The Himalaya Club

Mountain Echoes

Australian writer and barrister, John Lang (1816-1864), is best known having defended the Rani of Jhansi in court against the British East India Company, but as this book proves, was a fine raconteur with razor sharp observations about life in India, under the British Raj in the nineteenth century.

The Himalaya Club and Other Entertainments from the Raj, a slim volume, with a very enjoyable foreword by Ruskin Bond (the Mussourie connection), has a selection of Lang’s writings. He wrote of the scandals, the court cases and the strange, often hilarious, goings on during his time in North India. He travelled quite a lot, and wrote with a tremendous sense of humour—not even sparing himself. The language may be outdated, but the writing still has punch.

The Himalaya Club
John Lang
Speaking Tiger
Rs 199; Pages 135

Luckiest Girl Alive.

Blessings Counted

TifAni FaNelli—that’s the way her name is spelt—is the tough heroine of Jessica Knoll’s latest bestseller, Luckiest Girl Alive.

By age 28, she has reinvented herself as Ani, the stylish editor with the upmarket, The Women’s Magazine. She has clawed her way up from her small town, middle-class past and as a badge of achievement flaunts the emerald and diamond engagement ring given to her by the rich, handsome and prize ‘catch’ Luke Harrison. The ring papers over any cracks she may have in her façade, but she cannot get over a terrible secret from her past.

By today’s standards, Ani (“Ahnee not Annie”) has it all—beauty, almost size zero figure, perfect hair, designer outfits and accessories, an enviable job, a doting fiancé, a splashy society wedding in a few weeks, when the strings start to unravel.

All through her teen years she is as embarrassed by her curvy figure as by her mother who drives a flashy BMW,  and wears garish make-up. Even as a child, Ani realises that, “Education, travel, culture — this is what any pennies pinched should be used for, never flashy cars, loud logos, or personal maintenance.”

It is all connected with what she went through at school, when she tried desperately to belong to the ‘It’ group of rich kids, who allowed her entry, but made her pay a terrible price. The humiliation she went through was enough to break another teenager; Ani survives with some help from a sympathetic teacher, Mr Larson, but not without major damage.

As if this public flaying was not enough, something worse happens – much later in the book when the reader feels assured that Ani is safe. It is this second incident that scars her psyche—why she is called “luckiest girl alive” has nothing to go with good fortune, quite the opposite, in fact.

Knoll has worked Cosmopolitan and Self  magazines, so she gets the initial cut-throat The Devil Wears Prada vibe perfectly. Ani is the superior bitch who judges other women by their appearance, so confident is she of her own perfection. But nobody can pretend all their life, is what Ani finally figures out.

Knoll’s book—dark and twisted below all that glamour—is being compared to Gillian Flynn’s mega-seller Gone Girl. The move rights have already been picked up by Reese Witherspoon’s production company, Pacific Standard, as was Gone Girl.  Knoll’s book is a damning critique of the sexism, misogyny and class snobbery built into American society, while keeping the tone chick-lit breezy, thus mocking the accepted conventions of the ‘women’s novel.’ 

Luckiest Girl Alive

By Jessica Knoll

Published by Simon & Schuster

Pages: 352

Autobiography of a Mad Nation

Insanity Unlimited

Sriram Karri’s Autobiography of a Mad Nation begins thus: “I was born in a mentally retarded country.”

That is enough to hook the reader—at least an Indian reader—who understands and identifies with the writer’s words.  Karri’s second book was longlisted for the Man Asian Literary Prize in and has enough merit to be on that enviable list.

Like Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children, the book hurtles through real events that India has witnessed in the recent past—the Emergency, Indira Gandhi’s assassination, anti-Sikh riots, the Ram Janmabhoomi episode and its aftermath, Mandal Commission protests, economic liberalisation, Gujarat riots. His journalistic credentials give Karri the ability to research well, contextualize and write in a direct and unpretentious style. There is, of course, enough masala in the story to convince the reader, that India is indeed mad nation, and getting worse by the day.

