The End of Mr. Y by Scarlett Thomas

Ariel Manto is a PhD student who is working on 19th century thought experiments and is fascinated by an obscure work (The End of Mr. Y) by an obscure writer (Lumas). The strange thing is that neither she nor anyone she knows has ever read the book and only one copy is purported to exist in some bank vault in Switzerland. The book is believed to be cursed and apparently brings death to its readers. Ariel’s supervisor, Saul Burlem is something of an expert on Lumas and has written a paper on the curse although he too has not read the book. As we watch Ariel trudging through her fairly banal life of being perpetually skint, tackling her mice problems, spending time with her closeted gay German neighbour and partake in a sexually indulgent relationship with a married professor, Burlem suddenly and mysteriously disappears. Around the same time, Ariel serendipitously discovers a copty of The End of Mr. Y in a second hand book shop.  

The book describes passage into a temporal dimension and outlines the recipe to a tincture that enables the drinker to travel to this dimension, called the Troposphere and MindSpace in the book. But the page containing the recipe is missing, torn out. In an all too perfect progression, Ariel finds the page, hidden within another book in Burlem’s office. She of course proceeds to prepare the concoction (one part holy water and one part carbo-vergetalis – some sort of homeopathic ingredient) and drinks it. The tincture allows Ariel to travel (not physically, but astrally) into the Troposphere where she can access the minds of others akin to the plot device that’s central to the film Being John Malkovich. Beyond the danger of becoming irreparably consumed by the Troposphere whilst her physical body starves to the death, Ariel is targeted by a pair of strange suited men with American accents who claim to be from the CIA. They want the book and are eager to hurt Ariel to acquire it. The rest of this fairly long book sees Ariel escaping the clutches of the CIA guys with the help of Apollo Smintheus (a Mouse God thought up by some boys in Nebraska) and a theology lecturer.  

The End of Mr. Y is an engaging and intriguing novel. Unfortunately, there seems to be a lot of intentional obfuscation with tedious philosophical asides and frequent references to Derrida and Heidegger. Thomas has included an enormous range of thoughts and theories from science and philosophy as well as areas where they overlap. Although I found some things like Einstein’s train thought experiment and Schrödinger's cat interesting, on the whole, it was a little overwhelming which is, I think ,an apt summary for The End of Mr. Y – interesting but overwhelming.  

The Manticore’s Secret by Samit Basu

The Manticore’s Secret takes over from The Simoqin Prophecies and you finally understand why the trilogy is called GameWorld. Kirin who at the end of The Simoqin Prophecies is revealed to be the son of the rakshas, Danh-Gem is crowned the new Dark Lord. Meanwhile strange things are happening all over the world. A Manticore along with a coven of dwarves called the Marginal Labour Union opens a portal through which come three ravians to either save or destroy the world. Maya is kidnapped with a witless Asvin in pursuit and the Chief Civilian of Kol is about to be assassinated.  

The Manticore’s Secret lacks the tongue in cheek irreverence of its predecessor. It’s often far too serious. Thankfully, the injection of a new character, a schizophrenic guardian shape shifter named Red, brings some imagination to what’s otherwise degenerated into conventional fantasy, albeit an Indian one. But, I might be judging the book a little too harshly, it was a fairly fun read and I look forward to reading the third part soon and that can’t be a bad thing in these dreary times of mindless trilogies.  

The City & The City by China Miéville

Somewhere in the south-east of post-Iron Curtain Europe are two cities, Beszel and Ul Qoma. Both exist in the same geographic space, sometimes adjacent to or on top of each other but as independent rival nations. The two cities are kept apart principally by their citizens who unsee, unhear and unsense the other city for fear of the Breach, a supreme authority that enforces the civic separation. The residents of the two cities dress, eat and walk differently. There are colours that are allowed in Beszel which are banned in Ul Qoma. They speak what seem superficially to be two different languages but are actually dialects of a single tongue. They have different scripts and architecture. Ul Qoma is more authoritarian but wealthier as a result of a proliferation of foreign investment. Some areas of the two cities are crosshatched (Miévillian for overlap) so part of a street could be in Ul Qoma with another part in Beszel. The two parts would have different names but would remain topogangers (Miévillian portmanteau of topography and doppelganger). As people walk down the street in one city, they must ignore everything in the other or face the dire consequences of breaching. 

