John Updike - The Widows of Eastwick

Updike's Rabbit series has been on my to-read list for a very long time, so I'm not quite sure how my foray into his world started with his final book, published in 2008. And, as the blurb on the back didn't say anything about this book being a sequel of sorts to The Witches of Eastwick, which is also kind-of unfortunate for I approached this book as standalone. Which it possibly isn't. That said though, this book can easily be read in isolation. It's just that, sometimes, context is a good thing. But, anyway... The Widows of Eastwick follows three witches who used to be friends in their youth, but have since gone their own separate ways, in marriage and parenthood. However, once their husbands have died, and the children move away, the "three old ladies, gone brittle and dry in their corruption" reunite.

As widowed Americans, they travel - first it's Alexandra who goes to Canada alone, and then it's Jane and Alexandra who go to Egypt together, and finally, the coven come together with Sukie, as they travel to China. This part of the book reads more like a travel brochure than a piece of fiction, and while descriptions are normally a good thing, this was just incredibly slow-moving, and had me longing for an uptick in pace.

The wait didn't last too long, for when the witches visit the hometown they had run away from one summer, things start getting interesting. They gather that their crimes from the yesteryears would be forgotten by now, and nostalgia coupled with curiosity leads them back home. It doesn't sound plausible, but as a reader, you go with it, for you want to see why Updike is taking the witches back to the scene of their past crimes - is it atonement, or is it for the victims to exact revenge?

The homecoming isn't quite what they imagined. Eastwick has unsurprisingly changed over the years, from the fun hick place they all remember,  to a homogenised one. For the most part, they are forgotten, but they meet Christopher Gabriel, who blames the witches for the unfortunate demise of his sister - and he is looking for recrimination by casting spells on the witches using electricity. This is serious mumbo-jumbo territory. The witches look to magic, in an effort to protect themselves, but... is it too little too late?

I hate saying this, but the book really did leave a lot to be desired. None of the protagonists were in the least likeable. Forget likeable, I couldn't even relate to them at any level. The story came across as forced and instead of witchcraft, the theme seemed to be about three old ladies repenting their past - or the past they couldn't have.

From the reviews I've read, this does not sound like Updike's best work, so I suspect there will be more Updike on my reading list soon, for if nothing else, his writing is quite accessible (which surprised me). What would you recommend? And, should I go back to read about the shenanigans of the witches in their youth?

Thomas Keneally - The Tyrant's Novel

Schindler's Ark was one of those books that left me speechless; the story, the writing, the emotions it evoked. Everything, basically. A couple of months back, I picked up The Tyrant's Novel from a second-hand bookstore, just to see how it would compare to the 1982 Man Booker Prize winner. In a nutshell, this book is not a patch on Schindler's Ark. The location of the book remains ambiguous, although it's easy to reach the conclusion that the book is set in Iraq, and the dictator, referred to as Great Uncle is none other than Saddam Hussein. The reason for the ambiguity of the location and its dictator confused me. Perhaps it was down to the fact that it was a fictional novel. Or then, for the same reason as The West Wing, where Qumar is a fictional Middle-Eastern country, which represents the worst of all extremist Islamic states.

The narrator of this book, Alan Sheriff, has been commissioned by the Great Uncle to write a novel addressing the injustice of the sanctions imposed on the country by the international world. The book will be published under the name of the Great Uncle, and the objective of the book is to initiate some debates in the literary circles in the States, in order to get the G7 nations to re-think their stance. The deadline imposed to Sheriff is nothing short of unrealistic (one month), and as this narrative within a narrative progresses, one just gets the feeling that the novel leaves a fair bit to be desired.

At the very outset, Sheriff, who is narrating his story, says that this is the saddest and silliest story you will ever hear. The tinge of self-deprecation coupled with the curiosity it arouses is a great way to start the story. It immediately draws the reader in. In a way, it's a tall order - recanting a story that's both, the "silliest" and the "saddest". But then, despite being set in the Middle-East, all the characters have Western names, which is, in a way, inexplicable. The author, through his protagonist, does attempt to justify this, but it's an unconvincing argument.

