwald, but the wizard far darker than even Grindelwald was ultimately felled by - wait for it - 'Expelliarmus!' And correct me if I'm wrong, but weren't the Death Eaters supposed to be powerful dark wizards themselves? Not all of them were bloodthirsty savages like Fenrir Greyback or McNair, or moronic bullies like Crabbe and Goyle Seniors. Lucius Malfoy had been a Prefect at Hogwarts, and we all know just how skillful a witch Bellatrix was. So the idea that in a battle, they would all go down under a barrage of body-bind and stupefying spells (which is all that Dumbledore's Army seemed to have learnt under Harry's tutelage) when they had dark arts at their disposal seems patently absurd. One would have expected more displays like Crabbe Jr's Fiendfyre, but unfortunately the Death Eaters were reduced to a group as pathetic as the 'Chief Death Eater' himself.

About as infuriating is Rowling's blatant sexism, and the way she sidelined the only strong female character in the books, Hermione. Hermione, the most intelligent, perspicacious and talented of the trio, continued to think and plan ahead, and save Harry and Ron's hides the way she had since 'Philosopher's Stone'. Yet, notwithstanding the fact that without her Harry would have been a sitting duck from the very moment the MOM fell, right after Bill and Fleur's wedding, it is Ron who continues to be the 'best friend', Ron whose transgressions Harry forgives far more easily than he forgives Hermione for accidentally breaking his wand. Quick to criticise Hermione's words of caution as yet evidence of her narrow, closed-in, unimaginative mind, Harry seems to almost welcome Ron's self-centred, moronic suggestions during every discussion. Hermione's steadfast loyalty and unwavering courage is taken for granted, while much is made of Ron's decision to return after having deserted his friends when the going got tough - 'He saved my life, Hermione,' Harry tells her reproachfully when confronted by her anger at Ron's betrayal, quite forgetting that that was exactly what she had been doing when his wand got broken.

And come to think of it, what of the other women in the books? Fleur Delacour, Triwazrd champion, is reduced to a simpering maiden who graduates into a harassed housewife; Tonks' only role in DH was to get pregnant, give birth, and then, inexplicably, die; and even Mrs Weasley's defeat of Bellatrix was in the guise of a mother protecting her children. It's rather strange that a twice-married, independent, creative woman like J.K. Rowling should be so conventional at heart - the only non-conventional, strong woman unfettered by the normative ties of marriage or motherhood in the books was Bellatrix Lestrange - and who in their right minds would want her as a role model? The only road left open to every character, man or woman, was the one that led to the altar and subsequently, to parenthood - and every generation seemed to excel in falling in love at school, and then marrying their childhood sweethearts by the time they turned 20. And here I thought that the chances of teenage romances working out were fairly remote - or perhaps knowing how to do magic does give you a toehold in the land of happily-ever-afters.

While I still think that the concept of the Deathly Hallows was brilliant, and I loved the way she humanised Dumbledore - and the episode in Godric's Hollow was easily the best part of the book, in turn moving and chilling - I have to say that DH, for me, is the weakest book of all seven. And I do wish Rowling would stop answering questions and giving out tidbits of information in every interview that she's giving - does she really expect every Harry Potter fan to be doing little other than avidly trawling the net every other day in the hope that they'd stumble upon some loose end being tied up? These are issues that should have been dealt with in the book, not post-publication interviews! But I daresay it's Rowling's not-so veiled approval of the blatant commercialisation of the Harry Potter franchise (she's given over the rights to the name to Warner Bros, and is enthusiastically participating in planning hugely expensive Harry Potter theme parks that will be inaccessible to most fans, for example) that's led to the dilution of the books' content - most people would agree that her later books were nowhere near as good as the earlier ones. In fact, I doubt the later books would have been as huge a success had it not been for the hysterical marketing hype - much as I still love Harry Potter, I have to admit he faces stiff competition - Rowling does not have Philip Pullman's radical desire for subversion, to push the boundaries of fantasy fiction; nor does she come close to Jonathan Stroud's delightful, imaginative, quirky trilogy. These are books I find myself recommending heavily these days - and where satisfactory endings are concerned, few have come close to Stroud's The Bartimaeus Trilogy. What a glorious, ambitious, heart-warming, rousing finale that was. Would that I could say the same about my beloved Harry Potter!

