Penance

Crime And Retribution

The striking cover shows half the face of a beautiful woman, with a tear rolling down her cheek. Best-selling Japanese writer Kanae Minato’s 2012 hit Penance (already turned into an acclaimed mini-series) has just come out in Philip Gabriel’s English translation.

The story is dark and morbid, but absorbing enough to complete in a single marathon reading session.  Set in un unnamed town distinguished from other regular place by the purity of its air, Penance is the story of four friends, Sae, Akiko, Maki and Yuka, scarred by a childhood incident.

They are about ten years old when a new factory in their town brings an influx of city people, who look down on the unsophisticated residents.  Among them is their classmate Emily, who somehow joins the gang in spite of her superior ways.

Emily is raped and killed while the girls are playing by the school’s poolside. All four saw the killer, but when questioned by the cops, cannot recall his face.  Emily’s grief-stricken mother Asako accuses the children of abetting the crime, because the murderer is never caught.

The girls are shocked and traumatized by their friend’s murder, but are just about coming out of it when Asako, before returning to Tokyo, summons the four and tells them that they have to either catch the killer or perform a penance that would satisfy her, or she would find a way to take revenge against them.

The girls are too young to realise the rage and sorrow behind a mother’s words; their lives are marked by it, and affected in tragic ways. They all wreck their own happiness in the quest for atonement, because there is no way they can trace the killer.

The book follows the lives of each of them and examines how they engineer their own unhappiness—they are punished for a tragedy in which they played no part, and could not possibly have prevented.

The story may be a bit too schematic in the way the girls’ stories turn out, but Minato makes the reader care for them and also gives a sharp glimpse of contemporary Japanese society from the point-of-view of various mother-daughter relationships—fathers play little or no part in their childrens’ upbringing and seem not to interfere in household matters. When the horrific incident takes place, in the midst of the Obon (a Japanese festival to honour the spirits of ancestors), the mother rush to their daughters’ aid, the dads are supposedly enjoying their food and drinks with visiting relatives. Surprisingly, however, no mother understands her daughter’s plight, but a kindly policeman does.

For fan of crime novels, worth a read.

Penance

By Kanae Minato

Translated by Philip Gabriel

Publisher: Hachette

Pages: 240

The Sellout

Apartheid Alert

Caught it a bit late in the day but Paul Beatty’s The Sellout, that won the 2016 Man Booker Prize is a wickedly funny satire on race in America.

The narrator called Me starts his strange story with, "This may be hard to believe, coming from a black man, but I've never stolen anything." 

Me, also called Bonbon by his bus-driver girlfriend Marpessa, is a farmer in the small town of Dickens  in Los Angeles, dominated by Blacks and Hispanics. For reasons of his own, that involve an old Black actor called Hominy Jenkins who suddenly proclaims himself to be Me’s slave, called him “Massa” and begging to be whipped, Me decides to surreptitiously reintroduce racial segregation into the town, and finds that it actually raises the standards of living of the townsfolk.

Eventually, he has to stand trial at the Supreme Court and the journey to that point is profanity-laden, rambunctious and laugh-out-loud readable.

Coming in for particularly sharp lampooning are Black intellectuals, personified by For Cheshire who rewrites great novels into politically correct versions that read like, "Real talk. When I was young... my omnipresent, good to my mother, non-stereotypical African American daddy dropped some knowledge on me that I been tripping off of ever since."  

The book was reportedly turned down eighteen times before being picked up by a publisher and went on to become the first novel by an American author to win the Booker.

The Sellout

By Paul Beatty

Publisher: One World Publications, 

Pages: 304

The Width Of The World

Magical Fighting Spirit

The intriguingly titled David Baldacci book for young readers—The Width Of The World—is the third in the Vega Jane series. In the first two books, Vega Jane fought all kinds of creatures in a scary place called the Quag, that divides her town of Wormwood from the rest if the world. She escaped into a world she had never heard of, to a future she could not have imagined.

In book three, she and her pals Delph and Petra along with the one-eared dog Harry Two land up in a place that looks very strange to them; there are trams and trains that Wugworts, as the people from Wormwood are called, have never seen. They speak a different language—not all that distinct from English, but Vega has to memorize an encyclopedia to get by.

The enemy is a set of evil magicians called Maladons, who look like London bankers in pin-striped suits and bowler hats, but wield mean wands and spells.

