My favorite fictional characters

I have been tagged by Anu to write about my favorite fictional characters.

1. Calvin

As soon as one says fictional character, the first thing that comes to my mind is Calvin and Hobbes. Calvin has an amazing imagination (Hobbes himself is a fragment of his imagination!) and yet cannot solve a simple math problem. He hates Hobbes at times and still can’t stay without him. His arguments, sarcastic comments, reasons for doing something or not doing something, his naughtiness - almost makes me wish there was a kid like him around.

2. Jason Foxtrot

This boy is the uber geek from Foxtrot comics. Highly intelligent, looks forward to tests and exams at school. Video games and Mac are part of his staple diet. He has an elder sister and brother who he harasses for fun and helps them with their physics and math. This always makes me wonder how it would be if Calvin had a sister. Hmm…. that’s a thought, huh?

3. Caulfield Holden

No, I am not talking about the character from ‘Catcher in the rye’. This other Caulfield is a comic character from Frazz. The striking ‘resemblance’ in the name is intentional. Caulfield always reminds me of Calvin. Though Caulfield shares Calvin’s hatred towards school and education, he differs from Calvin in his love for books. Caulfield looks forward to summer holidays so that he can catch up on book reading and he dresses up as a fictional character for Halloween.

3. Christopher Boone

This little autistic boy from Mark Haddon’s ‘The curious incident of the dog in the night time’ is a character which expected sympathy from me but got admiration in return. The simple and unassuming life, ignorance about evil in this world and the sheer passion for anything logical - some things which I haven’t seen in any character, fictional or otherwise.

4. May Boatwright

The Secret Life of Bees is the last good book I have read. This character has stayed with me ever since. The main trait of this character is she can’t stand pain. Not physical pain, but the pain and sorrow that is so ubiquitous. She can’t stand anybody being sad or sorrow. Whenever she finds someone sad, she writes the name of the person on a chit of paper and buries it in what she calls ‘the magic wall’. This is her way of getting rid of sorrow in this world. Very touching book with memorable characters.

5. Characters in Tom Robbins’ novels

I have read two of his books so far (Jitterbug Perfume and Even cowgirls get the blues) and all of the main characters are fun. He comes up with characters with weird tastes and traits. A girl with a thumb as big as a tennis ball, a man who cannot stand female odor, a man who wants to conquer death, an angel which has a trademark odor… the list goes on. I like these characters only for their quirkiness and I admire the author for his imagination skills.

6. Hana

This main character from The English Patient is weird. She stays behind in the destroyed hospital to take care of the English patient and displays her loneliness through weird actions. She traces her footsteps on dust to make any visitor think that a person entered the room but never left it. She plays hopscotch all by herself. She talks to herself in her thoughts and so on. All the four main characters are special in their own way.

7. Earl and Mooch

The kitty and the doggy from Mutts. You got to read it to see how lovely they are.

8. Marvin

The chronically depressed robot from the The Hitchhiker’s guide to the galaxy’ series. His depression is so contagious, it makes you want to hate him.

The Music Room: Namita Devidayal

‘This book is a must for every musician and music lover!’ - Pandit Ravi Shankar says the front cover of the book and that was enough temptation for me to pick it up.

The book is about music and musicians. The main vein of the book is the life of Dhondutai Kulkarni, a highly regarded singer of the Jaipur gharana. Namita, the author, is a disciple of Dhondutai and this book is the singer’s life through the disciple’s eyes. The book begins with Namita meeting Dhondutai for the first time and being taken as a disciple. As Namita progresses in her musical journey, she unravels the life of her teacher.

While the majority of the book is dedicated to Dhondutai, Namita gives us a glimpse into the lives of Alladiya Khan, Bhurji Khan and Kesarbai Kerkar who all had been Dhondutai’s teachers at a point of time. The book doesn’t sound like a boring list of anecdotes and incidents. Namita intelligently weaves the present and the past and also manages to sneak in a thing or two about Indian music, its origin and its history. The latter happens to be my favorite part of the book.

Even for someone who is not interested in the singer as such, this book would still be fulfilling. It gives an overview of what a gharana is, how each gharana differs from the rest, the culture, and the much talked about arrogance of the singers. Namita even tries to justify why singers are short tempered!

The language is simple yet effective. The author does not waste too much time in listing her own life incidents. She states as a matter of fact that ’she got married’ or ’she had a son’ and so on. She has no confusions about who the book is about.