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

I was, strangely enough, singularly loath to begin reading my copy of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, the seventh and final instalment in J.K. Rowling's immensely popular Harry Potter series. For I knew that once I'd begun, I wouldn't put it down till I was done - and that wouldn't take more than a couple of days - and then, it would all be over. No more Harry Potters. No more waiting, no more arguments and endless discussions with friends and on public forums, no more anticipation, no more excitement. Having discovered Harry Potter before the advent of all the media hype that turned the publication of every new book into a veritable circus, I count myself among the group of original Potter fans, and I didn't want it all to end. But I didn't really have a choice, did I? So, after having stared at the cover illustration for as long as I could, trying to glean little details of the plot from the design, and having read the blurb, the dedication, and even the copyright page, there was nothing left for it but to dive in.

We all knew what Harry was expected to do in Deathly Hallows - at the end of Half-Blood Prince, he had resolved to carry out Dumbledore's final instructions, and now, aided by best friends Ron and Hermione, he sets out in search of Voldemort's Horcruxes, each of which he had to destroy before he could confront - and ultimately vanquish - the Dark Lord himself. Meanwhile, with Dumbledore's death Voldemort's powers had reached new heights - after taking over the Ministry of Magic, and the press, the new regime proceeds to unleash their reign of terror, particularly targeted against Muggles, and Muggle-born wizards, offensively termed Mudbloods, a term that belongs to the same category as, say, 'nigger'. Amid all the persecution a huge hunt is launched for Harry, the 'Undesirable No. 1' who has a bounty on his head - for the Boy Who Lived, the symbol of hope around whom the resistance was rallying, could not be allowed to continue living if Voldemort was to reign supreme.

Taut and dark, the book offers no respite, no breathing space from the very beginning, with the deaths of known and loved characters beginning from the fourth chapter itself. You realise then that this is how it has to be - in a world taken over by the Dark Arts, there can be no Hogwarts Express, or light-hearted moments. We are given a short breather during the run-up to Bill and Fleur's wedding, after which the action begins in earnest. Rowling's gift lies in her storytelling - while she isn't likely to get an award for the beauty of her prose, she does manage to communicate the tension that every one of her characters are going through - indeed, it is sometimes hard to remember that we, the readers, are outside the events being described.

But are we, though? No writer can escape the influence in her/his writing of the world that they live in, and Rowling is no exception. When you take into consideration the fact that despite the magic, the spells, robes and wand-waving, Rowling's work is firmly rooted in reality, a decision taken years ago when she decided to set the books and the characters in our world, our time and our dimension, the events that she describes become that much easier to relate to. I once argued that Voldemort's obsession with pure-blood witches and wizards, and his evil henchmen, the hooded Death Eaters, are symbolic of the racism that has been prevalent in every part of the world at all times - the Nazis, the Ku Klux Klan - and nowhere is that brought home more strongly than in Deathly Hallows. The setting up of the Muggle-born Registration Commission (headed by the evil, sadistic Dolores Umbridge, whose brush with the centaurs had clearly left no lasting impression), the refusal to allow Muggle-born witches and wizards a place in Voldemort's new wizarding order, the unceremonious arrest and deportation of all Muggle-borns and those holding out against the regime to Azkaban, the derisory way of addressing the few witches and wizards who had escaped arrest but been reduced to begging as 'it', thereby robbing them not only of their identity as members of the magical community but also of their humanity, brings to mind the horrors of persecution the world has been witness to - Nazi Germany, the compulsory registration of all Jews, the Holocaust, the Iraq war, religious persecution and Guantanamo Bay - our own government had, following the barbaric murders of the Staines family, decided to have all Christians living in the country register themselves - Nurmengard, the prison where Grindelwald's supporters, and Grindelwald himself, after his defeat at the hands of Dumbledore, were imprisoned, bears phonetic resemblance to Nuremberg, the place where the trials of those Nazis who had participated in mass genocide were carried out. In Voldemort's regime, Rowling envisions a future not unlike the dark world that Jonathan Stroud describes in his The Bartimaeus Trilogy - one where 'magic is might', and commoners/Muggles have to accept their rule, their superiority, and acquiesce to a life of subservience, where fear and suspicion prevails, and where resistance brings with it the firm promise of death.

