Less

Travelling Heart   

Arthur Less, the protagonist of Andrew Sean Greer’s bestselling novel,Less, that won the Pulitzer Prize and many others, may be a middling writer, but is admirably aware of his shortcomings. When his latest novel is turned down by his publisher, he is disappointed and wonders what he did wrong.  Is his writing too poignant, as his agent alleged, or not gay enough, as another successful writer points out.

Later in the novel, he tells a female travelling companion, “It was about a middle-aged gay man walking around San Francisco. And, you know, his … his sorrows … ” The woman says, “A white middle-aged American man walking around with his white middle-aged American sorrows? It’s a little hard to feel sorry for a guy like that.”

Arthur Less is a gay white middle-aged American man, who seems to dare anyone to feel sorry for him. No matter what travails he goes through, he comes out unscathed somehow, and endears himself even more to the reader. When his younger boyfriend, Freddy, plans to get married to another man, Arthur cannot bear to attend the wedding and feel people’s pitying gaze on him, so he accepts all kinds of junkets offered to writers and embarks on a series of trips out of the country, just to have a valid excuse to escape. He also does not want to be alone on his fiftieth birthday that is coming up soon.

Less is described as “an author too old to be fresh and too young to be rediscovered, one who never sits next to anyone on a plane who has heard of his books,” but even he has one bestseller to his name, that makes him eligible for speaking and teaching assignments, seminars and awards-- “the crazy quilt of a writer’s life: warm enough, though it never quite covers the toes.”

Greer’s gentle satire makes fun of the literary world and the quirks of authors, while his protagonist is refreshingly free of the slightest nasty streak. The places he visits, the people he meets and the adventures he has make up the very enjoyable novel.

Fortunately or unfortunately for Less, the biggest achievement of his life has been his past relationship with a great poet, Robert Brownburn, and through him, a peripheral involvement with the Russian River School, that is suddenly going through a resurgence.

Mexico, Berlin, Paris, Morocco, Japan and even India figure on Less’s itinerary. In India he is booked into what he believes is a seaside writer’s retreat, but turns out to be Catholic mission in Thiruvananthapuram. While he hopes to rework his novel in peace, he is thrust into the noise (three places of worship blare through the day) and endless bustle of the town.

What could have been a tragedy about mediocrity and heartbreak, turns out to be a comedy about a man who bumbles through life with such charming innocence that a rival actually envies him for having “the best life of anyone I know.”

Less:

By Andrew Sean Greer

Publisher:  Lee Boudreaux Book/Little, Brown

Pages: 263

Unsheltered

No Roof In Sight

When there are promises of making America great again, a family in Barbara Kingsolver’s Unsheltered, goes through the kind of financial crisis a middle-class person could suffer, anywhere in the world.

In one of the two interconnected stories, over a century apart, fifty-something Willa Knox, is told that her house is falling down, and it does not make sense to repair it. Willa, a journalist, no longer has a job after her magazine folded up, and she has come with her charming but clueless professor husband Iano Tavoularis, to live in this dilapidated house in Vineland, New Jersey, after the couple upped and moved for years chasing tenure in some university that would offer them stability.

The already precarious condition of the family is further strained, because her husband’s bed-ridden father, Nick, lives with them, his condition is getting worse, and their insurance package is inadequate for his medical needs. Then their daughter, Antigone aka Tig, returns from a stint in Cuba that she refuses to talk about; son Zeke, loses his wife, his job and home and moves back with his newborn son, expecting help and free childcare.

At an age when they should be planning for retirement, Willa and her husband slide down the ladder to a point where it feels like they are starting over from scratch. “It’s like the rules don’t apply anymore,” Willa says. “Or we learned one set, and then somebody switched them out.”

This family unit seems to personify what is wrong with contemporary America—Nick is a rabid right-winger, the opinionated but caring Tig is fiercely anti-capitalism, while Zeke, burdened with a huge debt and start-up dreams, still believes in the American dream.

The chapters of Unsheltered set in the 1870s, tell the story of impoverished school teacher, Thatcher Greenwood, who lived in the house that Willa moved into, and which was crumbling even back then. That was the time when an autocratic entrepreneur, Captain Charles Landis, founded what he hoped would be a Utopian community of Vineland, that he could control. Living across the street is Mary Treat, a self-taught naturalist, who conducts experiments at home and corresponds with Charles Darwin, whose ideas on evolution are causing ripples in the Church and its devout followers. Thatcher admires and befriends Treat (a real-life distinguished female scientist, rare in the 19^th century), that does not go down well with his bigoted employer or his self-absorbed wife.