The book is visually pleasing. It has a black cover page with a woman sitting with a tanpura with her back facing. I found this picture so captivating, I would sit and ogle at the tanpura, its intricacies and what not. I wish the author was more creative in coming up with a book title. The Music Room is too plain for such an enriching book.

I completely agree with Panditji that this book is a must for every music lover. I will also add that even if you are not a music lover, you might become one after reading this book.

Interview with Jhumpa Lahiri

Jhumpa Lahiri talks about her latest book Unaccustomed Earth and lots more in this interview with Sheela Reddy. Her latest book is a collection of short stories.

Animal’s People: Indra Sinha

This book was shortlisted for Booker Prize 2007. Thanks to Booker, people are aware of this book and it has not gone unnoticed. I had heard good reviews about this book and many people even predicted this book will win. That is a compliment for the book and reason enough for me to pick it up.

The story is based on the Bhopal gas tragedy. The author has chosen to set his book in Khaufpur, a fictitious city, the name describing the effect of the incident. The narrator is Animal, one of the many victims of the incident ‘that night’. He is speaking into a ‘tape mashin’ (machine) left behind by a ‘Jarnalis’ (journalist). The victims of Khaufpur live with the hope of getting justice one day, in the form of compensation from Kampani, the factory which leaked poisonous gas that fateful day.

Animal is thus named because of his bent back. He walks on four and hence no longer consider himself a human. With mangled sentences and words (namisbond, jamisbond), it takes a while to get used to the book. Sinha peppers the whole book with enough swearing and cursing to an extent that it got on my nerves. Sinha tries hard to maintain the tension and tone, but wavers a bit in the later chapters.

The author weaves in other threads in the book. Elli and her sacrifices, Zafar and his ideologies, Nisha and her emotions, Somraj and his helplessness, and of course, Animal and his ‘heavy monster’.

The book is heavy, literally and figuratively. This book does not attempt at showcasing the poverty stricken, sympathy seeking India. There is one paragraph where Animal justifies India and its position to Elli. I think every foreigner should read this paragraph and hope some will change their outlook of India.

Kudos to Sinha for refreshing our memory by writing about the gas tragedy which has altered many lives and somehow has not been taken seriously enough.

My Sister’s Keeper: Jodi Picoult

I had heard a lot about this book and had to give it a try. I am glad I did. This is one of the most touching books I have read till now.

I did not know anything about the book, which was good in a way, because I was completely shocked when I started reading it. Kate and Anna are sisters. Kate, the elder one, is diagnosed with leukemia and can be saved by stem cell transplantation. She needs an exact match donor for this. Enter Anna. She is genetically created (as in the embryo is created) to become the exact match for her sister and the donor, the savior is born. Kate has a kidney failure and needs her sister’s kidney to stay alive. The story takes a turn when Anna files a suit against her parents claiming medical emancipation and refuses to donate her kidney.

The book is a mixture of different emotions of interesting characters. At the center of the book we have Anna. She is torn between saving her sister’s life and standing for her own rights. She shares a warm relationship with her sister and still refuses to donate her organ. Sara, Anna’s mother, is torn between her two daughters. She wants to save her daughter’s life at any cost and is shocked by Anna’s refusal. Brian, Anna’s father, agrees with Anna, but wants her to save Kate’s life. None of the character is sure of what he/she is doing. Some of the scenes are just too touching. I was crying in some places.

What I really liked about the book is the author’s ability to convince the reader that every character’s opinion is correct. When the focus is on Anna, I felt her reasoning to be logical and found myself supporting her. When the focus is on Kate, I sympathized with her. When the author was talking about Sara, I too felt torn between my daughters and couldn’t make up my mind which one I should support.

If you are looking for an emotionally heavy book and do not mind sniffling while reading, pick up this book. This may not be one of my favorite books, but this is one of the most memorable ones for sure.

The Secret Life of Bees: Sue Monk Kidd

This book reminded me of To Kill a Mocking Bird. The narrator in both the books is a girl child. Both have Black people and their rights as one of the main themes. And I loved both the books.

This book is about Lily Owens, a fourteen year old, who lives with the guilt of killing her mother, although accidentally. A fight between her parents turns ugly and Lily accidentally fires the gun and finds her mother dead. Lily cannot forgive herself for doing this and thinks the entire world judges her by this. Her father is not much of a help. Lily finds her repulsive, scary and disappointing.