Harry himself, an adult at 17, finds himself cast adrift without the magical protection that, thanks to Dumbledore's spells, Privet Drive had offered, and bereft of the wisdom and guidance that the headmaster has always held out to him, and that he had taken for granted. Now, robbed of his one true father figure, he realises what it is to have people look to him for guidance instead, and feels the weight of the burden he bears, perhaps for the first time. Lost and lonely, and faced with unsettling facts about Dumbledore's hitherto unknown past, Harry reacts in an all-too typical fashion - he rails against Dumbledore for not having made his task easier, for not having taken him into confidence, for not having trusted him - part of the anger is directed against himself, for not having asked, and learnt, enough about/from Dumbledore when he had had the chance. Ron and Hermione, always true, always supportive, learn that Dumbledore, who knew them better than they realised, intended the mission to teach them more about themselves - Ron, having deserted his friends, gathers strength from his moment of weakness and emerges a true Gryffindor; and Hermione, while understanding that myths and legends can have as much of a basis in truth as facts and theories, finds within herself the courage to withstand even the torture that Bellatrix puts her through. Deathly Hallows is as much their journey as it is Harry's.

The slow, descriptive tone of Deathly Hallows in no way takes away from the grim tension - Harry, Ron and Hermione seem to be living on borrowed time, and each narrow escape from Voldemort could well be their last. The introduction of the deathly hallows, three objects that can allow the wizard/witch who manages to unite them 'mastery over death' provides a twist to the narrative - as Harry now has to make a crucial decision, and choose between Horcruxes and Hallows, power or his journey, and the knowledge that he will ultimately gain from it. It takes the death of Dobby, the house-elf so beloved to them - and us - who gave up his life while trying to save Harry's, to give Harry the enlightenment that he had been desperately seeking. The journey ends where it began - at Hogwarts - and it wasn't only Harry, but I, and I'm sure many, many others, who had a feeling of having come home in the familiar corridors and grounds. The last battle at Hogwarts, with the teachers, the DA, the Order, and every other student who refused to give in without a fight ranged against Voldemort and the Death Eaters was glorious, rousing, spirited, easily the best thing Rowling has ever written. The final confrontation, with Snape's vindication (no surprises there for those among us who had believed, if not so much in the likelihood of Snape's 'goodness', then certainly in Dumbledore's wisdom) and Voldemort's defeat, which came, as Dumbledore had predicted, through the former's complete ignorance of the power of love, comes as a fitting finale, everything that one could have hoped for.

Rowling had once stated that she hadn't read much of fantasy fiction, except for the canonical masters of fantasy like Tolkein and C.S. Lewis, and their influence is apparent in Deathly Hallows. The Slytherin locket Horcrux that weighed down the wearer, possessed their thoughts and imagination, and turned friends against each other is reminiscent of the ring of Sauron; and nowhere are the Christian allegories more stark than in Deathly Hallows. The constant emphasis on the power of love, of white magic that ultimately triumphs over the Dark Lord; Harry's choosing to sacrifice himself to save the lives of his friends and everyone else who loved and supported him, a choice which bestowed on them the same protection that Lily's sacrifice had bestowed on him, and, indeed, the entire episode in the Forbidden Forest reminds one very strongly of the Stone Table in Narnia, when Aslan chose to sacrifice himself to the White Witch in order to save Edward. Harry's subsequent resurrection mirrors Aslan's (and Aslan, as those who have read Narnia would know, was supposed to have been a metaphor for Christ), a resurrection that symbolised the return of hope, and the ultimate triumph of good over evil. The power of a pure, and whole, soul was constantly harped upon, brought out in the chapter 'King's Cross', where Harry meets Dumbledore after his 'death' in a place that could only be limbo. Accompanying them there is Voldemort, in the form of a ravaged, mutilated, whimpering, tortured foetal-like creature, for whom 'there is no help possible'; and in fact, the importance of keeping Harry's soul whole and pure is also iterated in the fact that Voldemort dies not at Harry's hands, but at his own, when his Killing Curse rebounds on him, bringing us full circle to the events of 16 years ago at Godric's Hollow, and the chain of events that Voldemort chose to begin himself through the murders of James and Lily, and his attempt on Harry's life.

