Review: The Pickup by Nadine Gordimer

Nobel Prize winning authors can be intimidating; their novels are often loaded with weighty issues and problems that are nowhere near tackled in the space of a story.  In fact, I'm coming to learn that some novels pose questions without answers and simply ask that we consider.  From whatever place in a writer that asks questions, South African author Nadine Gordimer tapped into that space in her novel The Pickup.

Synopsis:  A white South African woman, Julie Summers, one day finds herself in an auto shop to get her car fixed after an unexpected breakdown.  There she meets Abdu, a Muslim Arab man who comes from a world apart from her own privileged upbringing.  The two easily slip into a relationship that is built on common threads of interconnection, ignoring social ideals centered on race.  However, after moving in together and building a casual life without interruptions in Julie's Johannesburg apartment, they find that Adbu's citizenship has been recalled.  Without citizenship, Abdu must return home and Julie decides to return with him.  To his home, Adbu finds that what he easily accepted in Julie in South Africa becomes more difficult once they return home.  Rather than money and status, Abdu has brought home a white wife who knows or understands little of the hardships his family and people go through to survive on the edge of the desert.

Touted as a Romeo and Juliet love story, The Pickup aptly brings together two culturally different people in love.  As with Shakespeare's play, can love be enough to pull two people through a world that asks them to be apart.

Review:  The Pickup was an easily accessible story to fall into.  In little to no time, I found that Julie became a character that I felt familiar and at home with.  Although engaged in a love story with an Arab Muslim man who grew up worlds apart in social standing, Julie somehow easily overlooked the structures put in place to separate them.  Not once did I look at the couple and think, "Wow, this is odd," or "I wonder if Julie or Abdu feel out of place."  In fact, I found Julie's complete lack of tension towards their relationship very interesting.  The author really seemed to create a character that responded to her world the way we have idealized; Julie seemed to be unaffected by the judgments of society.

Although I sometimes thought the quirky non-tension of the first half of the book to be odd, I enjoyed the suspension of conflict for our characters.  There were observations made by Julie that showed that she recognized that Abdu was "different" for her, but not that she ever judged him or herself for those differences.  It wasn't until they moved back to his desert home that an unseen tension crept in.  This time, it seemed to be Abdu judging what they had together, fearing how Julie would face his harsh life and seeing it through her eyes.

Racial and social tensions are present in The Pickup, but not in the explicit ways one would normally expect. There is a subtlety and softness in the stress that builds in the relationship between upper-class Julie and the immigrant Abdu, indicative of a control over language by the author.  It is obvious that the two characters love one another, but not in an outrageous, over-the-top passionate way.  The steady treading forward movement of the novel was delightful and one that was intriguing to explore with our two characters.   Love was present and pressing forward,  challenged as in all relationships, but by different forces.

*FTC Disclosure:  This review was based on a library copy of the novel.

Review: Half a Life by V.S. Naipaul

Life has a crazy way of keeping us from the things we need to accomplish.  Sadly, I needed as much brain power as possible to scratch out the meanings behind the Nobel Prize winning author, V.S. Naipaul's Half a Life that I read over Christmas break.  This was not a relaxing read by any stretch of the imagination, but one that has kept my mind in conflict ever since.

Synopsis: Willie Somerset Chandran, born to an upper caste father and lower caste mother, felt the gap in his parent's station in life.  Not only had his father married his low-born wife out of a sense of pious self-sacrifice, even though he didn't love her at all, but he also abandoned his access to wealth by becoming a spiritual "vagabond" of sorts.  To this marriage, Willie and a younger sister were born.  Willie eventually made his way to London to get an education, in the hopes of escaping the social and family conflict he witnessed at home in India.  To a changing British world, this was not quite the case.  Willie was too dark and too Indian for his English speaking cohorts in school and around town, so he befriended those who were also cast offs of other regions of the old Empire.  Throughout this time, Willie worked on a collection of short stories that he used to express his feelings and thoughts, only to be taken advantage of by a British press that could market his stories as they wished, while taking most of the profits and prestige.  

After  multiple experiences with women of different nationalities and backgrounds, Willie learned that to steal away or date those women of his friends, was by far the easiest.  That was, until he met an African-born woman who saw herself reflected in the colonial writings of Willie Somerset Chandran.  From that point, Willie returned to Africa with her to experience the after effects of colonization, and the beginnings of social unrest with the taking back of a land that was not their own for so long.