"I would very much like to be the man you meet in the street. A man with a name like Alan. If we all had good Anglo-Saxon names...or if we were not, God help us, Said and Osmaa and Saleh. If we had Mac instead of Ibn."

Is there really that much to a name? Would it make a difference if Saddam had a different name? Or Osama? Would their crimes be considered any less trivial? Would their fates end differently? All rhetorical questions.

I digress... Back to the story:

The deadline imposed on Sheriff has been done so at a time when he's suffering from a serious writer's block. His wife is recently deceased, and all the materials for his second book have been laid to rest with his wife. He doesn't really have much to go on for this novel that he's been commissioned to write. And, if not written by deadline day... well, we all know how that story ends.

The emphasis seems to be on how completely powerless and helpless Sheriff is, as the powers that be seem against him. To quote Mark Twain, at this point:

There are many scapegoats for our sins, but the most popular is Providence.

And he's just one man trying to make sense of his reality. As are probably very many other men living in that dictatorship, as they desperately try to figure out their lives, and strike a balance between their personal demons (griefs) and the political terror that haunts them every waking minute. It's not a life I would care for, needless to say.

Sheriff's story is fascinating; specially as he talks about how he ended up at the asylum, which is where he's sitting as he tells his story. But, even as he ends his story, it doesn't change the world. All said and done, it doesn't really matter. In the grand scheme of things, it's fairly insignificant. But despite that, it's a story that needs an audience, and it's a story that's worth listening to. In a world where we take freedom for granted, and our fundamental rights are something we can't live without, this story serves as a reminder that even now - even in the twenty-first century - history is being made, and we haven't really moved on from dictatorships of the past.

I do want to read more works by Thomas Keneally, but I'm not quite sure where to go next. Any recommendations?

Neil Gaiman - American Gods

This book was recommended by the same person who introduced David Mitchell (number9dream) to me. It was then recommended by another colleague who borrowed number9dream from me. So, it had to be read. 590+ page chunkster or not, it had to be read. I finished it about a month back, and my head's been reeling since. I don't really know how to pen my thoughts down, for this book is epic. But - I have to do better. I have to, at least, give it a shot. So, here goes nothing.

American Gods is literally about American Gods, and how they immigrated to the Americas with their believers, back in the day. Centuries (and generations) later, people have lost faith (as they do), but the Gods continue to live - or exist - as they try and find their place in the new age, when new Gods of technology, media and television have taken the place that originally belongs to them. With the impending storm, a battle is brewing - a battle between the gods, to see which ones survive, and which ones fade into nothing.

“Gods die. And when they truly die they are unmourned and unremembered. Ideas are more difficult to kill than people, but they can be killed, in the end.”

Shadow, recently released from prison, only to discover that his wife has died in unfortunate circumstances is approached by Wednesday - a man who has many-a-trick up his sleeve. He hires Shadow as a driver of sorts, and so begins the journey to the heart of America, a road trip a la On The Road.

“This is the only country in the world," said Wednesday, into the stillness, "that worries about what it is."

The rest of them know what they are. No one ever needs to go searching for the heart of Norway. Or looks for the soul of Mozambique. They know what they are.”

The journey is to gather up all the old Gods to lead them to the battleground, and fight the new Gods. Yes, even Gods have power-struggles!

The paradigms were shifting. He could feel it. The old world, a world of infinite vastness and illimitable resources and future, was being confronted by something else—a web of energy, of opinions, of gulfs. People believe, thought Shadow. It’s what people do. They believe. And then they will not take responsibility for their beliefs; they conjure things, and do not trust the conjurations. People populate the darkness; with ghosts, with gods, with electrons, with tales. People imagine, and people believe: and it is that belief, that rock-solid belief, that makes things happen.

