Sagarika Ghosh - The Gin Drinkers and my Library Loot

I went to the Library on 14.08.2011 and picked up these books after much delibration.



1. Blind Willow Sleeping Woman - Haruki Murakami
2. Night Train to Lisbon - Pascal Mercier
3. Blandings Castle - P G Wodehouse.

I looked high and low for Silmarillion by JRR Tolkein, but could not find it.  I also looked for Tristam Shandy, again, nah.

I am reading The Gin Drinkers by Sagarika Ghose at the moment.  It was pretty engrossing at the begining.in the middle it has palled a bit.  It is a story of a bunch of privileged class youngsters.  Sons and Daughters of IAS bigwigs, who are educated in Oxford and are expected to settle abroad and do something wonderful and lucrative.  Like any youngsters at their age, they are a confused lot.  To spice things up, there is a mysterious gang of kitab chors running around, picking up priceless books from private libraries at homes.  There have been a couple of tantalizing clues about the thieves, so far.

Sagarika Ghose writes fiction with a practised hand, to the manner born.  You can't say the same about many other journalists who venture into book writing.  There will be more on the book once I finish it.  But at the moment, despite the sagging middle, it looks like a very good read.  I love it when books are based in Delhi.  I love the city, its my second most favorite city in the world.  That is from my slim repertoire of course, once I have globe trotted my preferences may change.

Haruki Murakami - After Dark

After I read Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami, I picked up Norwegian Wood by the same author. Norwegian Wood was a sad love story about a young frail girl Naoko, whose high school boyfriend commits suicide. She falls into deep depression after that and has problem fitting in with life. Her boyfriend's best friend, Toru, befriends her and falls in love with her. However, her depressed state prevents her from forming any relationship and she leaves for a mental asylum. Toru meets Midori and they are drawn to each other. But with the shadow of Naoko hanging over him, Toru is unable to move on. It is a good book but I was fresh from the magic realism of Kafka on the shore and the book was kind of depressing.




Last Saturday, I picked up After Dark by Murakami from the library along with other books. I saved After Dark for the last, wanting to savour it.  A couple of days ago, the other stock exhausted, I opened this book.

Eyes mark the shape of the city.

The first line read. And I knew I was hooked. It is a slim book, mere 200 pages of the small size.

The novel delivers gloriously... Inventive and alluring

says David Mitchell of Guardian, on the blurb. Ditto, say I.

The novel is about what happens to people after dark. In the few hours from midnight to 5 AM when the world sleeps peacefully, there are some who choose to stay awake. Why do they do that? What is behind their wish to spend the night waking?

Mari chooses to spend the night waking as she seems to have missed the last train home. She sits in Denny's with a cup of coffee and is hunched over her book, reading with deep concentration. She is disturbed by Takahashi, a trombone player who knows her and more particularly, her beautiful sister Eri. Takashahi is here because he plays with his band in a nearby basement and is at Denny's for a midnight snack. Later he sends over the manager of a Love Hotel called Alphaville. A Chinese girl has been hurt and they need someone who knows Chinese to talk to her. All this time, Mari's beautiful sister Eri sleeps a sleep that is too perfect to be true.

At the root of everything is the troubled relationship between the beautiful Eri and the homely Mari who chooses to drown herself in studies. Takashahi has a troubled past too. He is an orphan who has been brought up by his criminal father and a stepmother. He is at a crossroad, having to choose between a career in Law and Music. He is very fond of Five Spot After Dark which made him learn how to play a trombone.



It is a night full of happenings and conversations and introspection which will transform the lives of Mari and Takashahi, and Eri's too, perhaps.

Murkami's magic is all over the book. You hear the music the characters talk about, you feel what they feel. He has this ability of making you see right into the soul of people.

Haruki Murakami - Kafka on the Shore

I can be highly suggestive when it comes to picking literature. I am more likely to pick up a book that has been written about well, and spoken of as a classic. It was this instinct I followed when picking up Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami. Why this one by this writer? Because Kafka is my favorite author and I liked the use of his name.



Some books are not written asking for appreciation. They exist and wait for you to pick them up to read. If you do so, YOU are rewarded, if you don't its YOUR loss. This is that kind of a book. It does not hang around waiting for you to award it 4 or 5 stars, it is 10 stars already, and if you recognize that fact, its your good luck.

Now, what kind of a genre does the book fall into? Is it a romance? Drama? Fantasy Fiction? A coming-of-age tale? A combo of the last two? It does defy compartmentalizing. What do genres exist for anyway? So that the bookstores and librarians know where to slot it?

I am asking a lot many questions, mainly because I am trying to find words and phrases to describe the book best, knowing I am going to fall short. Ok here goes.

Kafka on the shore is about a 15 year old boy who is trying to escape a horrific prophesy. To avoid it, he has to run away from home. On his travels he learns about life and that even if he cannot avoid fate, he learns to deal with it. He is also trying to find the answer to a question that dogs most children who have to do without a parent - Were they loved?

"Every time we wish for something with our whole heart, the universe conspires to fulfill it." We have heard this phrase a lot recently. Here in this book we get to see how exactly the universe conspires. We get a bit of 'behind-the-scene' activity that can qualify this books as fantasy fiction. But as the setting is our world, the 'other world' element is so well integrated, that it seems like an everyday happening. The 'niceness' of everyday happenings soften the blow of the bad things that are actually happening elsewhere.



Murakami is an intellectual with varied tastes, you can see as you read his book. And he wears his it on his sleeve proudly, quite like TS Eliot. His literature shows up his taste for western music, philosophy and literature quite unabashedly. He references a lot of a music and books and speaks about them through some knowledgeable character. I quite like the 'international' feel of the book. Though it is set in Japan, it is so contemperory, it could have been in any corner of the world. There are no overt 'cultural' references. No Japanese tea ceremonies or bowing or references to the ancient cultures being best.

The book is crazy, wild, sexy, original and simply fantastic.

What am I going to do next? GRIN. I am going to pick up some Beethoven music that Murakami talked about. I am also going to pick an anthology of Prince, a musician that I love and so does Murakami, and so did Micheal Jackson. Oh. I am going to pick up Norwegian Wood by the same author.