Reviews and Comments

(Crossposted from my blog: daariga.wordpress.com/2015/11/15/the-narrow-road-to-the-deep-north/)

A world of dew,
And in every dewdrop,
A world of sorrow.
— Issa

Elegiac haiku and poem snippets like these pepper the dark pages of the WW2 novel The Narrow Road to the Deep North. Written by Australian author Richard Flanagan, the story is centered around a group of Australian prisoners of war (POW) and their Japanese captors, while they worked on the Death Railway and the resulting mental trauma on them after the war.

The Thailand-Burma railway line which cuts through dense tropical jungle was miraculously completed in just one year by the Japanese army using POWs and coolies as slave labour. The line is infamously named so for the heavy death count it extracted due to cholera, hunger, torture and atrocities: ~100,000 South-East Asian coolies and ~10,000 British/Australian POWs. Many of the Japanese and Korean captors who committed these horrendous acts were tried for war crimes after the war.

The book is roughly divided into three parts, covering the before, during and after lives of POW Dorrigo Evans, his Japanese captor Nakamura and other characters from a camp on the Death Railway. The story builds up to the dreadful happenings of a single day on The Line and its effects on those present there. There are many simplified movies and works (like Bridge on River Kwai) made about The Line. Thankfully, the characters in this book are complex, flawed and feel real. Dorrigo is a Tasmanian, who caught up in the eddies of life, ends up as an Army surgeon POW and is forced by circumstances to lead his men. Steeped in their Emperor’s propaganda and the supremacy of their race, normal Japanese people like Nakamura are brainwashed to effect unthinkable atrocities on their prisoners. The crushing defeat and the destruction of Japan by atomic bombs, takes a depressing toll on the Japanese survivors. On the other hand, the POWs, though celebrated as war heroes, never quite escape their traumatic experiences and struggle to adjust back in normal society.

Going into the book, I was a tad afraid that the torturous subject of The Line would be milked for maximum drama. Not so. Filled with flashbacks and flashforwards, what takes center stage is the pre- and post-lives of the main actors. The damp mood in the passages is lifted by Dorrigo, a connoisseur of classic English poetry and his captors, who similarly relish in the haiku of Basho, Buson and Issa. The verses picked by Flanagan are truly exquisite and the book is worth reading just for the poetry itself.

I picked this book after reading a review in The Economist. Though it surely is not as heavenly as claimed there, I did love it! The story spans from the bush of Tasmania to Australia to Thailand and post-war Japan. The romance of Dorrigo and Amy is a bit cheesy, but it helps lighten the bleak pages and I kept rooting for them. The prose does get too flowery in places, where maybe Flanagan should have held back from using his thesaurus.

Flanagan’s father was a POW on The Line and that is a strong influence in this book and in the character Dorrigo. This work won the 2014 Man Booker, which it probably deserved. Much like Julian Barnes, another Man Booker winner (for 2011), playing with words comes easily to Flanagan and the quality of writing here is strong. This is a good book whose visual imagery and tragic characters are sure to remain etched in memory.

(Crossposted from my blog: daariga.wordpress.com/2015/10/24/batman-the-dark-knight-returns/)

Batman: The Dark Knight Returns is the graphic novel by Frank Miller credited with starting the era of the dark superhero. Batman hung up his cape a decade ago and Bruce Wayne now wears the moustachioed face of a middle aged man, albeit with a ripped body. Gotham city is slowly being overrun by a criminal gang called the Mutants. When the life of his friend, James Gordon the police commissioner, is threatened, Batman returns in a glory of stiff joints and aching muscles. When he puts the Mutants back in jail, the talking heads on media start questioning why Batman should be above the law. The Commissioner puts out an arrest warrant for Batman. At this time, the Joker is released from prison and proceeds to unleash a high body-count rampage on the city. While he pushes Batman to the edge of his no=kill policy, citizens start protesting against Batman, citing that it is his very existence that makes criminals to creep out of the woodwork.