And then there's poor Shadow stuck in the middle, haunted by the physical presence of his dead wife, trying desperately to find some kind of solace with coin tricks, and get over the events of the recent past, and make some sense of the current events: the Gods, the carousel that spins till he reaches the place with the statues of the Gods, disappearances of people, and a myriad of characters - some human, and some, well, Gods. If it's not one thing, it's another. Even in the unlikeliest of places. But, that possibly, was the biggest problem with Shadow's character - despite being Wednesday's driver for most of the book, he really is just a passenger; passive and just along for the ride, while things happen in spite of him. An unlikely protagonist, some might say. Unlikely compared to say, his dead wife, Laura, or the enigmatic Wednesday.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book, and you can expect to see a lot more Gaiman on here! It's a hell of a ride, and in parts, it's exasperating, but all said and done, it's absolutely worth a read!

And to finish off, one extremely long quote (shamelessly copied from the internet), which I absolutely loved:

“I can believe things that are true and things that aren't true and I can believe things where nobody knows if they're true or not.

I can believe in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny and the Beatles and Marilyn Monroe and Elvis and Mister Ed. Listen - I believe that people are perfectable, that knowledge is infinite, that the world is run by secret banking cartels and is visited by aliens on a regular basis, nice ones that look like wrinkled lemurs and bad ones who mutilate cattle and want our water and our women.

I believe that the future sucks and I believe that the future rocks and I believe that one day White Buffalo Woman is going to come back and kick everyone's ass. I believe that all men are just overgrown boys with deep problems communicating and that the decline in good sex in America is coincident with the decline in drive-in movie theaters from state to state.

I believe that all politicians are unprincipled crooks and I still believe that they are better than the alternative. I believe that California is going to sink into the sea when the big one comes, while Florida is going to dissolve into madness and alligators and toxic waste.

I believe that antibacterial soap is destroying our resistance to dirt and disease so that one day we'll all be wiped out by the common cold like martians in War of the Worlds.

I believe that the greatest poets of the last century were Edith Sitwell and Don Marquis, that jade is dried dragon sperm, and that thousands of years ago in a former life I was a one-armed Siberian shaman.

I believe that mankind's destiny lies in the stars. I believe that candy really did taste better when I was a kid, that it's aerodynamically impossible for a bumble bee to fly, that light is a wave and a particle, that there's a cat in a box somewhere who's alive and dead at the same time (although if they don't ever open the box to feed it it'll eventually just be two different kinds of dead), and that there are stars in the universe billions of years older than the universe itself.

I believe in a personal god who cares about me and worries and oversees everything I do. I believe in an impersonal god who set the universe in motion and went off to hang with her girlfriends and doesn't even know that I'm alive. I believe in an empty and godless universe of causal chaos, background noise, and sheer blind luck.

I believe that anyone who says sex is overrated just hasn't done it properly. I believe that anyone who claims to know what's going on will lie about the little things too.

I believe in absolute honesty and sensible social lies. I believe in a woman's right to choose, a baby's right to live, that while all human life is sacred there's nothing wrong with the death penalty if you can trust the legal system implicitly, and that no one but a moron would ever trust the legal system.

I believe that life is a game, that life is a cruel joke, and that life is what happens when you're alive and that you might as well lie back and enjoy it.”

The pantheon of Gods unleashed on the readers is like a deep-dive into the world of mythology. The gods, incarnated as ordinary imperfect people, grace the pages, and reading about their past is fantastic. In fact, some of those bits were the most interesting in this chunkster, which I did fly through. It's a long-winded meandering book, with plenty of detours and excessive digressions, some of which are relevant and some of which not. At times, Gaiman does ramble on for a bit, but his writing is incredibly witty and for the entire book, he keeps the reader (well, me!) hooked.

Hilary Mantel - Wolf Hall

When Wolf Hall won the Booker Prize in 2009, I was slightly disappointed. It was one of those books on both, the longlist and the shortlist, that I didn't want to read. I can't quite put my finger on what it was, but there was zero motivation to read the book. A couple of weeks back though, I pulled it out from my Chunksters shelf, and decided to give it a go, prepared to abandon it midway. But, from the minute I started it till the time I turned the last page, I was totally mesmerised, and was kicking myself (not literally) for not pulling it down sooner.