Review:  It's nearly impossible to really write a review of Naipaul's Half a Life without including a gut reaction.  The multi-layered threading of ideas presented in the novel are mind-numbing, to say the least.  Every possible view and corner of race, social class, empire, colonization, education, and sexual politics are explored through the main character's life.  Just as you get the sense that you are nailing down a "point" being made, the narrative snakes its way in a different direction.   

Although I feel like I have read many books centered on these themes of identity, colonization, etc., I have to admit to feeling side-swiped by Naipaul's narrative style and message.  Maybe I wanted a more neatly, discoverable message.  Maybe it was the startling jump in 18 years in the narration that finally put the nail in the coffin for me.  Or, maybe it was the oddly callous approach to sex (not graphically described in any way) that left me concerned by the main character's mechanical way of life.  I wasn't so much shocked or appalled by Willie's life as I was concerned by his oddly disconnected, yet heightened existence.  On one hand he was disconnected from every social group or culture he lived among, and yet on the other, he blended in and had insights into the hypocrisies of every group in which he mingled.  It could be that this seeming "observation" mode taken by the main character is just the point?  Willie really was as the title says, always living "half a life" because he was always an observer in every culture, position, circle, or relationship that he was engaged.

Strangely, I'm glad that I tackled Half a Life.  In comparison to Naipaul's A House for Mr. Biswas, which I was familiar from a paper I wrote in graduate school, this later novel has a deeper sense of tension than I remember in his earlier piece.  In Half a Life, the narration is linear in one sense, but splintered and fractured in a very deconstructionist sort of way that forces the reader to feel the instability of the main character.  The concept of "still waters run deep" is a great way of describing the novel, in that the surface language and story feel smooth and uninterrupted, while the deep underpinnings of it are stirred and tumultuous beyond recognition.

 *FTC Disclosure:  This review was written from a library copy of the novel.

Another Masterpiece Classic: Small Island by Andrea Levy

Happy Sunday morning. To all those bleary-eyed readathoners this morning, I hope you had a great time yesterday. I wish I could have joined in the 24-hour Readathon, but I ended up taking off to attend a wedding reception in Idaho yesterday evening. It was a four hour drive up, a couple of hours sitting at a reception, and then another four hours back. Long day, but nice to see family and old friends.

I wanted to share an upcoming film on Masterpiece Classics on PBS that is based off of an amazing book by Andrea Levy, Small Island. Before my blog became a review site, I had already read Small Island at the suggestion of a respected grad school professor. My professor knew about my interests in the immigrant culture and in ethnic literature and contacted me to say I had to read this great book. Based on the experience of Jamaican immigrants trying to survive in England during the 1940's and 50's, we follow the lives of different characters who either cling to the dreams they have of an ideal island home, or who attempt to assimilate and become the ultimate British citizen to share in the dream of Empire.
Small Island was an amazing, fascinating, gut-wrenching reading experience. I thoroughly enjoyed the novel, and found myself considering how immigrants work to assimilate, often being turned away by the dominant culture they've been taught to idealize. The novel is a great jumping off point for discussing how our global community is changing and becoming more diverse, and I can't recommend it enough. If you like authors such as Zadie Smith of Jamaica Kincaid, I can assure you that you'll appreciate Levy's work.


On April 18th & 25th, Masterpiece Classic on PBS will be airing the film adaptation of Levy's novel Small Island. Reviews of the film (such as this one from the Telegraph) give it praise but aren't completely sold on the way the story is developed. As a fan of the novel, I'm eager to check it out for myself, and hope you will too.

Downloads: Views: 15434

Review: Fasting, Feasting by Anita Desai

In the wake of reading The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai, and struggling to review a book that blew me away with its depth and meaning, I thought I'd tackle her mother's book, Fasting, Feasting. It is also a book that I've seen featured on the AP Literature exam, and I wanted to read it so that I knew what I was recommending to my students. Thankfully, it was an intriguing read, and once again, not an easy one to recommend in short.

