Category: 30 Day Book Challenge

As you can probably tell from the last post, I run away very fast from books that are famous for being immortal romance. I don’t usually pick up comedy-of-manners type literature (although The Great Gatsby is hardly a comedy) either, unless it is very contemporary and very cutting. Even when I bought this book I did not intend to read it. It was very slim and very cheap, which made it the ideal birthday gift for someone I did not care much about but whose party I was expected to attend. I succeeded in squeezing out of the invitation eventually, so the book stayed with me. (Yes, I am exactly that uncivil.) And precisely because it was a very thin book, I decided I might as well read it in an evening.

As the post title declares, I loved the book thoroughly. I love the soppy bits a little less, but they are controlled and do not overwhelm the story. The style of the novel (and I’m not even talking about the style of writing) is effortless and impeccable. It helps that the 1920s in America — the jazz age — is one of my favourite periods culturally. That’s perhaps the reason that I had a hard time choosing an image for this post. I love almost all the covers this book has been published in. A concise and classy book. Just the way I like ’em.

What can I say? I have friends (very dear ones, too) who consider this book an absolute favourite. I initally had put down a different book for this post — and one can never run out of options for really bad and really popular books — but they are celebrating seventy-five years of the publication Gone With the Wind, and last week my newspaper supplement devoted an entire edition to it, with ludicrous claims like ‘Frankly, you’d have to be a right varmint to not give a damn about this epic book-film combination.’ I imagine I would be exactly that, because in my opinion, this here is one hell of an awful book. It’s not perhaps the most awful book in the history of literature, but it’s the size of two bricks, the writing is tiresome (no wonder Mitchell never wrote another book, small mercy if anything), the protagonist makes you want to slap her and you secretly cheer each time life screws her up a little — seriously, what’s there to love?

The fact is that I’ve noticed one warped tendency among fans of Gone With The Wind, especially those who champion it as an immortal romance — everyone loves the ending, where Rhett Butler most cruelly (and I’m assuming most unexpectedly) dumps Scarlett O’Hara. (I love the ending too, but then that’s all I love about the book. If I was one of the characters in the novel, I’d have thrown a party to celebrate!) Now, romance is not my favourite genre, but basic romance-reading psychology isn’t supposed to go like that. You see off your hero and heroine riding off happily into the sunset, and you feel a little Mary Sue glow in your heart. Why do people love the ending of Gone With The Wind, then? My personal theory is that whether they admit it or not, everyone hates Scarlett a little. Everyone hopes for her to get royally screwed at some point, so the ending works as a bit of poetic justice. It’s not even a feminist novel, precisely because of the ending. You want brave, cunning, devious heroine who straightens up her stinking lot with style and success, go read Vanity Fair.
What more, the title of the novel is a spectacular wastage of a poem that is perfectly divine otherwise.

I don’t know if it would be unwise of me to consider this book underrated based merely on the fact that I know only two other people who have read it. I’ve a suspicion that the arts community at my university is a bit of a Carter-not-reading pocket, just like it is a Pratchett-reading pocket, which makes me sad because Carter is one of the best female authors I have read. She’s perhaps the only female author I’m genuinely fond of, someone who can write chaos and humour and sadness at the same time.

Wise Children was the first Carter novel I read, a couple of years ago from a tattered BCL copy (which I nevertheless failed to locate at the next BCL Book Bazaar). It is written in the backdrop of burlesque and early Hollywood and a lot of old-world glamour and a lot of Shakespeare. There are a lot of excellent music references. Since no one has made a film out of the book yet, I collected all the music individually and compiled them into a fictitious album, which has been one of the most happy-making albums I’ve owned till date.

A book that is sad and moving and deeply beautiful. Rife with guilt and anguish, but more memorably, never have I read an author who writes music so effectively into text.

If I was given another choice I’d have included Norwegian Wood in this post (and now I have). It bothers me somewhat that both of these are novels of memory, loss and isolation, and that both of them anchor back to the time at college. I have one year left of college. I wonder if my selections are trying to say something I do not (yet) acknowledge.

All I can say about The Master and Margarita is that it’s an absolute, unbelievable, pants-charming-off delight; and once again my words fall greatly short of describing the brilliance of a book to anyone who hasn’t read it.

First read in a lonely hotel room in Bangalore years ago while I struggled to clear my head of confusion and undeserved transferred guilt, this novel is a bit of a carnival featuring lovers, writers, historical figures, the Devil, a giant black cat, Jesus Christ, Pontius Pilate and layers, layers, layers, layers. It’s funny and clever and ruthless and heartbreaking. It’s a riot. It manages to suck me right in even on my worst days and fill me up to here with wonder and awe. If there was no other book in the world and only this, you wouldn’t find me complaining one bit.