This is no teenage comic-book world. The characters, motives and actions are multi-dimensional and complex. Threads about a hero returning, having to question his own principles and actions, the change in tide of public opinion on heroes and villains, the story is full of these.

Where I started to lose the plot was in the second half. Superman enters the picture fighting a Russian nuclear attack, fails and plunges Gotham into darkness. He has his own personal rules questioned. When the police do not give up their chase of Batman, he ends up leading the Mutants as a vigilante force! It all starts to roll up into one holy ball of mess.

This novel inspired Christopher Nolan to bring a darker hero for his The Dark Knight Trilogy, to much critical and commercial success. And much like I felt about those movies, while I enjoyed the vision in this novel, it ends up becoming a bit too confusing and implausible. Unlike works like Watchmen by Alan Moore, I came away feeling that to really enjoy Frank Miller you have to be someone who is deeply invested in the Marvel/DC universe, which I am sadly not.

(Crossposted from my blog: daariga.wordpress.com/2015/10/03/my-man-jeeves/)

There are few authors who can deliver as reliable a dose of fun as Wodehouse. Especially when the inimitable Jeeves and Wooster are involved. I’ve been chewing through the Jeeves-Wooster bookshelf in chronological order and for the last few weekends my entertainer was My Man Jeeves.

The short stories in this collection from 1919 feature the second major appearance of the J-W duo. (They first appeared in The Man with Two Left Feet). Also making an entry is Reggie Pepper, who is nothing but another version of Bertie. The plots of the duo gave such a heavy deja vu that I’m pretty sure these were used in the Jeeves and Wooster TV series. (If you’ve not seen it yet: it stars Hugh Laurie and Stephen Fry and is exquisite, need I say more?)

All the familiar Wodehouse tropes are here: nosy aunts and uncles, girls, inheritance, high society parties and mixups that will magically get corrected before the end. Thinking about the depiction of aunts and uncles, maybe that is one reason why Wodehouse found such a popular audience in India!

The problem with My Man Jeeves is that many of the plots are too similar to each other. Wodehouse is always guilty of predictability, but putting these stories together in the same collection is pure laziness. In any case, this is a breezy rib-tickling read.

(Crossposted from my blog: daariga.wordpress.com/2015/08/23/i-robot/)

It did not take too long into I, Robot for me to realize why it went far beyond every other science fiction book I had read. Isaac Asimov fails miserably in convincing the 21st century reader about the mechanics and the so called positronic brain of his futuristic robots. In fact, he does not even try. However, that does not matter because the 9 short stories in this book explore something quite extraordinary: robopsychology, the analysis of the thinking and behavior of robots governed by the Three Laws of Robotics. Published in science fiction magazines between 1940 and 1950, these stories span the lifetime of the prime character, a Dr. Susan Calvin, a robopsychologist at U.S. Robots and Mechanical Men. In each of these stories, Susan recalls an interesting problem or dilemma faced in robot-human interaction.

The stories are in chronological order of their timeline, starting off with simple robots used as nannies or servants at home. Due to social pressure, initially US Robots is not allowed to sell robots for employment on Earth. Instead they sell them for mining and maintenance tasks on asteroids, planets and spaceships. In these environments, typically some anomaly in robot behavior is observed. And by analysing the complex interplay between the three Laws of Robotics, the solution is figured out. Each of these is a clever puzzle that I felt highly relevant even today. In fact, I could easily analogize each into a real-time system or multi-threading or such computer science problem of today.

Towards the end of Susan’s life, in her last few stories, we are finally served robots on Earth, that are so intelligent that they run entire corporations or parts of Earth. With Asimov, the robot situation is never dystopian, like in Hollywood movies, thanks to the first Law of Robotics: a robot should not harm a human. Asimov really stretches imagination with the Machine, which acts as a benevolent administrator to hundreds of millions of humans. In this final story, I also see fragments of today’s Internet, search engines and the all-pervasive machine learning algorithms that we use with abandon.