There is no real connection between the two stories, except the house, but Kingsolver vividly writes about the problems—political, spiritual, intellectual and financial—between the two eras, and how two sets of people fight against seemingly hopeless circumstances. "Without shelter we stand in daylight," Mary Treat says to Thatcher Greenwood. Kingsolver's wonderful book makes the reader aware that everything the thinking person holds dear is in danger of collapsing, and seriously contemplate the need to build a society with ideas that are progressive, humane and inclusive.

Unsheltered

By Barbara Kingsolver

Publisher: HarperCollins

Pages: 480

Long Road To Mercy

Core Of Steel

After the inimitable character of Amos Decker (not to mention Will Robie and John Puller), bestselling author David Baldacci launches a new series with a remarkable female character, Atlee Pine, a fighting-fit FBI special agent with a “core of steel”, who, by choice, lives and works in a remote area near the Grand Canyon, called Shattered Rock. She has a backstory— when she was six years old,  her twin sister, Mercy, was abducted and murdered by a ruthless serial killer. Her parents broke up after that and her father committed suicide. For years, Atlee’s survival instincts wiped out traces of the trauma, but when she reconstructs it with the help of therapy, she becomes obsessed with finding out what happened to her sister.

However, this track is introduced and put aside, for the next book perhaps, as she is called upon to investigate the killing of a mule in the Canyon, and the disappearance of the rider, Benjamin Priest. It seems like an open-and-shut case—how far could man go in that wilderness?-- but Atlee soon has the load of officialdom landing on her head. She cannot understand why powerful people in her own bureau, the army and higher-ups in the government are so concerned about a dead mule.

She is warned off pursing the case, but she and her spirited secretary, Carol Blum, a sixty-year-old mother of six, go rogue (“like Thelma and Louise”) in a vintage Mustang, to investigate on their own, and run smack into a global conspiracy, involving the Russians and North Koreans.

The reason for the murderous mayhem unleashed on Pine and anyone else who gets wind of the big secret is absurd enough to be plausible in today’s crazy world, run by deranged leaders.

Long Road To Mercy is not one of Baldacci’s best, it tends to go all over the place, and then spend too much time with Atlee hiking in the Canyon. But still, he is a master of the thriller, and offers the reader a loud enough bang for the buck in the winning climax. The further adventures of Atlee Pine will be keenly awaited.

Long Road To Mercy

By David Baldacci

Publisher: Grand Central

Pages: 404

Past Tense

Follow The Father

Jack Reacher, is a remarkable character created by Lee Child, a former army man who decided, on leaving his job, that he would never settle down. So he keeps on the move, with just the clothes on his back, some money and his toothbrush in his pocket. He has no destination in mind, and goes wherever a bus, or a car giving him a lift takes him. He stays in any motel on the way, and eats wherever he can—the life of a modern-day gypsy. The very tall, well-built Reacher never looks for trouble, and if at all he gets into a fight, it is to protect someone who needs help. He can beat up the best of them, with his honed instincts, impeccable technique, and hands that are described as “big as dinner plates.” 

In Past Tense, the 23^rd book of the bestselling series, Jack Reacher finds himself near Laconia, a small town in New Hampshire, and recalls that his father, Stan Reacher, was born there. He decides to go to Laconia and look for the family home.

Meanwhile, in another track, a young Canadian couple, Shorty Fleck and Patty Sundstrom, drive over in a battered car, hoping to start a new life in the US. Their car breaks down, the place where they find themselves stranded has no cell network and no cars driving by. They find a motel deep in the forest, and get a room there, with the cheerful owner promising to get their car fixed the next day. Between one thing and another, they find themselves unable to leave. Mark and his three cohorts, all smiling and helpful, imprison them for a purpose so sinister, that it would be tough for the reader to guess.

 The two tracks do not actually converge till much later in the book, but Reacher and Patty have a strange spiritual connection; several times in the book, they wake up at one minute past three, with some kind of primeval warning bell ringing in their brains.

Reacher believes his self-assigned errand is simple—go to the country office, find the record for his family,  take a look at the house and leave. But, to his surprise, no Reacher shows up in the search, which just makes him determined to try harder.