Wolf Hall, at 650 pages, has Thomas Cromwell, 1st Earl of Essex, as the central character. While it's set before and during the English Reformation, the focus is not King Henry VIII or Anne Boleyn; instead, it's the man who was the King's right-hand man.

But - how does a boy, a blacksmith's son, who doesn't even know his own birthday - get to be the King's favourite, and play such an instrumental role in the events that shaped British history? That's the angle Mantel has approached this book from. Fictionalising some of Cromwell's life, while following the actual historical events of the 1500s, she casts Cromwell as a sympathetic loyal family man and not the devil that everyone thinks he is. What is actually incredible is though, while portraying him as the hero (and not the anti-hero), Mantel does share what everyone around Cromwell thinks of him, and some of the things said are far from flattering. The high opinion the reader has of Cromwell though - it never changes. It doesn't even waver. Haunted by personal tragedies, his father's wrath, experiences abroad after running away from home post being victimised by his father's drunken beating once again, Cromwell's rich character shines through.

The Reformation is essentially about King Henry VIII wanting to divorce Katharine the princess of Aragon to marry Anne Boleyn. To do this, the Church of England is forced to break away from the authority of the Pope and the Roman Catholic Church, as the Pope would never void a legitimate marriage. King Henry VIII insists that Katharine was not a virgin when he married her, thereby meaning the marriage was never actually legit.

"Some say the Tudors transcend this history, bloody and demonic as it is: that they descend from Brutus through the line of Constantine, son of St Helena, who was a Briton. Arthur, High King of Britain, was Constantine's grandson. He married up to three women, all called Guinevere, and his tomb is at Glastonbury, but you must understand that he is not really dead, only waiting his time to come again.

His blessed descendant, Prince Arthur of England, was born in the year 1486, eldest son of Henry, the first Tudor king. This Arthur married Katharine the princess of Aragon, died at fifteen and was buried in Worcester Cathedral. If he were alive now, he would be King of England. His younger brother Henry would likely be Archbishop of Canterbury, and would not (at least, we devoutly hope not) be in pursuit of a woman of whom the cardinal hears nothing good: a woman to whom, several years before the dukes walk in to despoil him, he will need to turn his attention; whose history, before ruin seizes him, he will need to comprehend.

Beneath every history, another history."

Real-world events of historical significance, the wars and economic concerns and a rich cast of characters all come together in Wolf Hall. The significance of the title is not lost on the readers as well. As Mantel says in an interview:

Wolf Hall, the Seymour House in Wiltshire, is where we're going at the end of this book. But of course, I chose it primarily for its metaphorical resonance: who could resist it? The whole of Henry's court is Wolf Hall.

Cromwell makes everything his business, his loyalty, first to the disgraced Cardinal and then to the King unequivocal. His occasional thoughts about Anne, who he doesn't really seem to like, are hilarious though.

A little later he hears that Anne has taken wardship of her sister's son, Henry Carey. He wonders if she intends to poison him. Or eat him.

Anne really doesn't come across as a likeable character or Queen though. Instead, the Princess of Aragon seems to have a lot more character, and subsequently, a lot more respect from Cromwell. His interactions with both are delicate, as he tries to make peace and do what is right by the King - not questioning him - which might, in fact, be his biggest failing. It's almost a case of the Henry saying "Jump" and Cromwell replying with "How high?"

Even when Thomas More is in the Tower, awaiting his punishment for not condoning the divorce or the split from Rome, he tries to prompt him to ask for forgiveness, saying Henry's a compassionate monarch. And it's parts like this that makes Cromwell come across as a nicer person than history might indicate. Obviously, certain chunks are fictional, but to take a hated character from history and to turn him into - well, Cromwell in Wolf Hall does take serious talent.

