Author: whatcathyreadnext

#BlogTour #BookReview The Far Field by Madhuri Vijay @MidasPR @groveatlantic @dylanthomprize #SUDTP20

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Blog-Tour-Begins

Welcome to today’s stop on the mega blog tour celebrating the authors on the longlist for the Dylan Thomas Prize 2020. I’m delighted to bring you my review of one of the longlisted books – The Far Field by Madhuri Vijay. My thanks to Martina at Midas PR for inviting me to take part in the tour and for my review copy.

Look out for the announcement of the shortlist on 7th April. Ensure you don’t miss a thing by following the hashtag #SUDTP20 on Twitter.

If you missed it, you can also read my review here of another of the longlisted books, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong.

Dylan Thomas Prize TimetableAbout the Dylan Thomas Prize

Launched in 2006, the annual Swansea University International Dylan Thomas Prizeis one of the most prestigious awards for young writers, aimed at encouraging raw creative talent worldwide. It celebrates and nurtures international literary excellence.

The £30,000 Prize is awarded to the best published literary work in the English language, written by an author aged 39 or under.

The Far FieldAbout the Book

In the wake of her mother’s death, Shalini, a privileged and restless young woman from Bangalore, sets out for a remote Himalayan village in the troubled northern region of Kashmir. Certain that the loss of her mother is somehow connected to the decade-old disappearance of Bashir Ahmed, a charming Kashmiri salesman who frequented her childhood home, she is determined to confront him.

But upon her arrival, Shalini is brought face to face with Kashmir’s politics, as well as the tangled history of the local family that takes her in. And when life in the village turns volatile and old hatreds threaten to erupt into violence, Shalini finds herself forced to make a series of choices that could hold dangerous repercussions for the very people she has come to love.

Format: Paperback (464 pages)          Publisher: Grove Press
Publication date: 2nd January 2020 Genre: Literary Fiction

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My Review

The book switches back and forth in time between Shalini’s memories of her childhood and the visits of Bashir Ahmed, and her journey to Kashmir to try to track him down following her mother’s death. It’s skilfully plotted so there’s always more to be revealed and there is a tantalising sense of tension throughout. I expect I’m not the only reader who had a disturbing sense of history potentially repeating itself at certain moments.

The author brilliantly conveys the tensions within Shalini’s family, in particular her mercurial mother who can change from charming to disdainful in a moment, what Shalini refers to as her mother’s ‘lightning switch from one self to another.’ It’s something her father finds difficult to handle.  With Bashir Ahmed and her mother, it’s a different matter. Shalini recalls, ‘Looking back, I can see that something powerful occurred in that moment and it still astonishes me all these years later: Bashir Ahmed understood in about five minutes what took my father decades‘.

Like some three dimensional chess game, Shalini recalls her younger self’s struggle to make sense of ‘these shifting, traitorous pieces – mother, visitor, father – trying to keep track of their masked sentences, their mutable moods, waiting for a clear sign of what my next move should be.’ The burden of keeping secrets is also evident. Shalini reflects, ‘I thought of all the secrets I had carried as far back into my childhood as I could remember. I felt them pile one on top of another, suffocating me.’ However, perhaps some secrets are best left buried.

The author’s acute observation of the way in which people interact is memorably displayed in a scene depicting what must surely be the most ill-judged dinner party in history.

I loved the descriptions of the small Kashmiri village where Bashir Ahmed’s family live and the details of everyday life. ‘…The houses were flung wide upon the mountainside, like a handful of brightly coloured toys tossed by a careless hand, separated by narrow rocky ridges and terraced cornfields.’ The generous hospitality offered to Shalini both by Bashir Ahmed’s family, and earlier by Abdul Latief and his wife, Zoya, shows how this is embedded in Indian culture. However, the tension between the different religious communities and the shadow of past events are always in the background, as Shalini will discover as she faces difficult decisions about her future and comes face to face with the realities of life in Kashmir. The contrasts are stark: ‘...this place, these people, this life, with its secrets and its violence, its hardness and its beauty.’

One of the question the book poses is whether the impulse to act is always the wisest option, even for the best of intentions. “Isn’t that the important thing, to do something?” Shalini insists at one point. On the other hand, is the price of not acting just as high? Shalini’s experiences lead her to conclude that, in her family at least, ‘Ours has always been a story of cowardice, of things left unsaid.’ The book also reveals the unintended consequences on others of our actions. In Shalini’s case, this is manifested in a quite devastating way.