The book’s angry protagonist, Vikrant Vaidya, writes to the President of India to decide whether or not he is guilty of the crime (murder of a Muslim boy called Iqbal) for which he has been convicted. The President gets M. Vidyasagar, retired head of the CBI to investigate. And what emerges is a plot with many twists and turns and a cast of prominent characters, that places the blame for India’s insanity right where it belongs.

Autobiography of a Mad Nation

By Sriram Karri

Published by Fingerprint

Pages: 382

The Bone Tree

Going South

Greg Iles planned an epic trilogy about America’s Deep South, the centre of racism, violence and remnants of the white supremacist Ku Klux Klan gangs. The first was Natchez Burning, the second is The Bone Tree, the third is yet to come out.

It’s a massive amount of work and words, as his hero Penn Cage, lawyer, novelist and Mayor of   Natchez tries to keep his family together, fight entrenched corruption in the local police department and also solve past Civil Rights cases; he also gets embroiled in a quest to unravel the conspiracy behind JF Kennedy’s murder.

Without having read the first book, some names and incidents may not be clear, but that doesn’t stop the reader from going through 800 plus pages, gripping in most part.

A can of worms must have opened in the last book, which explodes in the second part of the trilogy. At the centre of the action is the unbelievably powerful and venal, Forrest Knox who uses his position as a police chief of Louisiana to run every crime racket possible. Like his equally evil father, Frank, before him, and his grandfather Elam (serial child abuser, whose bible is covered with human skin), he is the head of a racist group called the Double Eagles to which his crazy uncle Snake and cousin Billy also belong. He hopes to make a fortune in real estate after the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, by killing surviving black people and grabbing their homes.

Forrest is a formidable adversary for Penn Cage, who, when this story starts, is being tortured by a Double Eagles man Brody Royal, along with his new fiancée, local newspaper editor Caitlin Masters. They are saved by a journalist called Henry Sexton and another black man Sleepy Jonston (who must have had a bigger role to play in the last book), but Royal’s home is burnt to the ground, taking with it a lot of secrets; also throwing up some with the ashes and smoke.

An earnest FBI man John Kaiser is around to both aid and obstruct Penn— he is keener on following the JFK murder trail, than bothering about the immediate crisis. But everything leads somehow to the Knox family – a vile and demented bunch –and the Double Eagles.  What can solve many mysteries is the Bone Tree, a huge cypress that is somewhere in the middle of the vast Louisiana swamp, and the spot where Klansmen and Eagles dumped corpses of the women they raped and men they tortured.  Nobody talks about it or reveals its location for fear of inviting the wrath of the Knoxes.

Penn Cage’s father Dr Tom Cage and his buddy Walt are on the run, accused of murder. The cause of the Cage family’s current problems, is Dr Cage’s old nurse and lover Viola, who was raped by the Eagles and would have been killed years ago, but for the intervention of Dr Cage. To save her, he had to make a pact with a gangster, and unwittingly become a part of the Kennedy assassination plot.

Penn hides his mother and daughter and does everything he can to find and protect his father—the old man being virtually indestructible.  Meanwhile Caitlin and Kaiser’s photographer wife Jordan Glass take great risks to hunt for the Bone Tree.

There are dozens of characters, many subplots and a very complicated story that will continue into a third part. Fidel Castro makes a guest appearance when Jordan Glass goes to Havana to interview him. He is a link in the Kennedy killing chain, trying to keep Cuba from going the capitalist way. (“Sometime after I die, Cuba will revert to capitalism and the Walt Disney company will have Mickey Mouse running the damned casinos.”)

The Bone Tree is intricately plotted, and in spite of some slow and some implausible portions, very readable. A key character dies and one of the villains escapes to keep the story going into the next part.  All three together would make for an absorbing television mini series.

The Bone Tree

By Greg Iles

Published by William Marrow

Pages 804

The Nightingale

Remember The Heroines

History usually pays homage to the victors—the men who fight at the battlefront; how many care about the unsung heroism of the women they left behind?

