Elevation

A Lightness Of Being

Stephen King’s slim new novella, Elevation, packs in more heart and soul into its pages than many doorstopper tomes. It is kind of scary too, but not in a ghost-and-ghoulish way.

King fans would remember his 1984 novel, Thinner, in which a man is cursed with endless weight loss. In the new book, healthy and happy-go-lucky 42-year-old Scott Carey, discovers that he is losing weight at an alarming rate, but that makes no difference his 230-pound appearance—he gets lighter but does not lose mass. He has reason to be unhappy—his wife left him; but also to be happy—he got a well-paid work assignment.

Scott goes to see a doctor friend, Bob Ellis, who tells him, “I doubt very much if this is something that can be scientifically investigated.”  Scott does not want be turned into a science guinea pig and media freak, so decides to keep his strange condition to himself, swearing the doctor to secrecy.  It would seem like a dream to some, to be able to eat as much as they want without putting on weight, and having surplus energy to run a marathon, but nothing comes without a tragic price.

Going alongside Scott’s affliction, is the hostility faced by his new neighbours, a married lesbian couple, that has moved to the town of Castle Rock to run a vegetarian Mexican restaurant called Holy Frijole, which is on the verge of closing down for lack of patronage. Scott’s starts on the wrong foot with the more aggressive of the two, Deedee (the other partner is the mild-mannered Missy, a chef), by politely telling them that their dog is crapping on his lawn. He soon realizes that the women have more serious issues to deal with. When he gets into a scrap with a bully to defend his neighbours, Deedee gets inexplicably angry. His civility is so rudely rebuffed that he can only say, “All I want, is for us to be good neighbours.”

The conservative town does not want the Deedee and Missy flaunting their ‘otherness’. A character comments to Scott, “The county went for Trump three-to-one in ’16 and they think our stonebrain governor walks on water. If those women had kept it on the down-low they would have been fine, but they didn’t. Now there are people who think they’re trying to make some kind of statement.”  And just like that, King, gently slides in politics, intolerance and rigid social attitudes.

The book is simple, heartwarming (in spite of the cliché of a white male savior of women in distress) and stands for simple kindness over strident political correctness. It can be read in one quick sitting, but its impact on the mind will stay longer.

Elevation

By Stephen King

Publisher: Scribner

Pages: 160

Holy Ghost

Something About Mary

In John Sandford’s eleventh Virgil Flowers novel, Holy Ghost, the investigator is faced with an elusive sniper in a newly prosperous town.

Wardell Holland, the mayor of the beleaguerd town on Wheatfield, who had lost a foot in Afghanistan, spends his time literally shooting flies, till precocious teenager John Jacob Skinner comes up with a fraudulent but harmless scheme to alter the town’s fortunes. When the Virgin Mary appears in the town’s church, the devout flock to Wheatfield. The direct beneficiaries are Holland and Skinner, whose new store is right opposite the church.

Then two people are shot in apparently random attacks, and Wheatfield is in danger of going losing all its recent gains.. Flowers of the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, is summoned to help solve the case. He reluctantly leaves his pregnant girlfriend Frankie (quite a character, but she has little to do in this book) and drive to Wheatfield.

When the gun used in the killing is identified, its owner, Glen Andorra, turns up dead, shot in his home, with one of his own guns—of which has plenty, since he runs Wheatfield’s shooting rage. That makes one thing clear, the killer is from the town, and knew Andorra. Virgil believes that if he can find the motive, he will be able to catch the killer. The smartalecky Skinner is sure that the motive is money, but whose money, and who gains in a cash-strapped town? Holland is, of course, worried about the financial implications if the religious tourists are scared way by the sniper.

Sandford populates the novel with a cast of amusing characters—the top being Holland’s mother, who runs a café with such inedible food that Flowers and the other cops who land up for another case, have to survive on packaged junk from Holland and Skinner’s store, which also ends up being the cops’ headquarters. The dialogue is witty, the wisecracks fly thick and fast; the only small problem is that track that leads to the killer is not quite linked to the humorous set-up, but that does not take away from the enjoyment of the novel. John Sandford is, as Stephen King is quoted saying, “one of the great novelists of all time!' High praise indeed from the master of horror and suspense.

Holy Ghost

By John Sandford

Publisher: Putnam

Pages: 400

The Labyrinth Of The Spirits

Out Of The Maze

When Spanish writer Carlos Luis Zafon wrote The Shadow of the Wind in 2001 he created a book lovers’ paradise, in the form of a cemetery of forgotten books, a secret mansion made of endless walls, corridors and columns of books, preserved for posterity. Only a few are allowed into the maze, and if they are initiated, they are allowed to take one book which they have to protect for life.

