Book Awards Reading Challenge

Saleem Sinai, our narrator, was born on August 15th, 1947, just as the clocks stroke midnight. This is the exact moment of India’s arrival to independence, and he, along with all the other children born between midnight and one in the morning that day, has extraordinary powers. Some of the Midnight Children can fly, others can change their sex at will, others have the power of true sorcery, and yet know the secrets of alchemy. Some dazzle others with their superhuman beauty; others can travel in time or multiply fishes. Saleem’s gift is the most powerful of them all: he can see into the hearts and minds of men.

Saleem tells the story of his life – which is also the story of his true-twin, India – to his lover Padma. The story begins thirty years before he is born, when his grandfather returns to India after studying medicine in Germany and meets his grandmother in a very original way. The first section of the book is devoted to the lives of Saleem’s family before his birth. In the second and third sections, Saleem’s childhood and early adulthood are intertwined with the life of the newborn country: the formation of India and Pakistan and his birth, the war between India and China and the marital problems of his parents, the tumultuous relationship between Pakistan and India, which eventually led to war, and his exile, the emergence of Bangladesh and Saleem’s experience with death and loss, Indira Gandhi and the state of Emergency and his downfall.

I really liked the Arabian Nights-esque device of having the story being told by the narrator to his lover. The writing style is very much reminiscent of oral tales, and Padma’s interruptions are interesting and colourful. There aren’t all that many authors that can pull off that sort of rambly storytelling style successfully, but Salman Rushdie is no doubt one of them.

I have to say that I have somewhat mixed feelings about the term "magic realism". It seems to me that sometimes it is used as an attempt to, to paraphrase Terry Pratchett, give Fantasy a bath, dress it up in a suit and tie, and take it to a cocktail party to be introduced to Respectable People. Take a look at this wikipedia definition, for example: magic realism (or magical realism) is an artistic genre in which magical elements or illogical scenarios appear in an otherwise realistic or even "normal" setting. This is not very helpful as far as definitions go, because the exact same thing could be said of urban fantasy. This definition would only successfully distinguish magic realism and fantasy if we exclusively considered alternative world fantasy, but that would be a very narrow, and thus misleading, definition of fantasy.

But on the other hand, there is a very specific storytelling mode that I find in the works of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Daniel Wallace, Jonathan Safran Foer to an extent, and Salman Rushdie, and magic realism is as good a term as any to describe it. As I was reading Midnight’s Children, I asked myself: what is it exactly that makes this storytelling mode so distinctive? The answer that I came up with may not be entirely adequate, but here it goes anyway: for me, in a book like Midnight’s Children, suspension of disbelief works differently. It is a book in which, like in a fantasy, we are told things that go beyond the boundaries of the real. But, unlike in a fantasy, we do not necessarily take them at face value. We do not necessarily trust the teller of the tale (of course that there can also be fantasies in which this is also the case, but bear with me). We go along with the story, yes, but there is a subtle understanding that, in the world of the story itself, the extraordinary events are perhaps metaphorical, are maybe a way to convey a mood or a feeling that could not otherwise be conveyed. Saleem is a narrator that constantly challenges the reader’s faith in his accuracy. For example:

“…But now Padma says, mildly, ‘What date was it?’ And, without thinking, I answer: ‘Some time in the Spring.’ And then it occurs to me that I have made another error – that the election of 1957 took place before, and not after, my tenth birthday; but although I have racked my brains, my memory refuses, stubbornly, to alter the sequence of events. This is worrying. I don’t know what’s gone wrong.
She says, trying uselessly to console me: ‘What are you so long for in your face? Everybody forgets some small things, all the time!’
But if small things go, will large things be close behind?”

There are many other instances in which he tells Padma (and the reader) that even though what he is about to tell is unbelievable, they must believe him, and interestingly enough this plea tends to have the opposite effect. It’s not that it boycotts the story, it’s not that it makes it any less engaging, it’s just that it changes the way in which it works. We become more aware that we are witnessing a process that is akin to mythmaking.

Other things I liked about this book: the many references to Hindu mythology even though Saleem’s background is Muslim, the points that were made about freedom and oppression, poverty and inequality, and the dangers of religious extremism, the colourful portray of Bombay and of Indian culture (or cultures) in general. I also loved the way the second part of the book in particular recreated the world of a child so successfully. Saleem grows up in a villa in Bombay, and his description of his own experiences and of the way he, as a child, understands the lives of the adults who surrounded him, plus his discovery of his telepathic powers and his description of his first crush on a girl named Evie Burns, were my favourite parts of the book.

In the third section of the book, the story becomes very overly political, and I saw that Rushie’s harsh portrait of Indira Gandhi and her policies caused some controversy. Some of the things described in the book are pretty horrific, but I have to say that I simply don’t know enough history to judge whether or not Rushie was being too harsh. This book made me want to learn more, though, and that can only be a good thing.

There is much, much more to the book, and I fear that I am not making it justice. It’s just one of those books that encompass innumerable different things. If you got ten people who all agreed that it was a great book in a room and asked them to tell you why, I’m sure they would come up with ten different reasons why they loved it. To sum it up: I found Midnight’s Children an original, engaging and stimulating book, and I would recommend it to anyone with an interest in history, different cultures, myths or simply good stories.