These stories encompass new dimensions of vision and thinking about robots and our possible future life with them. It came as no surprise when I learnt that the term robotics itself was created by Asimov! The prose here is spare and elegant and the book is surprisingly easy to read considering its subject matter. Needles to say that I, Robot is a great introduction to Asimov and his Robot series and is a must read!

PS: The cover of the edition I read had this terrible Will Smith photo from his movie of the same name. (I have seen that atrocious movie and it has zero influence from this book.) It is quite pathetic how these book publishers are ready to make such vulgar covers of timeless classics, all for a quick buck!

(Crossposted from my blog: daariga.wordpress.com/2015/07/19/seconds/)

Seconds will hopefully be the last of guilty pleasures I’ve been treating myself to after The Count of Monte Cristo. This is a graphic novel from the fecund imagination of Bryan Lee O’Malley, famous for the Scott Pilgrim series.

The artwork in this is gorgeous: heavily borrowing from manga and pictures from Russian storybooks. (The latter were easily available in Indian libraries in the 80s.) The story revolves around Katie, who co-owns a restaurant and is planning to run her own one day. She discovers a house spirit, whose mushrooms can help change reality. Weird stuff starts happening once she goes overboard on having a perfect life by fixing everything using mushrooms.

I enjoyed Seconds so much that I’m highly tempted to read Scott Pilgrim next. I found the Westernized-manga character art incredibly cute and the colors are lush and dark. The story is very funny and there is always a peppy mood about the characters, especially Katie, who is just one cool gal. Bryan borrows very generously from manga, even the idea of a house spirit (kami), how its depicted and its central role in the story shows that. Finally, don’t be surprised if you get the urge to draw out some of the sketches in the book! :-)

(Crossposted from my blog: daariga.wordpress.com/2015/07/12/cant-we-talk-about-something-more-pleasant/)

In today’s society and media, there are still many topics that are taboo, with death being at the top of that list. The picture given of the years before death and death itself is totally misleading. A pretty image is painted of jolly old people with silver hair, weaker in strength, but fit in mind and spirit. And then they, presumably, need some hospitalization a few times and pass away peacefully in bed. It always irked me that this was not what I personally experienced with my grandparents, all of whom lived beyond 85-90 years. What I saw was totally different: a steady deterioration of the mind and body, senile dementia combined with most embarrassing of all: loss of bowel control. I witnessed how a person who was a rock in your life can turn out to completely stress and depress their loved ones in their last throes.

Though quite depressing to read, it is such experiences of her parents’ last years that Roz Chast has captured in the form of cartoons in her memoir Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant? She uses her trademark humor to lighten the mood, but there is only so much you can do when your parent is slowly losing all mental faculty. This is a great book, coming especially from an Occidental author, where these travails are hidden as much as possible.

We start off from the time her parents are living independently in their Brooklyn flat, where they have lived all their life. To be honest the first half of the book is quite cheery, filled with the oddities you will notice about your parents once you turn into an adult. After requiring a few hospitalizations, the first in their lives, it is obvious that her parents are in their last years. Though losing their memory, old people can be quite obstinate about changes and lots of these situations stress out the author. As things worsen, they finally agree to move out of their flat to a home for the aged. As health further worsens, comes inability to move around, adult diapers, liquid food and finally palliative care. In the end, the last words of a mind that is switching off is ironically the first it ever uttered: calls to a mother or a father.

(Crossposted from my blog: daariga.wordpress.com/2015/07/12/the-party-after-you-left/)

Roz Chast is my #1 favorite among the cartoonists whose works appear regularly in The New Yorker. (Don’t you think the cartoons are the reason to flip through a New Yorker?) I have always found her cartoons to be incredibly funny and felt that they depicted the craziness of modern urban life as no other. She focuses purely on the minutiae of domestic life that everyone experiences, but seldom gives a second thought. It helps that I like her simple drawing and coloring style too. Besides The New Yorker, she also draws about the absurdity of modern technology in other media. The Party, After You Left is one of her recent compilations of such cartoons. The selected cartoons each take a while to see and savor, making this a great choice to slowly flip through on a weekend afternoon or as a coffee table book. Lots of snickering and belly laughs guaranteed! :-)