The unusual setting is unexpectedly a backdrop to a murder mystery. Inspector Borlu is tasked with the job of investigating a Jane Doe dumped in a housing estate in Beszel. Unable to identify her as a local, his search leads him to discover that she is Mahalia Geary, an American PhD student working on an archaeological dig in Ul Qoma. He concludes that it’s a case of breach. When he approaches the citys’ joint council to advance the matter to the Breach, they refuse, digging up CCTV footage showing the van that dumped the body driving legally through the checkpoint at Copula Hall, the only building that exists in both cities by the same name and their only point of access to each other, evidence that the murder must happened in Ul Qoma and the body then driven through the international border. Borlu is sent over to Ul Qoma to help the local police with their investigations of the murder. His arrival in Ul Qoma coincides with the disappearance of one of Mahalia’s colleagues. Borlu follows up on a lead that Mahalia was investigating the existence of a third city, hidden in the cerebral fissures between Ul Qoma and Beszel, a parasitic city which exists through manipulation disinformation and control. Gradually but expertly, Miéville builds his mystery to a crescendo as Borlu navigates the strictures of the two cities to find the murderer.  

With The City and the City, I have officially read all of China Miéville novels. That either makes me nerdily boring or a wacko cultist. Since, I can claim some sort of de-facto expertise over the Miévillian (notice how using the suffix ‘an’ in lieu of ‘ian’ would produce the word Miévillain) literary space, I can proclaim with some gumption that The City and the City is very different from his other work. The book started off really slowly and getting your head around how the two cities work challenges your brain to accept the irrationally rational. But, as the novel progresses, you get caught up in Borlu’s inscrutable march to solve the murder. There are salutes to Kafka and Orville and a wonderful post-soviet, gothic mood. The ending was perhaps a little too quick a wrap up but I suppose it would have been equally ineffective to prolong it. There’s a minimalism about the narrative but the novel is no way brief. As always, Miéville challenges our assumptions; educates and entertains us in a way that is recklessly originally and wholly his.  

Here are my reviews of his other novels.  

Thighs like Trunks (Trees not Elephants)

An optimist's view of Bombay traffic is the time  you get to study the strange, startling and ever-changing street scape of the maximum city.  All over Dadar, Parel & Elphinstone, hoardings and billboards have come up promoting everything from mobile phone companies to pressure cookers under the guise of sponsoring local Ganesh Chaturthi festivities.  Here's an intriguing  one that I couldn't desist from recording for posterity.  It's sponsoring the Parelcha Maharaja mandal at the foot of Elphinstone Bridge and I could be forgiven for thinking that WWF was finally opening its women's chapter in India.  It's actually a promotional poster for a new Marathi movie - Agadbam.  I'm not really sure if I understand what the movie's about but there's something about an out of shape (seriously) woman who's about to get married.  I think I might be watching my very first Marathi movie soon.  

Token Preservation

Sometimes, whilst walking around the city, I often wonder where sign writers pick up the semantics of the English words and phrases they use.  Whenever I see this sign outside a neighbourhood supermarket, I imagine stewing my token in a jar of formaldehyde or carefully pressing it between the pages of a book or locking it away in a vault.  The thought of retaining it for the next 30 minutes and exchanging for my 'baggage' at the end of these 30 minutes doesn't seem to be the message that the word 'preserve' carries in this context, at least not to me.  

Reading & Reflection

Books can be life changing. If I ponder over the books that I have read over my lifetime, there must be hundreds that have been consequential. And yet, as James Collins put it in his essay The Plot Escapes Me in the New York Times, “I remember nothing about the book’s actual contents.” Collins says that “anecdotal evidence suggests that most people cannot recall the title or author or even the existence of a book they read a month ago, much less its contents.” Therefore, he asks the crucial question; “Why read books if we can’t remember what’s in them?”

The answer according to Collins is that even though we can’t recall much in most of the books we’ve read, they have in some way altered us and become a part of our being.