Synopsis: Centered around the lives of one family and their children, we see the affects of culture on the choices one makes for their life. The daughter of the story, Uma, is continually scorned at every turn. Not only is she pulled from school so that her brother can continue with his own future endeavors, but she is also an unattractive, undesirable young woman that cannot seem to land a husband, regardless of the dowry offered. In fact, people come out of the woodwork to take advantage of the family's desperation to marry off their daughter, to which Uma must be repeatedly saved, only to then return to her parent's home to be their veritable slave. Uma is treated as a second-class citizen at ever turn.

On the flip side, Uma's brother Arun finishes his schooling and is sent to the United States to go to college. During one lonely summer vacation, the socially inept young man is forced to live with the white family of a friend they knew in India. Rather than seeing Arun struggle to merely negotiate the strange cultural pitfalls of living with a meat-eating family, we are privy to the pitfalls that cause every bit as many separations between the family members as the forced pressures of his home culture.

Review: In both stories, between Uma and her brother Arun, we see the irony of the ideal situation set upon these characters. What happens to someone who is "supposed to" marry and have a family and does not. What happens to someone who is "supposed to" get an education and live happily ever after with a great career and the happiness that its money is supposed to bring? For Uma, although she is unable to find a husband, we are shown the ironic, unhappy situations in which her prettier sister and cousin are placed in when they both marry. Both women end up with unhappy marriages, going to show that marriage might not be a ready answer to a woman's happiness. With Arun, although he is attending college in the United States (an opportunity seen as highly desirable), where choices are seen to be free and almost whimsical in nature, he is exposed to what one might call a "normal" family that is actually filled with dysfunction.

I could see the direction Anita Desai was taking us as she wrote her stories about this brother and sister, raised in a culture full of ironies in the postcolonial present. We can readily see the sad pressures placed on women and families to marry, and to marry those that one's family and culture dictate. And even in the case of good marriages, there can always come heartache and turmoil. These themes should not seem foreign to anyone reading the novel, regardless of the culture one comes from. It's easy to see that Desai does not simply make "America" the ideal. The distance between the family members in the story also highlights the ways our own culture pulls families apart.

Overall, I did find this novel to be terribly sad. I did, however, have to read this in just a couple of sittings, because I was haunted by the myriad ways that a culture and family can pressure those they love into paths that create unhappiness. While not an uplifting book, leaving us without possibilities drawn out by the author, I can still say that I found it's meaning and points to be provoking. Really, quite a good story. I know that I will not forget Uma anytime soon.

(This book also counts as my third in the 1% Well Read Challenge.)

***Book purchased for personal use and review.

For more information see: Fasting, Feasting.

Review: The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai

This review has been stewing in my mind this week, and I have had a hard time putting into words the series of complex issues and relationships presented by Kiran Desai's brilliant novel The Inheritance of Loss. Clearly, this is a postcolonial novel, outlining the complex cultural problems surrounding identity and nationalism. Having said that, I will attempt to review, what I believe was one of the most compelling books I've read this year. I don't know how many people will read my complete review, but for me, this was one review I couldn't shy away from really delving into and writing more, than less.

Synopsis: In the last paragraph of chapter one, Desai outlines the main storyline of her text: a retired judge, his granddaughter Sai, the cook, and the dog Mutt all reside at the base of Mt. Kalimpong in the Himalayas, at a crossroad of ever-growing hatred and dissatisfaction with the world and how it has been left to them. Here we find an insurgency of Indian-Nepalese growing more and more dissatisfied with the poverty they face, their lack of homeland, and the remnants of a colonial world they embraced, yet hate, yet somehow still need to hold their society together.

As India tries to continue to return to its cultural ways from a time before the colonizer, we find people questioning what is right and good to embrace, and the ironies in doing so. For instance, the judge, upon his return from college in England (where he was hated and looked down on), brings back the accoutrements of a society he learned was "advanced," and to which he now feels akin to and should be more like now that his own social standing in India will far outrank those around him. These accoutrements include a powder puff, which his wife finds strange and silly, and quickly stuffs down her shirt. The judge throws the house into a veritable tizzy in an effort to find said puff (which no one can pronounce and are too embarrassed to explain to others such a dandified object), and becomes incensed when he learns that it was his wife that took them. His social standing is that of the highest ranking in his town (brought on by an education earned at a British college in England), and is recognized and feared by all around him as such, yet he is mocked on every side for his lack of Indianness and his new adopted British qualities that many are embarrassed of him for.