Rosaleen, a Black woman, is Lily’s housekeeper. She gets in trouble with a bunch of white boys and is imprisoned. Lily musters courage and helps Rosaleen escape from prison and both of them run away from home. They end up in a beekeeper’s house. August, the lady of the house, June, her cynical sister and May, the child at heart find themselves liking Lily and Rosaleen.

Kidd’s writing is poignant and humorous at the same time. The story is told from the kid’s perspective and she questions certain ways of life just like a kid would. The adult in us laughs at the kid’s innocence and is forced to think about the underlying meaning. Kidd creates a world where human lives are so comparable to the life of bees and still not as superior.

Kidd creates memorable characters. August with her head above her shoulders comes out as the perfect housekeeper who knows her stuff. May with her condition of “not being able to differentiate between her own grief and that of the world” evokes sympathy and love. The idea of “the wailing wall” and the little notes she keeps in the crevices tugs at your heart. I almost wished I had such a wall where I could lose myself.

Lily is just what a kid should be - full of questions, curiosities, presumptions and expectations. Her questions are startling and thought provoking. Certain incidents are disturbing. It is interesting that a kid can describe an incident in such a plain manner and it still disturbs you.

An excerpt:

Knowing can be a curse on a person’s life. I’d traded in a pack of lies for a pack of truth, and I don’t know which one was heavier. Which one took the most strength to carry around? It was a ridiculous question, though, because once you know the truth you can’t ever go back and pick up your suitcase of lies. Heavier or not, the truth is yours now.

A quote about bees precedes every chapter of the book. This quote acts like a summary of the chapter. Kidd’s comparison of the queen bee with August, worker bee with May, and in general comparing the bees’ life with ours is simply beautiful. This book is not so much about the life of bees as about ours.

At the end of the book, I had a warm feeling and yet my heart felt heavy. I loved every word of this book and felt bad it got over so soon. I really want to give it a re-read. This is one of those books which remains with you for a long time.

Read this book.

The English Patient: Michael Ondaatje

The English Patient is set in Italy against the backdrop of the second world war. The book begins with the plane crash of an English man (nicknamed as ‘The English Patient’) who gets badly burnt in the crash. He is taken care of by a nurse, Hana. They live in an abandoned church turned into a hospital during the war. When all the other nurses and patients move out, Hana and her patient decide to stay back. The patient stays because he cannot be moved and Hana stays because she is in love with him. The book proceeds and we see the entry of two more characters, Caravaggio and Kip.

This book is about these four characters, affected by the war in their own way. It is about their love, their loss, their eccentricities and their lives.

The first thing that gets you is the writing. Ondaatje’s writing is like poetry - it is like free flow of a river. His choice of words, his description - it is a pleasure to read this book. No words can describe his skills, so let me just quote a few lines from his book.

She entered the story knowing she would emerge from it feeling she had been immersed in the lives of others, in plots that stretched back twenty years, her body full of sentences and moments, as if awakening from sleep with a heaviness caused by unremembered dreams.

The second best thing about the book is definitely the characterization. Ondaatje skillfully shows the oft quoted rule in writing, ‘Show; Don’t tell‘. He creates his characters and lets them reveal themselves through their actions. An incident in the villa, a character’s habit, an eccentricity, a thought, an opinion - these build characters like no character description can. Each character is so beautifully etched - they will remain with the reader long after reading the book.

I didn’t find anything extraordinary in the story. It’s a typical love story - a story of survival and loss and post-war effects. I really didn’t pay much attention to the story when I was gorging on Ondaatje’s words.

This is not one your run-of-the-mill books. Some may even find it heavy and slow. When you start reading this book, if you find yourself looking forward to the story and happenings, you should probably stop reading. Just enjoy the journey, relish Ondaatje’s exquisite writing and the book will be a treat.

This book may not feature in my favorites list, but Michael Ondaatje certainly figures in my favorite writers list - right on top.

An article on Jasper Fforde

If you haven’t read Jasper Fforde yet, then I urge you to do so. And so does Pradeep Sebastian in his article which appeared in Hindu this Sunday.

On Chesil Beach: Ian McEwan

After the heavy reading of The Accidental and On Beauty, this book comes as a refreshing breeze. This book is short and sweet and is over before you know it.