“We have been formed by an accretion of experiences, only a small number of which we can readily recall. You may remember the specifics of only a few conversations with your best friend, but you would never ask if talking to him or her was a waste of time. As for the arts, I can remember in detail only a tiny fraction of the music I have listened to, or the movies I have watched, or the paintings I have looked at, but it would be absurd to claim that experiencing those works had no influence on me. The same could be said of reading.”

But, it’s difficult to not feel at least a little bit of regret about all those books ‘lost’ in the cardboard boxes of your cognition. In fact, that’s why I began this blog. By reflecting on what I’d read, I hoped to retain the experience of experiencing a book. When I did the CELTA earlier this year, Usha, the principal tutor, told us to endeavour to keep a journal for the course because according to her, the human mind can only hold an original idea for 30 seconds after which it disappears forever. I kept a journal and I think I was the only one among all the participants. I tried to do the same outside the course. I carried a little notebook to jot down my ideas which I could later transform into creative work. But, it wearied me. Reflection, ideation and documentation just don’t seem to fit snugly in my scheme of things. But without those ideas (which strike in the oddest of places), hunched over the keyboard, expecting great writing to simply happen is unreasonable. I have hit writer’s block without ever having written.

The Beast with Nine Billion Feet by Anil Menon

Thirteen year old Tara and her seventeen year old brother Aditya live with their aged aunt in Pune circa 2040. Their father’s AWOL after being declared a terrorist for opposing a strain of genetically engineered seeds. The siblings face the pressures of school along with the strain of being the progeny of a much beloved albeit persecuted scientist, Sivan Bhau. Their rapidly depleting bank account is but the most tangible sign of their uncertain future. Tara buries herself in books to occupy her active mind that dawdles on the insecurity of her dark complexion and her lack of friends. Aditya works odd jobs to supplement the family’s income, all the while working on clandestine projects that harness his genius whilst hiding the shameful secret of his dyslexia.

Tara’s life takes on a turn when she meets Francis and Ria, twins who’ve recently moved from Sweden under a neighbourhood monkey puzzle tree. The twins who coincidentally join her school and befriend her as classmates are the first real friends she’s ever had. The joy of hanging out with friends dispels her intial apprehensions of their suave and wealthy mother Mandira (“Call me Mandy”) with her uncomfortable questions and ostensible omniscience. What’s more, her brother’s been working on projects for a Swedish woman named Vipsala aka Mandira. So why has Vipsala moved to Pune? Tara doesn’t know and nor does she ask until she observes whilst swimming that her new found friends lack navels. When Sivan returns unexpectedly and momentously after receiving a presidential pardon, Tara and Aditya confront their own feelings towards their father after his long absence and the strange conspiracy in which they seem to be caught up in, finally manifests itself.

Young adult science fiction set in Pune in 2040 could be a by-line for gratuitous and shameless idiocy. Except, it’s not. This is a remarkably intelligent work. Menon tackles the ethical issues of genetic engineering and poverty in a balanced and sensitive way. The characters are very believable; emotions are not oversimplified for the sake of comprehension. Aditya’s turmoil of feeling betrayed by his father and his need for proving himself is conveyed so adroitly that you forget that this is meant to be science fiction for teenagers. At Crossword, I recall nosing through some Indian science fiction. I can’t remember the author’s name but it was a jingoist fantasy of a utopian mid-twenty first century India. Menon doesn’t compromise realism on the altar of futurism. Cows chew their way through Pune in The Beast with Nine Billion Feet and walls are covered with political graffiti. Farmers are as impoverished as ever and rickshaws still ply (although in quirky automated avatars). Menon has Vermillion, a political party opposed to genetic engineering, win elections but he also has goons from this party vandalise the house of Tara’s teacher in opposition to her sexuality. I suppose this book will make its intended audience think because it asks difficult questions about complex issues.

I don’t know if this is a plot spoiler or evidence of my stupidity, the beast with the nine billion feet is no GM millipede, it’s us. Although, technically it should be nine billion pairs of feet.   But, enough pedantry, The Beast with Nine Billion Feet is engaging, sharp, original, well-paced and nattily written, all the things that good fiction ought to be.

Here’s Menon's website where he’s posted some of his short stories.  