The huge success of the first book (translated by Lucia Graves), led to three more,  The Angel’s Game, The Prisoner of Heaven and the last in the series, The Labyrinth Of The Spirits—a magnificent, sprawling epic of a novel (800 plus pages), an absolutely riveting saga of Spain under General Franco, a country seething with unrest, intrigue and politically-motivated atrocities.

Alicia Gris is introduced in this book, a young woman, who, as a child, lost her family during the Spanish Civil War when the Nacionales (fascists) mercilessly bombed Barcelona in 1938. She was rescued by a young Fermin Romero de Torres (from the earlier books), who stowed away in a ship to Barcelona, escaping the sadistic Inspector Fumero, to carry a message for Alicia’s mother. While they were separated in the melee, Alicia found herself in the huge, mysterious library, where her life was saved, but she was left with a burn injury that causes her unbearable agony, and also painful memories that refuse to fade.

The suave and sinister Leandro Montalvo pulled her out of the streets and inducted the beautiful and enigmatic woman into the secret police in Madrid, a job she excelled at and hated. Leandro promises to release her, if she does one last job—tracing the missing Minister of Culture, Mauricio Valls.

She is paired with a reluctant partner, an older policeman, Juan Manuel Vargas, and they make their way to Barcelona, where the key to the mystery lies, and somehow the Sempere family of booksellers is involved.  Alicia discovers a possible clue—a rare book by the author Victor Mataix in Valls’s office in his forbidding Madrid mansion. Valls used to be the director of the dreaded Montjuic Prison in Barcelona during World War II, where several writers were imprisoned, tortured and possibly killed, including Mataix.

As Alicia and Vargas start investigating, they almost uncover a dark secret that imperils their own lives. Nobody seems to be what they claim to be, and nobody can be trusted; there is danger, deceit and a trail of crimes committed by the corrupt and powerful men in Franco’s tyrannical regime. They have left behind a system that has thrown up ruthless men like Valls and a frighteningly vicious cop called Hendaya.

In the first book, just before the Spanish civil war Daniel Sempere, the son of a bookseller who was one of the cemetery’s curators, selected a novel called The Shadow of the Wind by an obscure author, Julián Carax, and that is linked to the chain of the fourth book. The two middle books added writer David Martín, and in the last, is Victor Mataix, creator of a series of children’s books, called The Labyrinth of the Spirits; whose life and work hold the solution to the problems in which Gris and Vargas are caught up.

There are passionate romances, complicated subplots, references to classic literature, and stories within stories—the whole effect is that of a jigsaw, which readers can get lost trying to solve, till Zafon decides it’s time for them to fit all pieces of the puzzle and emerge into the light.

While he tells his stories, Zafón also comments on the political and religious censoring of what are considered ‘unsuitable’ books, and also conjures to vivid word pictures of Barcelona and Madrid. He is truly a magician of words and Lucia Graves translation captures his imagination and occasionally florid style, especially when Fermin speaks, “like a book,” a young character complains.

Readers who have read the earlier three books, would enjoy this one much more, but it works quite well as a standalone novel too.

The Labyrinth of the Spirits,

By Carlos Luis Zafon (Translated by Lucia Graves)

Publisher: Orion

Pages: 882

Flights

Wandering Heights

Polish author Olga Tokarczuk’s novel Flights, translated by Jennifer Croft, won the Man Booker International Prize earlier this year, for translated fiction. It is not strictly a novel, but an intertwined bunch of pieces and stories about travel.  Most of the book is set in airports, railway stations, hotels, cars on the road, and gives a dizzying feel of dislocation.

The book begins with a narrator who likes the idea constantly being on the move. She says, “Clearly, I did not inherit whatever gene it is that makes it so that when you linger in a place you start to put down roots. . . My energy derives from movement — from the shuddering of buses, the rumble of planes, trains’ and ferries’ rocking.”  