Tells the story of Paddy Clarke (Patrick) growing up in Ireland in the 1960s. Set in the fictional estate Barrytown when Paddy is 10, Doyle looks at childhood and the brutality of it. Paddy is pretty much second in bully Kevin's gang and they get into all kinds of trouble. Probably the worst is pouring lighter fluid down Paddy's younger brother Sinbad's (Francis) mouth and then lighting a match horribly burning his lips. Another time they post a dead guinea pig through the letterbox of a woman in their estate that they don't like.

About halfway through the book it turns from the misadventures of youth to a more serious tone as Paddy's parents marriage begins to reall break down. Paddy begins to take more responsibility in trying ti stop their fighting without their knowledge as well as looking out more for Sinbad who is starting to grow up. He starts to recognise Kevin for the true bully he is and hang out with loner and hard knock Charles Leavy.

The children are written very convincingly, both their language and their often bizarre logic. For instance in fights there are rules and if one hits another you get a free hit in return. It made me miss my childhood a little with all the random games with local kids. It also made me sad as this culture seems to be shrinking as kids these days seem more interested in indoor persuits like watching the television and playing computer games rather than running about and playing outdoors.

On Beauty opens with Jerome Belsey’s e-mails to his father. Jerome is the only religious member of his family, and he has greatly irritated his deeply secular father not only by converting to Christianity, but by accepting a summer internship in London working for his father’s intellectual nemesis, a highly conservative right-wing Trinidadian academic by the name of Monty Kipps. Jerome has a short lived romance with Victoria Kipps, and although the drama that ensues is over quickly, the paths of these two very different families are soon to cross again.

Howard Belsey is an English academic who is working on a book that will supposedly deconstruct Rembrandt. His wife, Kiki, is a strong and assertive African-American woman. Their three children are Levi, Zora and the aforementioned Jerome. Levi is the youngest, a teenager who is searching for his identity. The ambitious Zora plans to follow her father’s footsteps into the academic world, and Jerome is having trouble getting over his heartbreak.

When Monty Kipps is invited to join Wellington, the same New England university where Howard Belsey teaches, the conflict between the two takes over the entire faculty. Meanwhile, Victoria Kipps is taking Howard Belsey’s classes, and Kiki Belsey and Carlene Kipps become friends.

This plot summary doesn’t even begin to make On Beauty sound as good as it actually is. Oh, how I loved this book. It reminded me of Middlesex in some ways, and that’s pretty much the highest compliment I can pay a book. While I was reading it, I found myself thinking that I should read books like this more often. But then again, how many books like this are there? Books this powerful, this intricate, this graceful?

But why did I love it so much, you ask? First of all, I loved it for the superb writing. Zadie Smith's command of language is impressive. She has a wonderful, subtle and intelligent sense of humour. She can make a seemingly simple sentence sneak at you and make you want to cry. And then there's her attention to detail; there's the things she leaves unsaid; there’s the sheer elegance of her prose.

I was going to pick a passage to share here, but if I pick one I’ll have to pick two, and then I’ll find myself picking pick three and four and five, and this post is going to be long enough as it is. Believe me, there are many, many memorable passages in this book.

The second reason why I loved On Beauty so much were the characters. It was the characters that had me hooked from page one. They are complex, fascinating, and quirky, but also human, fallible and very real. They are in some ways typifications, while at the same time defying the very concept of types. Even the ones that aren't exactly likeable are wonderful to read about. One of the reasons why I couldn't put this book down was because I wanted to spend more time in the company of these people. I wanted to see their relationships develop; I wanted to discover their innermost secrets; I wanted to know their fears, ambitions and dreams.

But what, after all, is this book about? It’s about the struggle of conservative and liberal ideas in the academic world (and Zadie Smith doesn’t reduce it to anything as simplistic as “liberals are good and conservatives are bad” or the opposite. If what she says could be reduced to anything at all, it would be to something along the lines of “people are complex in many ways”). It’s about academic life in general in a fictional town near Boston. It’s also about beauty and lust and desire and loss, and self-discovery and marriage and friendship and love. Plus it’s about family, racial tensions and identity, the situation in Haiti, subcultures, music, and painting. To sum it up: it’s about life.

There were certain things in the novel that I particularly loved. The friendship between Kiki Beasley and Carlene Kipps, for starters. These two women become friends despite their differences, despite their husbands’ enmity, despite the drama involving both their families. Carlene believes things that would make any feminist (any sensible person, really) cringe: that while men live for ideas and projects, women live for their families; that it is not fit for a woman to criticize her husband under any circumstances. Kiki’s whole life is based on the opposite principles. And yet these two women simply enjoy each other’s company. When they first meet, Carlene recites to Kiki a line from a poem that she likes: There is such shelter in each other. The scenes in the novel in each the two women are together are very touching scenes.

I also loved the exquisite way the novel describes a thirty year long marriage, the things that hold it together and the things that break it apart. There’s loss, of course, but there’s also tenderness, familiarity and companionship. And, along with these, there’s cruelty and loneliness and pain. The contradictory emotions are so intertwined that they cannot be separated, and all together they form a picture – a picture of a lifetime together (an almost inconceivable amount of time for someone like me, whose life has not yet been thirty years long), brilliantly portrayed in all its beauty and its frailty in the pages of a book.

On Beauty made me laugh as often as it made me think, and almost as often as it made me cry. This was my first experience with Zadie Smith, but, as I’m sure you can imagine, it’s taking all my self-restraint to keep me from ordering White Teeth and The Autograph Man right now. I really look forward to reading more of her work.