King Rat by China Miéville

Into the street the Piper stept, 
Smiling first a little smile, 
As if he knew what magic slept 
In his quiet pipe the while; 
Then, like a musical adept, 
To blow the pipe his lips he wrinkled, 
And green and blue his sharp eyes twinkled, 
Like a candle-flame where salt is sprinkled; 
And ere three shrill notes the pipe uttered, 
You heard as if an army muttered; 
And the muttering grew to a grumbling; 
And the grumbling grew to a mighty rumbling; 
And out of the houses the rats came tumbling.
(The Pied Piper of Hamelin, Robert Browning) 

Like Un Lun Dun and Kraken, King Rat features a central character whipped out of the banality of routine life into an unfamiliar world where convention doesn’t apply and nothing is as it seems. The backdrop for all three books is London, almost a character on its own, gritty, dark, claustrophobic and yet liberating.  

King Rat is inspired by the Pied Piper of Hamelin, a folktale whose eeriness I realise only now. Saul Garamond returns home from a camping trip to find his father dead, having fallen from their sixth floor flat. Taken into custody on suspicion of killing his father, Saul is rescued from his cell by a man who smells like filth and moves like a shadow. He’s able to squeeze himself through gaps, impossibly small places, scale walls and go unnoticed, like a rat. The Rat King claims to be his uncle and takes him into the sewers where as Saul feeds on leftover food from garbage bins, he feels a transformation into that part of his being he’s never acknowledged but has always existed. The Rat King wants to use Saul part-rat, part-human status to defeat the Piper. But, armed only with scanty knowledge of his existence based on half truths, Saul, the new crown prince of the rats must decide who he wants to support and what he wants to make of his new world.  

Like his later books, Miéville crowds his work with rich allusions and pop references. The Rat King’s friends, Loplop, the bird king is drawn from German painter Max Ernst’s obsession with birds and his alter ego of the same name; and Anansi, the West African trickster sprite, the inspiration behind the spider king. The writing is not as dense as his other books, but his narrative is as always original. Even in fantasy, he does not wish us to escape the realism of grime, feeling and fate. Fantastical transformation in his work is almost never physical but deeply affecting nonetheless as when Saul realises with each passing moment, how increasingly animal like he becomes, beyond the superficial aspects of eating garbage or reeking of filth.

"The acceptance of the unacceptable was a kind of reactionary stoicism, a dynamic that dulled his feelings for these others. He could feel it within him, a growing cunning, a hyper-real focus on the here and now. It frightened him. He could not battled it head on, he could not decide what to feel and what not to feel, but he could challenge it with his actions. He could change it by refusing to behave as it it were how he felt. He abhorred his own reaction, his own feeling. It was an animal trait." 

The writing is not as fine as perhaps Kraken and sometimes you stumble on the crude alliteration of phrases such as “conquistasdors in Karl Kani, Calvin Klein and Kangols.” But, because King Rat lacks the runaway hedonism of the Bas Lag series and dizzying copiousness of Kraken, there’s a much more credible and alluring irrationality to it. The hallmark of good fantasy is the capacity to permit escape into meaningful irrationality. In King Rat, being smothered by warm furry brown bodies is as real as it is fantastical.  

(Painting to the right: Loplop Introduces a Young Girl by Max Ernst)

The Simoqin Prophecies by Samit Basu

I am somewhat wary of reading popular fiction written for Indian consumption. In general, there’s a faecal quality about these books that makes them appalling to read and a terrible waste of one’s time. Basu’s The Simoqin Prophecies has been around for over six years and it sticks out amongst its comrades like a blonde backpacker at Dadar station.  

Three friends, Maya, a spellbinder, Kirin, last of the Ravians and Spikes, well a creature with spikes live in the mercantile city state of Kol. Their world is threatened by the return of a rakshas named Danh-Gem who two centuries before, unleashed a reign of terror. Lady Temat, the ruler of the city rescues Asvin, just about to be slaughtered prince of the kingdom of Avantri, and plans to groom him into a hero who will ultimately kill Danh-Gem. Basu borrows chaotically from Indian and Greek mythologies, The Lord of the Rings, Dungeons & Dragons, Bollywood and contemporary life, parodying these elements in his book. In Kol, there is intense rivalry between the University of Enki and the Hero School. The Hero School appears to be a parody of the Indian Institute of Management, full of nerds who want to submit meaningless reports on managing the economy.  