Vega Jane has discovered her terrific magic powers, Petra is quite adept too; the ‘unmagical’ Delph is there to provide the good looks and create some romantic tension between the two girls.

What is surprising is that best-selling author Baldacci has written a book for young readers, in the chirpy voice of a sixteen-year-old girl. The series, is obviously inspired by the Harry Potter books, but has turned into a bestseller anyway, perhaps because young readers like non-stop action. The books have been snapped up for a movie series, to tap the teen or young adult demographic that turned page-to-screen franchises like the Twilight and Hunger Games into big money-spinners.

In this book, Vega Jane and gang, running away from Maladons, accidentally finds themselves in her in her ancestral home, where they could have lived safely for the rest of their lives, since the enemy cannot see it. But they discover that the Maladons capture innocent people looking for a better life in the city, and enslave them.

Vega Jane has to find a way to free them, turn them into warriors and lead an army all at the age of sixteen. Since kids today are practically unshockable, the violence is graphic and plentiful, but there are also magical creatures in the hidden mansion that serve as the house help, including a suit of arms that is a butler and a broom that is a chef.

It’s all quite crazy and delightful, but no match for Harry Potter; still a popular series has a young female leader in Vega Jane, who should serve as a kind of role model for girls. Book Three ends with a ghastly tragedy that no young person should be exposed to, and a definite promise for a Book Four.

The Width Of The World

By David Baldacci

Publisher: Pan Macmillan

Pages: 480

The Good Daughter

Maze Of Secrets

Dahlia Waller remembers being called Pet by her mother. But her memories are possibly muddled, because she did not have a normal childhood. She was dragged by her mother Memphis, from one place to another, usually at night, packing meager belongings into a car and heading for the next motel, trailer, or cheap rental, that did not require identification papers.

Alexandra Burt’s The Good Daughter, is a maze of Dahlia’s hazy memories of being poor, friendless and home- schooled; her mother working at menial jobs for cash, because of the lack of “paperwork.” After some years of this, they land up at the town of Aurora, which, unknown to Dahlia, is her mother’s hometown.

When she grows up and leaves home, Dahlia’s life is a miserable chain of dead end jobs, because of the same missing “paperwork.” She returns a few years later, and the two women form an uneasy bond. Dahlia is haunted by visions and snatches of memory she cannot place.

Her already troubled life is shattered further when, resting after a jog, she discovers the half-buried body of a woman in the forest. The woman is taken to hospital in a coma, and becomes headline news in the town. The case forces a reconnection with a childhood friend Bobby, now a cop.

A befuddled Memphis is found wandering around a deserted farm, and Dahlia discovers that it belongs to her mother. She is furious about having lived like a vagabond all those years, when her mother always owned a large property in Aurora.

Memphis seems to be getting frailer by the day and losing her memory; she starts to tell Dahlia the story of her past that has brought them to this pass. She starts with the story of the owners of the farm, the woman’s life marred by a horrific incident in her youth, that has scarred her for life.  As Dahlia tries to make sense of what is going on, the past and present converge, with Alexandra Burt trying up all loose ends. Even with some ghoulish goings on, the core of the book is about love, longing for the unattainable, and the search for an elusive peace. 

The book is focused on the remarkably strong Memphis and Dahlia, with the men in their lives playing catalysts in the tragedy, and final redemption of the women.  After some point, the suspense can be guessed at but that does not take away from the page-turner quality of the novel.

The Good Daughter

By Alexandra Burt

Publisher: Harper Collins

Pages: 400

Dangerous Games

Steely Women

Danielle Steel has been a best-selling author for so long, that she could probably write a book like Dangerous Games in her sleep.

It is a page-turner with ‘hit’ stamped on it, with Hollywood actresses lining up to option it for a movie—because it is such a simple novel, written in a matter-of-fact style with no unnecessary flourishes. There is a crime and a high-powered criminal, but since it’s not a whodunit, the reader knows right away who the bad guy is and wait to see how he will be tripped up. It must be said that Steel wrote a fitting punishment for the man.

The protagonist, Alix Phillips, is a television correspondent, with a particularly fearless temperament; along with her lone ranger ex–Navy SEAL cameraman, Ben Chapman, she rushes to the world’s most dangerous trouble spots, to report on wars, riots, scandals, protests and such. She keeps the channel’s ratings high, and her boss Felix Winters reserves the choicest assignments for her, while he battles anxiety and chronic acidity.