Kristin Hannah’s bestselling novel, The Nightingale, set during World Ward II, pays homage to Frenchwomen who held the fort while the men were away. During the German occupation of France, there was an active underground Resistance, and many of those who risked imprisonment, torture and death were women. Sadly, when the War ended, they returned to normal life, looking after the wounded or mentally traumatised men who came back from the warfront, and, as it often happens, nobody asked about the women and their suffering. They themselves downplayed their courage, in the process of helping their country heal itself.

The book begins in 1995, when an elderly and terminally ill woman is being hustled by her well-meaning son,  Julien, into a nursing home. As she goes up to the attic of her home one last time, an old trunk revives the painful memories that had been buried. Her son knows nothing of her past, because she never told him stories about her family. She has been invited to Paris to attend   a ceremony to honour the passeurs—the people who helped fugitives—soldiers and Jews-- escape the Nazis.

In 1940, Vianne Mauriac, bids farewell to her husband Antoine who goes off to war. Left behind in the town of Carriveau, she looks after her small garden, teaches at the local village school and raises her daughter Sophie.

In Paris, her father Julien tries to reign in his rebellious daughter Isabelle, who is constantly expelled from schools, because of her behavior. When the unthinkable happens and the Germans invade Paris, there is an exodus from the city. Isabelle is also sent away to live with her sister, but by the time she reaches in a battered condition, she has met and fallen in love with the Resistance fighter Gaetan.

At Vianne’s home, she recovers from her bruises but not from her rage against the Nazis. She seeks ways of joining the Resistance, and her resolve is strengthened when a German, Captain Beck, is forcibly billeted in Vianne’s house. The Germans have looted every home in France, confiscated radios, taken charge of food distribution and made sure the French are starved, terrorized, broken in body and spirit. Women and children have to face bitter winters without wood for heating, adequate clothing or food—every morning they have to queue up for meager rations.  They can’t even share their troubles with friends and neighbors, because collaborators report real or imaginary infractions to the Nazis and anybody can be shot dead without a second thought.

Isabelle finally gets to join the Resistance—in the village, she distributes pamphlets, and on finding a way to get to Paris, she goes on to become the legendary Nightingale, who helps downed Allied pilots to escape over the Pyrenees into Spain.  The work is dangerous and the Nazis without mercy—it’s as if Isabelle has a death wish.

Captain Beck is a gentleman, but the Nazi who parks himself in Vianne’s house next is a savage. Still, under his nose, Vianne saves Jewish children whose parents are sent to concentration camps, by forging papers for them.

Isabelle is captured too, along with one of her Resistance friends, and sent to concentration camp, where the two endure unimaginable brutality.

Even though one picked up the book, without much enthusiasm, as yet another WW-II saga, it turned out to be a compelling read.  Kristin Hannah manages to grab the reader’s attention, evoking sympathy and admiration for the women who stood firm, while their lives were ripped apart during the War.

The Nightingale

By Kristin Hannah

Published by: St Martin’s Press

Pages: 448

The Longest Ride

Many Shades of Love

Nicholas Sparks’s bestselling novel, The Longest Ride, has already been turned into a movie (by George Tillman Jr.). He writes the kind of books that are made for the screen.

Two very different love stories unfold and come together in an unpredictable happy ending. In the first, 91-year-old Ira Levinson drives his car off a snowy road and is wounded. He is unable to extricate himself from the car, and in a haze he sees his dead wife Ruth appear to sit by his side and reminisce about the old days.  The second has bright student art history student Sophia, meeting a bull-riding cowboy, Luke, who is unlike any man she has come across before.

The two love stories belong to different eras, different class of people and very different families. What they have in common is the young lovers’ ability and willingness to transcend all barriers.

Starving, dehydrated and in pain, Ira keeps himself alive by going over his romance with Ruth. Both belonged to Jewish families, scarred by Hitler, World War II and the Holocaust. The shy son of an old-style haberdasher, Ira goes to war and is severely wounded. He comes back alive but with a disability that keeps him away from Ruth. In the end their strong bond survives and they go on to build a happy life together, and a home filled with beautiful art.