Several of the question we had been debating for the past two years were answered satisfactorily - where Snape's loyalties lay, and why; the meaning of the triumphant gleam in Dumbledore's eyes at the mention of Voldemort having taken Harry's blood; the bond that Harry had created between himself and Wormtail by having saved the latter's life (a debt that Wormtail, in his turn, repaid, a moment of pity that he paid for with his life); we learn, as promised, a little more about Aunt Petunia. The surprising revelations about Kreacher and Dudley's characters drive home the fact that even the most unexpected people have the power to astonish us; Mrs Weasley's duel with Bellatrix is nothing short of brilliant; and the delightfully irreverent Potterwatch, the underground radio channel run by members of the resistance, bears testimony to Rowling's ample wit. However, there were several unanswered questions and disappointments, not least of which was the way most of the deaths were handled. Dobby and Fred's deaths were moving, and would have driven most people to tears, and Snape's death, and the memories that he left Harry were beautifully written. However, were Hedwig, Mad-Eye Moody, Lupin and Tonks so insignificant that their deaths were dispensed with in just a couple of terse lines? Despite all the hype surrounding the deaths, it seemed as though Rowling had taken the easy way out, killing some of the most lovable, yet supporting characters while the major ones all escaped virtually unscathed. And if Harry escaped death only because his blood ran in the living Voldemort's veins, how did he not die when Voldemort did? Or, after resurrection, are you supposed to stay resurrected? And why would the blood-thirsty Death Eaters, who cheerfully struck everyone they could find with the Avada Kedavra without a second thought, not kill Hagrid when they had the chance but tie him up instead? And what on earth was Colin Creevey, a Muggle-born, doing at Hogwarts when the school was only open to pure-bloods?

Rowling's epilogue, 'Nineteen Years Later', her attempt at providing the series with a fairy-tale ending, bordered on the cheesy. Amidst the news that everybody had, most incestuously, married one or the other of the Weasley family, and that they all had at least two to three children with rather predictable names (except for the touching Albus Severus; and surely it's reasonable to presume that almost two decades later, teenagers would not still be using that most irritating word, 'snogging'?), many questions went unanswered - what, for example, had Harry, Ron and Hermione taken up as professions? It was wonderful knowing that Neville, the hero of the resistance, was Professor of Herbology at Hogwarts - but who was the current Headmaster? Did Kingsley stay on as Minister for Magic? Where was Luna? Where was George, and how had he coped with losing a twin? And surely it wasn't mere coincidence that led Rowling to give Teddy Lupin the same fate that had befallen Harry himself, the sole exception being that Teddy had a godfather, in the form of Harry, who could, and did, provide him with a family. Perhaps Rowling will give us some answers in the Harry Potter encyclopaedia that she has been thinking of writing - but the fairy-tale happily-ever-after made for a very anticlimactic ending for a dark, yet positive book. Had she left that out, it would have been pretty much everything fans the world over were hoping for.

Eragon - and 300

I watched a few rather disappointing movies recently. Some readers will remember my review of Christopher Paolini's Eragon, which, despite it's flaws and lack of originality, I had quite liked. So of course I had to go and catch the film Stephen Fangmeier had made based on the book, which finally released here a couple of weeks back. Boasting of a sterling cast, which included legendary actors like John Malkovich and Jeremy Irons, and special effects that would bring fire-breathing dragons to life, the film appeared promising. It didn't live up to that promise, though - to put it briefly, it was terrible.

