Book review - 'The Scapegoat' by Daphne du Maurier

Many (most?) of us may've wondered, at some point or other, how our life would've been if we were actually living not our own life but the life of another, known or unknown, person.  We've just a hazy idea of such a 'substitute' life, usually focusing on the more rosy aspects, and either totally ignoring (or ignorant of) the travails, or (consciously or unconsciously) glossing over such potentially unpleasant aspects to keep the 'desirable' quality intact.  This 'what would've happened' question is what Daphne du Maurier, more famous as the author or the legendary 'Rebecca' and 'Birds', sets our to investigate in this complex novel.

The story starts with a suspenseful move, as a rakish French landed aristocrat Jean meets his doppelganger, an English teacher John touring France and, after peddling John copious amounts of alcohol, scrams with John's 'identity', leaving him sleeping in his hotel room.  Then starts the 'will he, won't he' game, to guess the point upto which the humble John will carry forward the deception, either willingly or by force of circumstances, or give up and (at least try to) go home. 

As things start to happen rapidly in the week or so over which the story unfolds, John goes about the charade first reluctantly and then with a sense of mission to 'heal' the inhabitants of Jean's chateau, the family members, each of whom Jean seems to have treated badly in different ways.  Initially, John seems more a victim of the circumstances than a willing imposter, just going along with things to keep up the pretenses so as not to hurt the family members.  But by and by he starts to take a more active role to 'set things right' as he - sometimes misguidedly it seems - deems best.  He does flinch away from some hard decisions at first, giving morphine to the old mother, and negotiating a hugely disadvantageous contract with the main customer of the family's glassworks just to keep it afloat.

It's only after Jean's pregnant wife commits suicide, after his pre-teen daughter has run away from home (though later found at the glassworks), that John resolves to take things into his own hands and takes some decisions to the decisive benefit of all family members.  At that point, inevitably, Jean comes back and John, after failing to bump him off, is forced to make his exit from the scene, after saying goodbyes to Jean's mistress Bela who had probably seen through him anyway.

While the story itself is pretty interesting, almost a page turner, the underlying philosophical aspects are what impart it a certain unique quality.  Looking deeper, it seems that, rather than a story of two characters with diametrically opposite nature and behaviours, it's actually about the different personalities hidden within us all.  And how we choose to bring one or the other - sometimes parts of both - to the surface, sometimes to deal with different people or circumstances and sometimes on a whim.  John cannot always get away with being the 'goody-goody' benefactor to all, sometimes - for instance during the bird shoot - coming across to others (notably to Jean's younger brother Paul, almost all the time) as a bumbling idiot or worse, as an insensitive prick, mostly for no fault of his!  This dichotomy is brought out well towards the end - when John condemns Jean as evil, Bela tries to impress upon him that Jean also has some good qualities and does love his family after all.

And these are the two axes - the futility of aspiring for 'a different life', and the co-existence of both good an evil within a person - on which this excellent novel spins.  Good as an engaging story, and great as a 'look within' tale.

Book review - 'Cosmos' by Carl Sagan

#cosmos  #carlsagan

(Just my personal perspectives on the book - it'd be pretentious on my part to 'review' a stupendous work like Cosmos!)

For those with a taste for knowledge on the human endeavour of all hues, this book may leave them speechless! It's anyway a well-known work of epic proportions, but probably more well-known to people of a certain generation, who grew up watching Sagan, in his TV series of the same name, explaining it all back in the 80s.

The book is divided into 13 chapters (perhaps as a protest against the stigma and superstition attached to that number?, but more probably to fit in with a 13-week TV schedule). And it covers a mesmerizing array of human knowledge - from astronomy (of course!), to history (esp. of science), to anthropology, to mathematics, to logic, to physics and biology! Sagan takes us on a whirlwind tour of the cosmos itself, from the time when it was evolving out of the big bang to the birth of galaxies, stars and planets, from the primordial gases which arose first. Dropping down to the solar system, he traces its (short, in cosmological terms!) history, and then the evolution and stabilization of planets including earth.

While laying out the process of evolution of lfie on earth, Sagan keeps going back to the cosmos to prove that 'we're all made of stardust'. In between, he describes in fascinating detail how early scientists of millennia ago persisted in their pursuit of scientific knowledge, including the hardships (and sometimes bodily harm) they faced.