Sophia Danko, the daughter of immigrants who run a small town delicatessen, goes against her family’s wishes, and moves to college. She is just over a bad relationship when she runs into handsome cowboy Luke Collins. She is fascinated by the idea of his life on a ranch he runs with his mother, and his passion for the dangerous sport of bull-riding.

If in the case of Ira and Ruth, the similarity of their lifestyle and culture draws them together, it’s obviously opposites attract in the tentative romance between Sophia and Luke—they have nothing in common except curiosity about the other. 

Nicholas Sparks, best known for The Notebook and Walk to Remember writes in a simple, no-frills style, which is probably what wins him millions of readers.  Can’t say The Longest  Ride is a great book, but Sparks writes for his fans, and they have no complaints.

The Longest Ride

By Nicholas Sparks

Published by Grand Central

Pages: 464

A Curious Mind

The Right Q

Brian Grazer is the producer of such hits as Apollo 13, Splash, 8 Mile, A Beautiful Mind and 24.  He also managed to line up a series of celebrities for a “curiosity conversation”.  His book A Curious Mind, written with business journalist Charles Fishman, is all about the advantages of curiosity.  Which means the self-made man attributes his success to the belief that, “Life isn’t about finding the answers, it’s about asking the questions.” 

The book has many interesting vignettes from Grazer’s charmed life, from his childhood dyslexia to his encounters with famous people and how they helped him by answering his questions. For instance, when he went to meet the powerful producer Lew Wasseman he was told, “If there are a dozen ways to become a producer — having money, knowing people who have money, having connections, having friends in the business, representing movie stars or writers — if there are a dozen ways to become a producer, you don’t have any of them.”

Wasserman advised Grazer to write his own movie if he wanted to be a producer and that’s how Splash, the love story between a man and mermaid was created, even though it took seven years to reach the screen.

The first chapter begins with a quote by Dorothy Parker, “The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity” and plunges right into Grazer’s views on curiosity and how it was the guiding principle of his life.  A very entertaining and inspiring read.

A Curious Mind

By Brian Grazer & Charles Fishman

Published by: Simon & Schuster

Pages: 320

Hot Pursuit

Flying High

Hot Pursuit is Stuart Wood’s 33^rd book featuring the rich, high-flying, well-connected lawyer, Stone Barrington. Not having read any of the previous 32 books, I didn’t know what to expect.

The book begins with Barrington taking delivery of his new private jet. The one flying the plane and training him, is a young, blonde, amply endowed, female pilot, Pat Frank. In no time, they have hooked up, but he does not treat her as just another conquest; he helps her in many ways, and worries about her safety.  Turns out, she is being stalked by not one, but two, armed and dangerously nutty ex-boyfriends.

 The other track here is Barrington’s friendship with the new US President, Katherine Lee and her husband, First Gentleman, William. Because of this, he is invited to her swearing in ceremony at Washington and the many parties afterwards. For this, his date is the powerful Holly Barker, just appointed to join the President’s Security Council.

While Barrington is wining and dining with the New York police chief and an up-and-coming political figure Everett Salton at a super-exclusive club, the action shifts to Holly’s new assistant, Millicent Martindale, who, along with her FBI pal Quentin Philliips has to trace, three potential terrorists that have infiltrated the top echelons of Washington and London. The intelligence bureaus of both countries are roped into the thrill-a-minute tracking of the men they call Three Stooges.

But, there is the also lazy plotting-- two major problems are solved by people accidentally overhearing important conversations.  There is too much flying jargon as private jets zoom about, which is boring to read.  

The reader is treated to Barrington luxurious lifestyle and acquainted with his VIP pals, but he does not really do much. Since this is my first Woods book, I am not aware of Barrington’s past, but it appears his wealth comes from his dead wife; he has no special talent except flying and bedding the right women—though Woods skips the sex completely, the “business” is completed with a strange prudishness.  Stylish he may be, James Bond he is not!

Hot Pursuit

By Stuart Woods

Published by: Putnam

Pages:  352