On Chesil Beach is about Florence and Edward, the newly weds who decide to go to Chesil Beach for their honeymoon. The book opens with the two of them sitting uncomfortably in their honeymoon suite and wishing that the dreadful moment of their marriage consummation never occurs. Florence thinks she is ‘odd’ because she has never felt the physical urge and she finds the very thought of it repulsive. She is a virgin, of course, and is not really looking forward to that moment when she has to give it up.

Edward, on the other hand, is perfectly normal and fantasizes about it and looks forward to it. His worry is that he might act too quickly and thus spoil his bride’s fun. The author captures this tense moment beautifully and the reader really wishes that the dreaded moment never occurs.

McEwan doesn’t waste too much time in setting the plot or establishing the characters. He directly takes the reader to the scene where the action is and then takes the reader back in time to give a bit of a background about his main characters. Neither of them had a normal childhood, so to say, and the reader tries to attribute the reason for Florence’s so called oddity to her childhood.

All credit to McEwan for handling such a sensitive subject in a graceful way. Be it his description or his choice of words, the reader never feels that it is vulgar. He gives it just the right amount of focus and importance to create the tension required.

The first scene in the honeymoon suite has constant switching of POVs between Edward and Florence and this made it difficult to read. Just as you begin to sympathize with Florence, the author suddenly drops you in Edward’s mind and then you are confused! I wish he had split the two POVs into separate chapters and may be describe the same scene twice in two different POVs. That would have been interesting.

The novel ends with an emotional note. Before the reader can react to the story, the author chooses to end it. I liked the book and wanted it to go on. I probably liked it because it was short.

This is a nice, little book, little being the key word here. Give it a try. If you like it, well and good. Even if you don’t, you don’t have to worry too much about it, because you won’t spend so much time reading it.

The following paragraphs contain some details about the book which may be termed as spoilers:

The uncomfortable night progresses and the two end up having a fight. The fight scene itself is narrated completely from Florecen’s POV. McEwan describes her emotions so beautifully in this scene. She is upset with herself for behaving in a certain way and her inner voice says she should apologize, but she suppresses it and puts the blame on Edward. This scene is so captivating. It probably would not have worked so well from Edward’s POV.

The couple decides to separate and the last couple of scenes is told from Edward’s POV. I wonder why the author chose to narrate it this way. The author does not even reveal what happens to Florence, apart from her dream of a live concert coming true. I would have liked it better if the last few scenes had Florence’s POV. I wanted to know what her emotions were after the fight and whether she felt she made the wrong choice.

My Name Is Red: Orhan Palmuk

I picked up this book after my friend’s recommendation. After reading Palmuk’s Nobel award acceptance speech, I was looking forward to reading more from him.

At the first glance, the book is a murder mystery. It also has a love story woven into it. Readers get to explore Istanbul and other towns in Turkey through the author’s eyes. One also gets a peek into Islam and its customs.

It is based in Istanbul and revolves around a group of miniaturists, painters and gilders who create manuscripts and books. The book begins with the murder of one of the artists and goes on to solve the mystery of who did it and why. Black can be termed as the main character of the book who is madly in love with Shekure. Her beauty is so generously praised all over the book, one eagerly wants to witness her beauty. Whenever I come across such descriptions (’the most beautiful girl who every man fell in love with’), I begin to wonder if such a woman can ever exist. I must admit, I am sometimes put off by such exaggerations.

The original book is written in Turkish and it has been translated to English by Erdağ M. Göknar. Though he has won acclaims for his translation, I found the sentences too long and flowery. In the later stages of the book, the language was actually a strain - I wanted someone to read the lines and tell me the gist of it.

Another problem area was the pace. Initially, the book moves really fast and somewhere midway, it slows down to a halt before picking up pace again. I feel the book could have been shorter - it was a little too long.

The best thing about the book is definitely the creativity of the author in writing the story from different perspectives. You must have heard about this many times now. He writes from the perspective of a tree, a dog, a gold coin, and even a corpse. I particularly enjoyed the chapter written from the perspective of a gold coin. The coin talks about moving from one person to another and about fake coins. This chapter had some philosophical undercurrent to it.

I happened to notice an error in the book. It was on page 276 in the edition I read. It is that part of the book where Stork, Butterfly and Black team up and go to confront Olive. Stork is wearing an armour and the chapter is narrated by Olive. He says ‘Olive in his shining armor’ or something like that. It should be Stork since it’s Stork who is wearing an armour.

This book is not one of the best I have read, but was not bad enough for me to ditch it. If you want a little peek into Turkey and its people, if you want to read a murder mystery, do read this book.