The power struggles, the jealousy, the humour and the emotional baggage that everyone's carrying - it all comes across, so stark, so clear, that every character is ambiguous. There's no black and white. There's no sinner, there's no saint. It's a lot like the real world today - everyone has their place, and everyone has their endgame. To manage that with such a myriad of characters (we actually do meet practically anyone and everyone who was involved in the Reformation, or had a part in Henry's Court or knew Cromwell) is incredibly commendable, and I found it quite difficult to judge the characters or find out if I liked them or not. Cromwell and his family though - loved them to bits. And the Cardinal.

My only gripe with this book was the way Mantel referred to Cromwell - always in the third person pronoun: He. Occasionally, paragraphs and pages had to be re-read, but that's a small gripe compared to just how fantastic I thought the rest of this book was. There is meant to be a sequel in the pipelines, and I can't wait to read that. Off we go to Wolf Hall, and see what transpires next...

Not a Rat’s Chance in Hell Challenge (or, Am I Inherently Masochistic?)

Sarah is hosting the Not a Rat’s Chance in Hell Challenge, and for some reason I signed up. Maybe it's because I am inherently masochistic, or maybe, I genuinely think it'll make me a better reader. I'll copy and paste the ten categories from her post, along with the book on my shelf that matches the description. Hats off to Sarah for coming up with this list.

1. A book that has been previously abandoned Irène Némirovsky - Suite Française or, Jane Austen - Mansfield Park
2. A re-read. Didn’t quite get it/thought there was more/made promise to self to re-read? Time to make good. Anita Brookner - Hotel Du Lac or, Harper Lee - To Kill A Mockingbird
3. A book that has sat on the shelf, like, forever. (Decades.) Philip K Dick - The Man In The High Castle
4. A book that paralyses one with dread. Oh my god. Umm, there is, Gravity's Rainbow and 2666, and being a masochistic, I recently purchased The Savage Detectives. It's got to be one of those! Or, Wolf Hall.
5. Investigate a canonical writer hitherto most shamefully overlooked. Thomas Hardy - Tess of the D'Ubervilles The Return of the Native
6. Seek out a book by an author who has earned ostracism by being so good that any further novel could surely never measure up…? J.D. Salinger - For Esmé – with Love and Squalor
7. And the opposite… That author who was supposed to be really good, but didn’t go down too well? Give him/her another go! I might be manipulating this single one in my favour, but something by Nabokov. I found Lolita too twisted, and couldn't quite finish it, but I loved his writing, so... Alternatively, Peter Carey's The True History Of The Kelly Gang. I can't even begin to describe how much I hated My Life As A Fake, so...
8. Take a chance. Read a book which you would rather not. For instance when the OH says ‘you’ll really like this’ and you’re thinking ‘no, I really won’t…’ Hmm... let's leave this one for now. Other than chick-lit, I'm a pretty open-minded reader, so, let's see.
9. A book from an unfamiliar genre. Isaac Asimov - Foundation
10. Ask a friend (preferably a person of impeccable taste, and definitely not someone who might have an axe to grind) to choose a book that you will, in their opinion, like. (This does not mean ask a dozen people until you get the right answer!) Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn - Cancer Ward

I'm not sure if I'll finish this challenge - think I'll come up one or two short, but hey! It's not called Not A Rat's Chance In Hell for nothing. I think at some sadistic level, Sarah actually expects us to come short... :)

I am actually really excited about this challenge though - I mean, there are so many contenders for some of the categories that the mind boggles. For example, on investigating a canonical writer - well, I've not read any Tolstoy, the Brontë sisters, Bolaño or Umberto Eco. It's actually quite embarrassing, if you think about it.

As for books sitting on my shelf for decades: I bought both, Tess of the D'Ubervilles The Return of the Native and Mansfield Park about eleven years ago, and they've sat pretty for all these years, probably (possibly?) judging me.

So, are you tempted to join in? The more the merrier, and all that? What would you choose in each of the categories, IF you were to join?

More importantly, have you read any of the books? Is it going to be a smooth or extremely bumpy ride? Looks like a really tall climb though...

Edit #1: I pulled out Thomas Hardy's Return of the Native instead of Tess, so edited the post to reflect the same. Ooops. Sorry!