I now know why the film Eragon has received consistently bad reviews. Everything that made the book enjoyable and complex has been cut out, leaving only the bare bones that made for an insipid, two-dimensional film. I know that movies based on books rarely live up to expectations (except for films like To Kill a Mockingbird and The Lord of the Rings trilogy) - but surely they can at least stick to the plot and try to make it work? And if Peter Jackson could have made such fantastic films out of Tolkein's incredibly complicated The Lord of the Rings, a book that Paolini himself drew liberally upon in both Eragon and its sequel, Eldest, couldn't Stephen Fangmeier have given us a passable movie version of Eragon? Everything went wrong in Eragon - Ed Speeler, who played the title role, was wooden and amatuerish, the script was shoddy, the backdrops all too clearly created in a Hollywood studio, the acting, with the exception of the big names, pathetic - and Saphira was just not blue enough! From a sapphire blue dragon whose scales would shine as brightly as gems, she was transformed into a blue-grey dinosaur with a tail, who was just not awe-inspiring. At various points majestic, frightening, lovable, stubborn, impish, quirky, wise yet child-like, Saphira, Paolini's best and most original creation, was reduced to little more than a talking winged steed. Much as I like Rachel Weisz, I have to say that she didn't bring Saphira to life - and the beautiful, loving relationship that Saphira and Eragon, as Rider and Dragon, shared, was dealt with in only a few perfunctory lines of dialogue.

John Malkovich's Galbatorix was menacing enough - more so when you consider the fact that he did not have much to go upon, as in the books, Galbatorix, despite being a constant presence, never does make an appearance - but then, when has Malkovich ever disappointed? Jeremy Irons made for a brilliant Brom, but here again Fangmeier slips up - the bond that Brom and Eragon come to share, as mentor and protege, surrogate father and son, Riders with shared powers and destinies, is not allowed to develop. So we never get to see how Brom shaped Eragon, a mere farm boy, into a Rider, or how they both learn to trust each other with their lives; instead, we are supposed to believe that Eragon learnt how to wield a sword all on his own, and began using his magical powers quite, well, magically. Brom's death fails to move because we never get a sense of the kind of person he is, and Saphira's last gift to him is puzzling, because we don't understand why she should do so much for him. And key characters, who make Eragon the book such an exciting read, are unceremoniously dispensed with - Roran, Eragon's cousin, whose transformation from village apprentice to warrior is as powerful as Eragon's, only appears in the first 10 minutes of the movie; Angela, the lovable herbalist/fortune-teller is reduced to a Barbie look-alike in a lot of gold bling who enters and exits within a confusing span of two minutes; the fearsome Razac, modelled on Tolkein's Nazgul, and who are as indestructible as the latter, are casually killed in a very short battle; the Urgals were, as my husband said, nothing more than tattooed WWF wrestlers; and Solembum, the wonderful were-cat, is absent altogether.

Sienna Guillory's Arya leaves a lot to be desired - it is very hard to imagine her as the beautiful, brave, clever and inscrutable elf princess. And while Garrett Hedlund is capable enough as the tortured Murtagh, his character, too, is glossed over - the announcement, 'he is Morzan's son', is met with next to no emotion. The one who stands out, however, easily the best thing about the film, is Robert Carlyle, in the role of the Shade Durza - he is chilling enough to send very real shivers down your spine. Powerful, arrogant and cruel, he sweeps through the film dripping scorn and disdain for the mere mortals that dare to stand in his way - Durza was so brilliantly played that I actually hated to see him die. It's hard to tell why the people responsible for this film actually made it, since they robbed it of its very essence, leaving in its place yet another action adventure meant for children, and not a very good one at that. Did Paolini have any role to play in the making of Eragon? Did he react at all to the destruction Fangmeier and Peter Buchman (the scriptwriter) had wrought upon his book? There probably will be a sequel to the movie as well, as Eragon ends with a shot of Galbatorix and Shruiken, his black dragon, both roaring with anger at their defeat - but unless, like the Harry Potter movies, Eldest is made by another, and better, director, I think we can safely presume that it will be as big a disaster as Eragon is.