He cannot stay out of trouble, however, and fells with one flying fist, in two separate instances, a man harassing a woman, and another beating up an old man.  The families of the wounded men have the kind of connections that would have a mob coming after him. Reacher finds a helper in the old man called Burke, who drives him around, when Laconia’s top cop, Brenda Amos wants him out of town to prevent gang shootouts in her peaceful jurisdiction. But, the way things happen, every time she looks up, there’s Reacher breaking her rule, when all he is trying to do is solve the puzzle of the Reacher clan missing from official records.

It’s a surprisingly humorous and fast-paced book, and when Reacher’s laconic character, who leaves a trail of broken bones wherever he goes, encounters the very smart and spunky Patty, there is a savage, fight-to-the-finish climax. For Lee Child fans, a very satisfying read; those who discover Reacher so late in the day, there are twenty-two books to go, and you can’t stop at one.

Past Tense

By Lee Child

Publisher: Delacorte

Pages: 400

The Death Of Mrs Westaway

Magpies And Mystery

Hal, the small, dark-haired and spunky heroine of Ruth Ware’s suspense novel The Death Of Mrs Westaway, belongs to the new list of young women who are in distress, but do not wait for a  prince to rescue them.

Harriet ‘Hal’ Westaway is in dire straits. Her mother died suddenly in a hit-and-run accident, and the 21-year-old has no money and no prospects. She makes a precarious living as a tarot reader on a touristy pier in Brighton, and when the novel opens on a stormy night, gets a threatening letter from a loan shark. There is also strange missive from a lawyer promising her a legacy from her grandmother’s recent death in Cornwall. Hal is puzzled because her grandparents died years ago.

 A visit from the loan shark’s thug casually wrecking her kiosk and talking of broken bones, makes Hal spend her last bit of cash on a ticket to the village, where she hopes to be able to bluff her way through the inevitable interrogation by the other members of the Westaway family and their lawyer.

 After the funeral, she is taken to the cold, stone mansion, Trepassen House, infested with raucous magpies and without central heating, where a scary housekeeper, Mrs Warren (soul sister of Rebecca’s Mrs Danvers), installs her in a freezing attic room, that looks and feels like a prison cell.

 The Westaway family consists of three brothers, their partners and kids, and a missing sister, Maud, whose daughter Hal is assumed to be, but knows she is not. She hopes that if she is caught out, she will get away pretending it was a case of mistaken identity. She also hopes, she will receive a small bequest that will help her pay off her debts and manage for a few months. But what happens next, throws her completely off balance—first literally, as she faints from cold, damp, hunger and stress, and then gobsmacked when old Mrs Westaway’s will is read out.

She realizes that she has some connection with the family, more so when there is an attempt to kill her. Mrs Warren warns her to get out, and at least one of the Westaway men is not at all happy with the terms of the will.  Ruth Ware expertly builds up layers of suspense; Hal’s story is interspersed with that of a young woman who was locked up in the very attic where Ruth finds herself, and scratched “Help Me” on the glass—everything about the place spooks Hal out, though the Westaway family—particularly an aunt-- is kind and solicitous.

Best-selling author Ruth Ware does not dilute the story with needless romance or other diversions; The Death Of Mrs Westaway is a solid Gothic suspense novel, and the reader discovers the mystery of Hal’s past, as she stumbles on clues.

The Death Of Mrs Westaway

By Ruth Ware

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Pages: 384

The Blue Lotus

Collected Wisdom 

Meena Arora Nayak writes in her excellent book The Blue Lotus: Myths And Folktales of India, “This vastness of over three thousand years of storytelling is difficult to fathom, even for an Indian. Most Indians have an idea of the country’s general ethos that derives from the overarching pan-Indian traditions; however, people living in one part of the country have little idea of folkloric traditions in another part.”  Which is so true, and all the more reason why the work the author put into this volume should be highly appreciated. Her selection of stories from a very deep and wide pool, gives the reader a wonderful insight into the diverse narratives of the country. There are the great epics, the Vedas, Puranas, Upanishads tales from the Panchatantra, Jataka Tales, Kathasaritsagar and a treasure trove of stories from the various religious texts and folk tales from the various linguistic groups and tribes of the country. It is impossible to encapsulate them into one volume, but the author has categorized them beautifully, written some evocative notes, and listed such exhaustive references, that this delightful volume could lead the curious reader to many more. The Blue Lotus is for collector to keep and dip into from time to time; and perhaps for parents to read to their children, so that they are introduced to the rich cultural and spiritual heritage of India through stories that are as full of magic and adventure as they are replete with wisdom.

The Blue Lotus Myths And Folktales Of India

By Meena Arora Nayak

Publisher: Aleph

Pages: 584