In the meantime, Biju, the cook's son, has taken off for the United States to earn lots of money and great prestige for his father and country. Biju lands in New York City, only to find more poverty, low-paying jobs that have him unable to buy housing, and interacting with people he would never have considered before. Biju learned what it meant to be an Indian, regardless of their worldwide presence:

From other kitchens, he was learning what the world thought of Indians:
In Tanzania, if they could they would throw them out like they did in Uganda.
In Madagascar, if they could, they would throw them out.
In Nigeria, if they could, they would throw them out.
In Fiji, if they could, they would throw them out.
In China, they hate them.
In Hong Kong.
In Germany.
In Italy.
In Japan.
In Guam.
In Singapore.
Burma.
South Africa.
They don't like them.
In Guadeloupe--they love us there?
No. (77)

Although Biju was in the great land of freedom and opportunity, he worked to survive, watched rampant waste going on around him when he knew people at home starved, watched people turn their back on cultural practices they led their families to believe they continued, watched newbies arrive only to allow them to flounder and figure it out the way he was forced to, and watched as his understanding of who he was and what he really wanted out of life disappeared.

Then there is the granddaughter Sai, who has been left orphaned and must live with her Indian grandfather that perpetually lives in a British lifestyle, antiquated and falling in around him. Sai has also been raised more "colonial" than Indian, which distances her more and more from the society she lives in. Tutored by a Indian-Nepalese man, she falls in love (or what she believes is love), and the tutor and student experience the joys of life and the community together until the cultural/social clash comes down to haunt their mixed cultural relationship. What was once a small mountain valley town, now becomes a veritable war zone. Those with any vestiges of a colonial past in their lives are held up as the demon holding back "natives" who have lost their lands, culture, and economic holdings. Beyond issues of politics and land distribution, culture becomes the main factor under attack, and all involved in the margins of these cultures are forced to assign themselves to a side.

Review: I can't adequately say how much this novel moved me, troubled me, and worried me. As with many postcolonial/postmodern novels, there are few answers, and many issues brought to the reader's attention. You see that the vestiges of any colonizer leaves those behind with a fierce struggle to determine identity, either stripped of all things colonized, or embittered by evidence that one's former native self might be lacking in some areas. Where does that leave one's identity? In this case, if you like anything British, does that make you non-Indian? How do you etch out an identity from what is left of your former culture, when so much of your economic footholds and social standings are still tied to the former colonizer? It's all so complex, that you can see why it left my head swimming a bit.

The thing I liked the most about Desai's narrative was that it was non-linear. I didn't find this non-linear pattern to be disturbing in the least, in fact, as we bounced backward and forward in time and location, we see even more clearly how troubling is one's identity. Plus, this switching of storylines made me eager to keep reading so that I could learn more about each character. The one thing I have to mention though, would be my response to the judge and his marriage. Although you get that the judge finds he can't relate to his fiercely"desi" wife, in the remnants of his life in England, he seems more angry that he can't get a British wife but may not want one. Then who can he relate to? Not only is he too Indian, but he's not Indian enough, and his relationship with his wife becomes horrifyingly disconnected, disturbing, and downright abusive. I couldn't read the sections that dealt with their relationship fast enough; I just wanted it to be over with and move along. It was just too painful, and made me sad for all involved.

In connection to this sad story of love and disconnection, I have to share one of my favorite quotes of the entire novel. In the opening scene of the novel, we are actually set in the future (without knowing she's starting at the end) waiting for the tutor to arrive as Sai considers the following of love:

Could fulfillment ever be felt as deeply as loss? Romantically she decided that love must surely reside in the gap between desire and fulfillment, in the lack, not the contentment. Love was the ache, the anticipation, the retreat, everything around it but the emotion itself. (3)

I don't know why, but I underlined this quote about love and starred it a million times. Why? Maybe because my own connection to love has been so painful, and that all I see can relate to this beautiful sentiment about love being about all that surrounds love. How does one actually get to the core of it? What a beautifully messy way of describing it!

Overall, Desai's novel was painfully brilliant. Little answers are provided in this agonizing tale of postcolonial discontent and lost identity, yet the awareness brought about by its complexities are breathtaking.

This also fulfills one requirement for the 1% Well Read Challenge.

For more information see: The Inheritance of Loss