Far more disappointing, because there were far too many expectation attached to it, was 300. After the gritty, in-your-face, dark Sin City graphic novels, made brilliantly into a film by Roger Rodrigues and Frank Miller, I have been a die-hard Miller fan. While I haven't read 300 yet, the film didn't come anywhere close to the celluloid version of Sin City. Dripping testosterone, the film was all about CGI, male bonding, the glorification of war, and the age-old divide between the mythical 'East' (in the form of the Persians, led by the god-king Xerxes) and the 'West' (exemplified in the Greeks, particularly the Spartans, the repository of all that is brave, and good, and noble). Laced heavily with rather blatant racism (the Persians, who all look suspiciously like members of some long-lost African tribe, are cowards, at best; at worst, they embody in themselves every form of depravity known to man - be it treachery, barbarism, or kinky sexual fetishes that would make even the Marquis de Sade look like an unimaginative schoolboy), 300 is actually considered by some to be part of a psychological warfare being levied against Iran, in tandem with the impending threat of attack from the US government. This very male film, made by a man for men of all ages (there is only one female character in the film, King Leonidas' wife, who sums up her role, and that of all Spartan women, in one sentence - 'Only Spartan women can give birth to real men') takes off from the socialisation that all little boys are subjected to, which says that unless you go aggressively charging through life bloodying every demurring nose within sight, you're not worthy of being called a 'MAN'. So there's loads of rhetoric, lots of decapitations, artistically spurting fountains of blood, severed limbs, battle-cries, in the midst of which the noble 300 fight their beautifully choreographed way through, ankle-length cloaks, which, if worn in real battles, would trip the persons wearing them right under the closest sword, swirling gracefully. Yet somehow the battles fail to move, the war-cries don't elicit a corresponding stirring of hearts (the way they did in LoTR, for instance). All one can ask at the end of what a newspaper report called 'the Spartan workout video' is - which self-respecting Spartan would go into a battle fought with spears, swords and arrows wearing only the briefest of chaddis?

The Bookseller of Kabul

This weekend I read Norwegian journalist Asne Seierstad's The Bookseller of Kabul, published in 2004, and subsequently reprinted no less than 25 times. It focuses on an Afghan family in the days immediately following the defeat of the Taliban by US forces - the family patriarch is the bookseller in question. The author looks at the lives, loves, hopes, desires and aspirations of the family members, and intersperses the account with dollops of Afghan history that anyone with the ability to trawl through Internet search engines can have access to. Shah Mohammad Rais (the bookseller, named Sultan Khan in the book) was so incensed after reading the book that he flew over to Norway with lawyer in tow, and sued Seierstad; they reportedly also got into trouble with the authorities and their neighbours. I can understand why.

To begin with, the author makes up pseudonyms for everyone in question so as to maintain anonymity, but then describes them in such great detail, down to their professions and area they live in, that the entire exercise is rendered redundant. I'm also not sure why Seierstad chose this particular family - as she herself claims in the Foreword, the family, being an urban, educated, rich one, isn't representative of Afghan families at all. As an author, she is well within her rights to choose the story she wants to tell, and focus on characters that are best suited to take the narrative forward - but if the story is a true one, and the characters real people, holding them up to the world's scrutiny without any well-defined rationale can just be a mere exercise in voyuerism. Which, to my mind, is what this book is all about. Coupled with this is the trap all white, Western people fall into - that of gazing at the 'other', the developed nations, through their detached, culturally-specific, and all too often ill-equipped lenses, and interpreting cultural nuances with their aid. In her attempt to fit Afghanistan within the stereotypical vision that most people outside the country, especially those from the global North, have of it, the author highlights only those incidents that conform to the stereotype, and focuses on just that evidence that confirms her hypothesis - that Afghanistan is a backward country still in the grip of religious forces, where men rule and women are treated worse than cattle.

