Mailbox Monday/It's Monday - What are you Reading?

Mailbox Monday is a meme sponsored for the month of March by Diary of an Eccentric.

This meme hosted by Sheila at Book Journey.

I had three wonderful books come into the house this week. Two were purchases and one was a win.

A Pulitzer prize winner.

A psychological thriller. Also quite representative of the statement be careful of what you wish for! you may not like what you get. Nadine is so keen to look for her birth mother and what she unravels is not exactly what she was looking for.

The third was the book win. A real chunkster on Julia Child from spicelines. A delightful blog not just on cooking but so much information on everything related to food.

Reviews on my blog have been particularly slow whilst I try to balance home in Colombo and home in Rozella (where there is no internet). Book reading goes on apace though.

Right now reading Middlesex. Once I finish this one I get on to a couple of books by Sri Lankan authors - Ru Freeman's A Disobedient Girl and the hilarious, tongue in the cheek humour of a Sri Lankan author J B Muller who writes specifically about the Burgher community in Sri Lanka. The Burghers are of mixed race - either Dutch, Portuguese or British who have married into the local communities and whose numbers are declining in this country today.  They have contributed immensely not just to the civil service, but also to the development of the English language and have added greatly to our culinary traditions.

Looking forward to visiting other blogger's mailboxes.

Review - Thrity Umrigar's BOMBAY TIME

I was waiting for this book for a very long time. Thrity Umrigar has been a favourite author of mine for ages and this book did not disappoint. The beauty of the story is that the doings of the families of Wadia Baug (a block of flats in Mumbai) are set amidst the wider scope of the Parsi community at large. You finally end up knowing quite a bit about Parsis in general and the residents of Wadia
Baug in particular.

The story is of Rusi a businessman whose dreams of becoming another Tata has failed. He is moderately successful but not to the extent that he wanted. We also have his embittered wife Coomi who cannot really pinpoint her animosity and anger towards her husband. She is just dissatisfied, bitter and angry at the turn of events. The story of Rusi and Coomi and their daughter Binny who has made a life for herself in England is set against the stories of Jimmy and the catalyst of the story is Jimmy's son's lavish wedding banquet.

The wedding forms the setting for the story of all who gather to celebrate the event. From Tehmi who married and who was widowed tragically after just three years of married bliss and who has almost withdrawn from the world, to Dosamai widowed with a married son who has moved as far away as possible from her, to the very happily married Bomi and Sheroo and Adi Patel who flits from one woman to another and is never satisfied we have the broad outlines of the people who inhabit the flats and how their lives have mingled from the time they were young couples and with growing children. Now the couples are middle aged and children married and they are introspective as to how their lives have changed and what their present focus in life is.

The story is representative also of the different stratas of society found in Mumbai. We have the Parsis generally considered a very educated, business minded community who are forward thinking, English educated and who consider themselves a cut above everyone else! Originally from Persia to escape persecution they sought refuge in Mumbai and ended up holding key positions in the civil service under the British. This consolidated their hold on society in Mumbai especially in the business sector. We have on the other hand the teeming poor of Mumbai waiting for the guests to finish eating so that they could partake of the remnants and for them the remnants were the feast. This seems to highlight the differences in this society which I presume remain to this day. It does not augur well for society in general when the gap between the haves and the have nots is so very wide.

I was so struck by the Parsi community that I want to do a bit of reading on this tiny community of under 80,000 (worldwide). The book gives you an insight into Parsi customs and traditions but it is a small intriguing  look only. The fascinating tradition regarding how Parsis view death and how they deal with death in their Towers of Silence is also fascinating reading.

Would highly recommend this book not just from a family story point of view, but also an insight into Mumbai and this small community still managing to survive maintaining all its traditions and customs.

Review - Jodi Picoult's The Tenth Circle

Most of Jodi Picoult's books deals with families and often families who are troubled. This one is no exception. A simple teenager's inability to cope with love and heart break, the resultant disasters it
brings about and a father's main focus to protect his daughter at whatever cost.

Trixie is in high school when she falls in love with Jason who dumps her. This would be the normal teenage angst but for Trixie it is heartbreak because she believes that this is love of the everlasting kind. She is also willing to do anything including sleeping with other mates of Jason in order that he will get jealous and maybe realize what he is missing.  Reading even this part of the story was for me very difficult.  Trixie was able to get through her everyday life with personal crisis after crisis and her mother and father were not aware of what was happening.

Both parents were loving, considerate parents. The father had been the sole caregiver of Trixie whilst the mother went to work. At this time the mother was also involved in an affair with a student and she was in her own little world unaware that her husband was fully aware of what was happening. Maybe he too did not want to acknowledge that his whole world was changing before his eyes and not for the better and he preferred to be an ostrich and pretend that nothing was happening. When he did open his eyes it was far too late.

One night at a party with Trixie drunk and having consumed drugs, she comes home with a tale that she was raped by Jason. To everyone around her Trixie was asking for it. It also perplexed Jason himself who could not believe that she was bringing the charge against him. Jason was a popular boy and this divided everyone in college into camps. In Trixie's camp there was only herself because everyone knew that she was mad for Jason and had repeatedly told her friends she would do anything to get him back.