But beyond the rich scientific knowledge, most of all Sagan's book is an impassioned humanist plea. Woven throughout the book are his firm convictions on the unity of human race and the overarching need for tolerance and comity among nations, that the resources being wasted in a mindless nuclear arms race could be so profitably used in endeavours to know the cosmos better and thus benefit the human race as a whole.

As Sagan says towards the end, in the last chapter 'Who speaks for earth?': "We are a rare as well as an endangered species. Every one of us is, in the cosmic perspective, precious. If a human disagrees with you, let him live. In a hundred billion galaxies, you will not find another"!

This is a compulsory read for anyone with a passing interest in science and the human endeavour.

Book review - 'Chasing the Monsoon' by Alexander Frater

#monsoon

And what a chase it was!

it starts off as a simple story of a British journalist resolving to literally 'chasing the monsoon', that is, physically travelling across India, from Kerala (where the Monsoon hits the Indian mainland) to Cherrapunji in Meghalaya, at that time (around 20 years back) the wettest place in India. It's apparently triggered by Alex's chance meeting with an Indian couple at a UK neuro clinic where he goes to be diagnosed for a neck concussion. But as the author says towards the end: "the seed had been sown not at the National Hospital, in the company of the Baptistas, but a year earlier when I received word of my mother's death in New Zealand. The loss of our second parent fixes us next in the firing line and makes life suddenly finite. It is the moment when we finally grow up".

Such musings of the author continue throughout the book, and lend it a lush, personal touch. The main story is interspersed with tales about the author's early life in a New Hebrides island in South Pacific, before the family shifts to Australia. And while chasing the monsoon across India, the author shares historical tales of the life and times in the places which he passes through - from how trade ships navigated the monsoon waters in 16th century to how Meterologists researched about the reasons and progress of the Monsoon across centuries. In between, the author writes about his travails with the Indian bureaucracy while trying to get a border area permit to visit Cherrapunji (which he gets, finally), his visits to places like a fort in Rajasthan (where the King had had 'artificial rainfall' pavilions constructed!), and interactions with a few friends he makes on the way.

It seems the Monsoon acts as a catharsis for the author, both physically (he's cured of his neck pain) as well as psychologically (he seems to fulfill his father's wish to visit the Indian hill state). As he says towards the end, "I felt younger, stronger, better, curiously at peace... because I... possessed a brief to follow it, I had been rewarded in the way that traditionally it was supposed to reward everyone".

A damn good read on a monsoon day...

Book review - 'A Room With A View' (EM Forster)

#aroomwithaview

This is the first Forster novel I've completed in full (not counting Forster snippets read somewhere or parts of movies watched), so these are my first impressions. (And thanks to the kind soul who gifted this classic to me.)

The first half or so of the novel seems quite slow in taking off (and not only by today's standards). The actual happenings seem to consume less ink than the ruminations of the characters (and, in some cases, of the author), especially while the action is centred in Florence. It's only towards the end of that sojourn that things start happening, bringing into focus not only the slowly developing love story but also the sharp distinctions in mores and behaviour between the English middle class landed gentry and the upcoming citizenry. Overall, the treatment in the first half of the novel seems excessively verbose.

It's when the action (!) shifts to Surrey that Forster seems to come into his own, etching out in sharp detail the internal struggles and frustrations of the lead character (Lucy) who, while seeming to conform to the expected behaviour patterns of the day (including submitting to and supporting the sometimes obnoxious behaviour of her beau), actually has a rebel inside wanting to break free. The entry of George Emerson, with whom she had a brief 'encounter' in Florence, into the scene and his passionate courting of Lucy only provides the trigger for her to break off her engagement. The scene where she explains her reasons to Cecil is almost a cry out by Lucy, notwithstanding his nuanced imputation that she's speaking someone else's words. The few chapters upto this stage bring out the feminist slant of Forster's writing, and could be considered quite bold not only for his times but decades thence.

A modern story might have ended with Lucy sticking to her resolution to go abroad again and thus plowing her lonely furrow (perhaps remaining a spinster a la her cousin Charlotte, as insinuated by her mother). However, in perhaps a doffing of hat to the conventions of the day, she is eventually 'won over' by George, with not a little help from his free and frank father Mr. Emerson, and the novel ends with the married couple coming back to the Florence 'pension' (hotel) where they originally met.

Readers of other classics authors may find this novel a bit more 'ruminating' and with less 'action' than a novel on the same times by, say, Hardy or Tolstoy. But Forster's novel does throw light on the struggles, internal and external, which women of that day faced in the initial days of asserting their individuality, if from the perspective of a privileged class.