All of which might well be true, but is a journalist really allowed to choose only those facts that best suit her at any given moment in time? There's a thin line between reporting on another culture and using the facts to reflect your own bias - The Bookseller of Kabul is an indictment of Afghan society in general and this one family in particular. Seierstad stayed with the Rais family for several months - I cannot believe that in all these months she came across just these smattering of incidents to write about. As a white woman, her primary concern was the way 'women were treated' - a fact that's not new to any of us in the Indian subcontinent, but which must have elicited gasps of horror from the so-called progressive white world - the target audience. While Sultan Khan is held up as a man brave enough to defy the Taliban and court imprisonment in an attempt to preserve his country's history and culture, that facet of his personality is subsumed under detailed descriptions of his despotic behaviour towards the rest of his family, his lasciviousness where his beautiful, teenaged second wife was concerned, his materialistic bent of mind that caused him to sacrifice humanity at the altar of business and profits. We get to hear all about how his sons hate him (has anyone who read the book notice how peculiarly ambivalent her attitude towards Mansur was? Was she sympathetic or did she disapprove of his selfishness? Was Mansur a confused teenager whose will was steadily being eroded by his tyrannical father, or was he a spoilt, self-centred boy who believed everyone in the world had been created for his pleasure alone? He took on several guises, much in the manner of a chameleon, depending on the point the author was driving home at that given moment) and the women in his family fear him - all helpfully repeated with every anecdote just in case you missed the point the first, second, or fifth time.

My major problem with the book is that it adds nothing to our knowledge about Afghan history or culture - as I mentioned earlier, the bits of history the author rather monotonously recites are stuff we all know about, or facts easily available on the Internet. There is no analysis, no critical commentary - just a mere presentation of facts, whether they be about the history of Afghanistan, or about the Rais family. However, how is getting to know the little domestic details of one family in Afghanistan going to help anyone? How is it enriching the corpus of literature that already exists on this topic, and sundry related others? The only thing it does it satiate our desire to see into other families, to satisfy the voyeur present in all of us. Seierstad doesn't disappoint here. She lingers deliciously (much like the Afghan women she describes gossiping) on stories of young women's transgressions in matters of love, and the punishment that befell them thereafter; on the 'dirty thoughts' that flit across the minds of young teenage boys; and, most obviously, in the whole chapter devoted to the hammam. Now, all of us with some knowledge of the world know what the hammam is all about. It's no different from the bathhouses of Rome, or the saunas in the West. It's a communal bathing area. Fatima Mernissi and Bouhidiba, among others, have written marvellous articles critically analysing the role of the hammam in Islam, and the gender relations that become manifest through it. That, however, is not what Seierstad had in mind - she chooses to focus on the hot and steamy interior, scenes of women scrubbing each other's backs, breasts and thighs, talk about how married women strip completely while unmarried ones don't - if this isn't blatant voyeurism, what is?

I'm not surprised Mohammad Rais was furious. Instead of a book on his family he could proudly show off, he was presented with constant references to his cruel and tyrannical character, accounts of his family's alleged feelings towards him as well as their illicit desires, all of which he would rather not have known, and, as if that wasn't enough, he had to be presented with rather negative descriptions of the naked body of his mother! If that's not going to drive a traditional, god-fearing, conservative man to apoplexy, I don't know what is. Would Seierstad have done the same with the mother of, say, a bookshop owner in Soho?

Seierstad, in every work of hers, is annoyingly self-indulgent, a fact her next book, 101 Days, an account of the first 100 days of the American war on Iraq, attests to. Unlike most good journalists, she focuses more on herself than the history she's witnessing, or the people she's interviewing, or even the facts she's reporting. We can't but be aware of her presence throughout - and nowhere is it more obvious than in The Bookseller of Kabul. Cliched, pointless and badly-written, Seierstad's work is a lesson on how journalism ought not to be done. I'm not surprised it became a bestseller, though - after all, the same can be said of The Da Vinci Code, and look where that's at now. Also, there's nothing people like more than to witness someone else's dirty linen being washed in public.

I'd initially intended for this blog to contain short reviews of three books, but this one seems to have taken up way too much space already. So will leave the others for later blogs - and the remaining two, thankfully, have been books I enjoyed immensely.