Her daughter Faye, was raised by Alix’s mother Isabelle, and now that she has grown up, she in equal measure proud of and exasperated with her mother’s choice of career over family.  Widowed early and disowned by her husband’s snooty parents, Alix loves her mother and daughter fiercely, but her work is her greatest love.

Felix tells Alix he has heard that the Vice-President Tony Clark, who is planning to run for the top office, is on the take. His image has, however, been whitewashed by his proximity to a much-revered leader Bill Foster, who was assassinated. His wife Olympia Foster, has turned reclusive, her only mission is to keep the progressive ideas of her husband alive. Clark is her only friend, and she does not know that her lonely but peaceful life is about to be upended.

When Alix taps her sources in Washington to find out more about Tony Clark—who has a trophy wife and a luxurious lifestyle—the FBI picks up the trail, and the matter is no longer a ratings bait, but one of top security. If a politician so high up in the hierarchy chain can be suspected of corruption, how much deeper could the rot be? As can be expected, Alix comes under threat when word of her investigation reaches the antagonist.

It is an engaging read, because Alix is the kind of woman who is a role model for today’s careerwomen. However, her independence and love for her work is emphasized over and over again, as is Ben’s fierce privacy.

The relationships—whether personal or professional—are nicely depicted; the taciturn Ben turns out to be quite the hero.  There are no real surprises in the book, and the bad guys are who you’d expect them to be, but Alix has all the makings of a franchise heroine, if Steel followed current trends. Who better than an intrepid journalist to expose the world’s ills?

Dangerous Games

By Danielle Steel

Publisher: Pan MacMillan

Pages: 306

Gandharvi

Music, Friendship and Love

The English translation of Sahitya Akademi Award-winning novelist Bani Basu’s 1993 novel Gandharbi  has been released. The translation by Jayita Sengupta is titled Gandharvi, and has a preface by musicologist and music critic, Meena Banerjee.

For those who have not been following contemporary Bengali literature, it is a good way to catch up.  Gandharvi (and there is an explanation of the term in the preface) is about a young woman, Apala, who belongs to an old-fashioned, middle-class family, that does not understand or value her passion for classical music.  Her mother is widowed and under the thumb of her autocratic elder brother-in-law.  Apala’s brother is getting set to become a doctor and go abroad—away from the oppressive atmosphere at home.  Apala learns from a kindly tutor,  Rameshwar Thakur, who wants the best for her, but even he cannot break walls of tradition that surround her.

The book begins with Apala rushing off home after participating in a very important music competition, in which she excels, but comes second. The gathering of music scholars and connoisseurs recognises in her a rare talent, and she is offered a prestigious scholarship to study with a great musician.  

Her uncle, however, frowns at the idea of her going to Lucknow and learning from a “tawaif”, and forces her to get married. Her husband-to-be heard her singing at the concert and decided to marry her.  Apala is not a beauty, nor is she outgoing and charming; so even though she would rather devote her life to music, she is not given the option.

Apala is meek by temperament, but when, just before her wedding, her friend Soham, also a singer and pupil of Rameshwar , has a nervous breakdown, she helps in his treatment by going over and singing for  him till he recovers. In a fit of jealous rage, Soham had attacked his guru’s daughter, Mitul, and injured her.  It is only Apala’s care that helps Soham recover fully.

In her marital family, she is given a kind of limited independence, that allows her to sing on radio and Doordarshan, but she is also expected to be a model housewife. She gives birth to three children and loses her edge, while Soham and Mitul go on to achieve fame and fortune singing popular songs.

For the protagonist of a novel, Apala is rather bloodless—she submits to whatever fate throws at her, whether it is a forced marriage, marital rape, her mother-in-law’s interference in the upbringing of her children, or even the hostility of her kinds towards her pursuit of music. The more complex character seems to be her husband Shibnath, who is caring and supportive on the one hand, and an unrecognisable monster on the other.  Apala’s friend Dipali and her doctor husband Bidyut are quite superfluous to the narrative, so is Mitul’s dance partner Shekharan. 

What Basu has done is captured the world of classical and popular music, even a bit of cinema and dance. The translation keeps to the usage of Indian English, but could have done with some more careful editing, for example terms like “business magnet” could have been corrected; some terms like horsetail instead of the more popular pony tail, are jarring.  But the Bengali milieu and the period come across well; there is also a helpful glossary of musical terms at the end. Classical music lovers would undoubtedly appreciate the book.

Gandharvi

By Bani Basu

Translated by Jayita Sengupta

Pages: 288