The Far Field is the sort of book I love: great writing, a compelling story that immerses me in the lives of its characters, and that gives me an insight into the culture and history of an area of the world about which I knew little. I am grateful to the Dylan Thomas Prize and Midas PR for the opportunity to read a book I might not otherwise have come across. It certainly deserves its place on the longlist, I hope it makes the shortlist and I would love to see it win.

In three words: Assured, acutely-observed, compelling

Try something similar: The Storyteller by Pierre Jarawan

Madhuri-VijayAbout the Author

Madhuri Vijay was born and raised in Bangalore. She is the recipient of a Pushcart Prize, and her writing has appeared in Best American Non-Required Reading, Narrative Magazine, and Elle India, among other publications.

The Far Field is her first book. She currently lives in Hawaii. [Photo credit: Dylan Thomas Prize/Manvi Rao]

Connect with Madhuri
Website

#BookReview A Lodge in the Wilderness by John Buchan #ReadJB2020

whatcathyreadnext

20200314_134401About the Book

An imaginary conference is arranged by a multi-millionaire Francis Carey at Musuru, a lodge located on the East Kenyan Plateau some 9,000 feet above sea level, to discuss Empire.

The conference is made up of nine men and nine women, taken from the upper and professional classes.

Format: Hardcover (334 pages) Publisher: Nelson
Publication date: 1950 [1906]   Genre: Fiction

My Review

My Buchan of the Month for March was A Lodge in the Wilderness.  You can read my blog post introducing the book here. It was published in November 1906, initially anonymously. Although nominally fiction, the book is essentially a debate about Imperialism conducted by various supposedly fictional characters (although Buchan’s first biographer, Janet Adam Smith, observed that ‘spotting the originals of the characters was one of the pleasures of the book for its first readers‘).

In reality, it’s a political treatise masquerading as fiction and not the John Buchan book I would recommend for readers new to his work; one of his adventure stories featuring Richard Hannay or his works of historical fiction would be a much better starting point.  In fact, I’m not sure I would recommend it at all, except for serious Buchanophiles. I would include myself in that category but even I struggled to maintain my interest and will confess to skimming some of the sections of poetry and the more turgid rehearsals of political doctrine. I found myself identifying with one of the more engaging characters, Lady Flora, who is described as sitting ‘with exemplary patience through the long discussion’ and discovering ‘that only a walk on the terrace would be sufficient reward’.  (Lady Flora is reputedly based on Buchan’s future wife, Susan Grosvenor.)  Earlier, she had remarked, “I do so wish…that they wouldn’t all talk in paragraphs.” Indeed.

The whole book has a paternalistic tone and some of the characters express extremely distasteful views, including advocating eugenics for the destitute who ‘are past hope [and] should cease to exist’ and state-organised emigration.   At no point do any of the characters argue against the concept of Empire; they seem merely concerned with how to make it run more efficiently.  I also found myself inwardly shuddering at references to ‘strange, sullen, childish dark-skinned people’ and that the ‘native’ must stand as an equal before the law with the white man but ‘not a social or political equal’.  Thank heavens we have moved on from that sort of attitude.

However, there are early signs of John Buchan’s ability to describe landscape which would be such a feature of his later books.  For example, this description of an African sunrise. ‘And then over the crest of the far downs came a red arc of fire, and the heavens changed to amethyst and saffron, and, last of all, to a delicate pale blue, where wisps of rosy cloud hung like the veils of the morning.’   Unfortunately, the occasion for this lyrical description is a hunting trip during which several species of big game are killed.

The odd dash of sardonic humour brought some light relief, such as when the Duchess reports news from home. “Eve Nottingham has written a book, purporting to be the letters of a Japanese wife to her English mother-in-law.  What will that silly woman be after next?  She has never been outside Europe… She might as well write the letters of a Coptic greengrocer to his Abyssinian grandmother.”    

April’s Buchan of the Month is A Book of Escapes and Hurried Journeys.  Look out for my introduction to the book and, later in the month, my review.

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John BuchanAbout the Author

John Buchan (1875 – 1940) was an author, poet, lawyer, publisher, journalist, war correspondent, Member of Parliament, University Chancellor, keen angler and family man.  He was ennobled and, as Lord Tweedsmuir, became Governor-General of Canada.  In this role, he signed Canada’s entry into the Second World War.

Nowadays he is probably best known – maybe only known – as the author of The Thirty-Nine Steps.  However, in his lifetime he published over 100 books: fiction, poetry, short stories, biographies, memoirs and history.

You can find out more about John Buchan, his life and literary output by visiting The John Buchan Society website.

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