Interspersing the voice of this restless modern-day gypsy, are digressions like random observations about travelling, and stories of other travellers, the most disturbing being the one about a man whose wife and child go missing when they are on vacation. Tokarczuk whips up tension and suspense and then abandons this track for a bit, to look at other people and their experiences, none of which give the reader a sense of an ending.  These fragments of stories and observations range from the banal (sanitary pads!) to the macabre, and could be like things that happen to everybody when they travel, but don’t always come to a neat conclusion, because it is time to move on to a new place. Still, the narrator who does not like the idea of naming or describing experiences, says, “Do not leave any unexplained, unnarrated situations, any closed doors; kick them down with a curse, even the ones that lead to embarrassing and shameful hallways you would prefer to forget. Don’t be ashamed of any fall, of any sin. The narrated sin will be forgiven. The narrated life, saved.”

It may not be a book to be read at a go, but dipped into from time to time, to get a dose of humour, wisdom, curiosity and introspection.

Flights

By Olga Tokarczuk

Translated by Jennifer Croft

Publisher: Riverhead

Pages: 416

Alternate Side

Parking Woes

At the centre of Anna Quindlen’s Alternate Side is an ordinary incident of a parking quarrel that could occur in any teeming city with more cars than space to park them. The unexpected burst of violence goes on to become a study of urban angst, fractured relationships, class and racial differences and the sheer cussedness that stress brings about in the most civilized of people.

Set in a posh Manhattan neighborhood, where people live in designer homes, throw catered parties, have their kids raised by Jamaican nannies and their toilets unclogged by Hispanic handymen, it is seen from the point of view of Nora Nolan, who has an enviable job as the director of a Museum of Jewellery in New York; she is so good at her work, that is constantly being pursued by others to head their non-profit initiatives. While her husband Charlie’s career as an investment banker, is on the decline, even his boss tries to woo Nora which causes some friction in their already fraying marriage.

The crisis that shatters the peace of the neighbourhood is caused by a Jack Fisk, an unpleasant lawyer hitting the colony’s handyman Ricky Ramos with a golf club and breaking his leg, because his van was blocking the entry to the precious, much-coveted parking lot. If the lawyer is not to be sued for all he’s got, he has to prove in court that it was an accident. Charlie and the men of the close-knit community decide to back the lawyer, and Nora is appalled. She has always been the type to do good, help the housekeeper and handyman with things her family no longer uses, or give money to the homeless man outside her workplace, but her smugness is dented by Ricky’s furious wife, Nita.

Alternate Side has focused on a very small and privileged section of New York, but the briskly-paced novel with a dash of dark humour, is an incisive look at emptiness of urban lives and tensions simmering under seemingly happy homes.

Alternate Side

By Anna Quindlen

Publisher: Random House

Pages: 304

Calypso

Families Are Made Of This

David Sedaris writes in a funny way about everyday things that most people won’t notice—like shops at the airport trying to sell you stuff you don’t need, but he can expertly blend humour with empathy and pathos when he writes about subjects like aging, depression, suicide. His family and long-time partner Hugh appear in many of the essays in Calpyso—pieces that are part fictional, and always engaging. 

His regular readers know about his large brood—there was his loving but alcoholic mother who died years ago, his old and tetchy father, who lives alone in a messy house, but won’t move out or accept help; there is a bunch of siblings, their spouses, a supersmart niece, and enduring memories of sister Tiffany, who committed suicide. (At some point on the book Sedaris confesses that he slammed the door on the troubled and troublesome Tiffany and never saw her again.)

Calypso, Sedaris’s tenth collection of story-essays has a lot more of his family in it; the joyous times spent in the amusingly named beach cottage, Sea Section, on the North Carolina coast, where the clan gathers regularly for holidays—the house that that Sedaris and Hugh purchased to fulfill the wish that,  “one day I would buy a beach house and it would be everyone’s, as long as they followed my draconian rules and never stopped thanking me for it”. There are anecdotes around the house—like the time his sister Lisa and he went for a walk on the beach and could not figure which of the near-identical sea front cottages was theirs.

Sedaris writes about getting obsessed with his fitness device and spending hours walking (“Before, once we’d eaten dinner, I was in for the evening. Now, though, as soon as I’m finished with the dishes, I walk to the pub and back, a distance of 3,895 steps”), and cleaning up trash on the way while he is out and about, so that a garbage truck is named after him. In another hilarious episode, a reader, who claims to be a doctor, removes a tumour under Sedaris’s skin, which he then collects to feed to a turtle.

If he writes with humour about his family's belief in ghosts, his sister's encounter with a psychic of his father's admiration of Trump, he can turn the smiles to tears when he writes about the shame of incontinence. There is a fine balance of light and darkness in Calypso to make it amusing as well as deeply poignant.

Calypso

By David Sedaris

Publisher: Little, Brown

Pages: 288