The story goes on from there but it is definitely controversial, and you do get sucked into the story. This is a very strong book and it will linger in your mind for a long time.

Will be away from my computer for another four days!

Review - SATURDAY by IAN McEWAN

The story covers a man's life for one day - the whole of Saturday. It is not an easy task to compile a book which was quite chunky into one day without getting very boring and I was doubtful at the start whether I would finish this book but it turned out to be quite different.

Henry a neurosurgeon starts out his normal day but due to a series of incidents - some violent - his whole world is turned upside down as a result. Even the minute description of his family is brought into the orbit of this ordinary day. It also points out what I just read in another book that the whole story of what if I had waited behind for one minute more to pet the dog, or water the pot plants - would my life have been totally different as I would not have faced whatever dire incident I did. Fate seems to be also part of the scenario.

The day begins with Henry witnessing an airplane crash landing at Heathrow. Envisaging a major disaster he realizes later on it is a cargo plane, the pilot has successfully landed and what he imagined as a human carnage is not to be. This early violent beginning of the day at 4 am is somehow indicative that the day is not going to go in its normal routine.

The whole of the day constitutes Henry's thoughts and actions - and the bizarre events of a demonstration in London has its own effect on Henry and his family. The effect of one action having an effect on the next - a series of consequences is the highlight of the story. At times the description of Henry's thoughts was a tad slow and you really wanted to know what was happening next because you knew that something had to happen. You always knew that the end would be explosive - you just wanted to get to that.

My first read of this author. For anyone who likes introspective literature this is a must read.

Review - Cynthia Harrod Eagles - The Question

I am back to the series and each one is even better than the last! Set in 1898 there seems to be conflicts on every side. This particular author highlights how the family copes in every situation imaginable - set within the broader framework of the world outside the smaller world of the Morland clan. The continuity of the family despite hardships, deprivations and death (so many deaths due to wars, such a tragic waste) must be the identical story to so many families who may be able to identify with such families. The carnage of war, specially during this early period with the lack of hospital and medical facilities at its crudest would have accounted for casualties in equal measure as in face to face combat.

It is almost the end of the Victorian era and the mighty Queen who held it all together is not there to continue her strong hold on Britain. It is also a time of crisis for the women's movement in Britain. It is almost unimaginable for a modern woman who has the vote and who takes it almost for granted, to understand the suffering and the harassment that women faced in obtaining the vote. The fact that men could not even visualize a world where women voted, or where a woman had a career of any kind is also difficult to even read about.

The Boer War comes into focus in this book mainly because of one of the Morland's involvement in it. The futility of war is specially marked in this one - even the soldiers not knowing what they were fighting for, though everyone went into it initially in very high spirits.

On the home front Teddy Morland is doing his utmost to upgrade the family fortunes and with Henrietta's family coming into the house - the house is full of life. There is also very importantly, the introduction of the motor car which is a huge step forward in the field of transportation though the horse still remains a very important part of the Morland economy.

I love the way the Morlands become involved in every aspect of the era - one goes to fight the Boer war, one is at the bedside (almost) of the Queen when she is dying as she is one of her most faithfull Ladies in Waiting and one woman is actually imprisoned in support of the suffragette movement.
This involvement of the Morlands brings the actual events much closer to one.

Another very good book.

Mailbox Monday/It's Monday - What are you Reading?

Mailbox Monday is hosted this month by Diary of an Eccentric.

Hosted by Sheila at Book Journey.

The books received this week are the balance loot from my friend.

V S Naipaul's Magic Seeds - a classic

Described as a class act!

Another best seller!

Shortlisted for the 1999 Booker Prize. Seen this on several blogs this week

Described as a most evocative writer.

The century's most explosively hilarious novel of far-out sexuality.  Looking forward to this one.

Have a good week.

Review - Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt

A memoir set in a background of impoverished Ireland and America this was a harrowing tale with undertones of much sadness as well as dry wit and humour. Unimaginable difficulties faced by a toddler right up to adulthood - unimaginable to the average middle class child of today.

Set in the 1930s and 1940s this book should be made compulsory reading - not just as a lesson for more privileged children (the usual eat all your vegetables, children in third world countries are starving sort of story) but for children to know what sheer grit and determination is to overcome all this.

The story of Angela married to drunk Michael and their numerous children. One by one the children die off - due to illnesses brought on by malnutrition and neglect and Frank as the eldest becomes the man of the family even at the age of ten where he knows exactly what is happening in the world around him.  That a child has to be forced to grow up so soon, not to enjoy his childhood, even simple pleasures and then you have the contradictory condition of him enjoying his father's songs and stories despite knowing what kind of a man his father actually is.

You knew right at the beginning that Frank will overcome all the disadvantages thrown at him and somehow come up trumps but I did wish that it was not such a harrowing story to get there.

Am back from Rozella ready for the new week! have done lots of reading this last week. What I left behind....