I was floored by the trailer for the movie Watchmen, slated to release in 2009. Intrigued by the weird superheroes and their predicament shown in the trailer, I decided to check out the graphic novel it's based on. Watchmen, a graphic novel (and not a mere comic) written by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons deals with the life of retired superheroes living in the USA of 1980s. Most of them have hung up their costumes after the Keene Act was passed banning vigilantism and they're now trying to get back to living within society. The book starts off with the murder of Edward Blake aka The Comedian. Walter Kovacs aka Rorschach thinks that this is no ordinary murder, but the first among a string intended to wipe off all the retired superheroes. He tries to find out who and why and this leads him to meet all his old superhero buddies. This also leads the reader through the rest of the novel, to discover the stories of all these heroes (in flashback) and how they're leaving mundane lives among society.

At 436 pages, complete with artwork, Watchmen is a heavy read. The story is complex, deep and hugely introspective. It has a sombre mood all through, being set in a crumbling USA of the 1980s when Russia is waiting to unleash its nukes on their enemy. Alan Moore not only excels in the details of his characters, but the intricate way in which he reveals their arcs is just brilliant. Interspersed with the novel's timeline and its flashbacks are (fictional) excerpts from books, diaries, reports, all of which totally immerse the reader in the alternate world that Moore has wrought. There are also tons of quotes and art references as the book progresses. (For example, every chapter ends with a progressing blood spill onto a clock that is edging closer and closer to 12 midnight. The reader only discovers in the last chapter where this image actually fits in.) I will easily admit that this is nothing like any comic I've ever read, it's a totally new experience! As it says on the cover, this is definitely a book only for mature readers. It will forever change the way you look at comics/graphic novels/superheroes. A highly recommended read.

Palaeontologists Dr. Alan Grant and Dr. Ellie Sattler, chaos mathematician Dr. Ian Malcolm and lawyer Donald Gennaro are invited by Hammond to his resort island off Costa Rica. To their astonishment, they discover that Hammond and his InGen Corporation using fossil DNA, supercomputers and gene sequencers have been able to clone dinosaurs at the Jurassic Park. The group is also joined by Hammond's grandchildren Tim and Lex Murphy. They all set out on a park ride to check out the dinosaurs when all hell breaks loose.

The story in the book is deeper, darker and much different than the movie. I hadn't expected this. It was just as nail-biting as any Crichton book and I ended up being awake until 5AM (and yet another weekend sleep went down the drain). Malcolm with his chaos theory ramblings is highly entertaining. There are more varieties of dinosaurs introduced in the book than in the first movie. Crichton's books always have some smartass way of division into sections. This book is divided into iterations, with each one slowly progressing to form a fractal accompanied by Malcolm's quotes alluding to the same. The underlying message of the book is that genetic engineering without careful understanding of the consequences can be devastating. Though written back in 1990, the book's takes on genetic engineering are surprisingly accurate seen in today's context. This is a good pop sci-fi thriller.

Reggie is an Earl who looks like a gorilla, but soft at heart. He is sent to the US by his aunt to bring back his cousin Eggy who is in Hollywood and has got engaged to a commoner there. During his journey across America, Reggy falls in love with a delicate actress named April June. In Hollywood, Reggie discovers that his cousin has engaged to Ann, who is his old flame!

Things start to get complicated when Reggie goes to a dentist to have his teeth extracted. When under the influence of gas, his soul gets exchanged with that of Joel Cooley, a Hollywood child star who is also at the dentist. Now, with the body of Cooley, Reggie finds himself beset with the former's troubles and also needs to keep in touch with June. He soon discovers that June's love for him is just for his wealth and also that he still loves Ann. The threads tie together cleanly and all ends well.

The book is filled with the trademark Wodehouse humor. Also, this was interesting since it was a non-Jeeves story. Laughing Gas is a fast paced humorous read with zero dull moments.