Maya, Asvin, Kirin and Spikes along, a vaman guru (dwarf) named Gaam Vatpo, a rabbit bodyguard named Fluffy aka Steelbunz and a centaur set off on a quest. They go to the island of Bolvudis where Maya’s father, the Mantric, has become the Badhshah – ruler director of the island. He harnesses a narcotic that grows on the island to produce muvi-visions (films) which he uses imps to store in squid (don’t ask how!). Their productions feature sirens dancing from tree to tree in the perfectly square forest in a takeoff on Hindi movies.  

The great thing about Basu is that he is not one of those creepy fantasy writers who are dead serious about their creations. He’s laughing along with the reader with silly dialogue like this one between the members of the quest who’re crossing over to Bolvudis on a boat manned by a man dressed as the Grim Reaper.  

‘We’re training him as much as possible, sending him to pick people up and so on. He’s getting scarier, though, he only fell into the water once this time. You must remember he’s a very new Death.’
“A new Death?’
‘The old Death died.’
‘The old Death died?’
‘He was a very old Death.’

Basu’s borrowed loads from Indian folklore include a very irreverent rendition of the pre-battle scene at Kurukshetra which forms the core of post-Vedic Hinduism. The voice of God was apparently just an annoyed magical chameleon. There are some things that are slightly cheesy though like patrons ordering Bhel Puri at a bar called the Fragrant Underbelly run by what I think is an ogre. But, I suppose outlandish inclusions and a complete suspension of disbelief are what make this Indian fantasy novel unique. The Star Warrish ‘I am your father’ anti-climax was the proverbial lump of butter on the paratha.  The other refreshing aspect  of the Simoqin Prophecies is its very Indian perspective on the good vs. evil dichotomy.  Unlike folklore from the West, Indian oral narratives have always held that good and evil are relative terms and to our  demonic enemies, we must appear to be the demons.  Basu holds true to that stream of thinking.

Not bad at all and I am looking forward to reading the second part (yes, it tires me to say it, but it’s frigging trilogy). Here's Basu's blog.  

The Growing Pains of Adrian Mole by Sue Townsend

I seem to have a knack for doing it and as always, I started reading the series with its second book. Still, I wasn’t lost and I enjoyed myself. 15 year old Adrian Mole is plodding through his adolescent years. Far way in the southern Atlantic, a war is being waged over the Falklands. Meanwhile, Adrian records his thoughts and deeds in a diary. He’s a little more precocious, verbose and forthcoming that your average garden variety teenager and regards himself as some sort of left wing poet. Poet or not, his musings are downright hilarious and full of curious epiphanies like “"I have just realized I have never seen a dead body or a real female nipple. This is what comes of living in a cul-de-sac." At another point, he fantasises that he is a successful romantic novelist named Adrienne Storme with a pot-boiler called Longing for Wolverhampton. Here’s an excerpt: 

Longing for Wolverhampton by Adrienne Storme 

Jason Westmoreland's copper-flecked eyes glanced cynically around the terrace. He was sick of Capri and longed for Wolverhampton. He flexed his remaining fingers and examined them critically. The accident with the chain saw had ended his brilliant career in electronics. His days were now devoid of microchips. There was a yawning chasm in his life. He had tried to fill it with the travel and self-gratification but nothing could blot out the memories he had of Gardenia Fetherington, the virginal plastic surgeon, at St. Bupa's in Wolverhampton. Jason brooded, blindly blinking back big blury tears....

The Growing Pains of Adrian Mole is one of those lovely silly books that make a lot of sense. I am fond of Sue Townsend and you can read my post on her novel Ghost Children here. 

My Favourite Wife by Tony Parsons

Bill Holden, a lawyer from England, gets a lucrative posting in Shanghai. So off he goes to China with his wife Becca and his four year old daughter in tow. In Shanghai, the Holdens settle down to a cushy expat life at Paradise Mansions, condominiums filled with foreigners and latter day concubines of successful Chinese businessmen. Bill naively experiences poverty and inequity for the first time in the form of ‘practical’ Chinese girls, beggars and protesting farmers. Parsons constructs his flawed hero so stereotypically that it’s no surprise that Bill, reflecting on his own working class background, wants to tackle the issues of post-modern China head on. But, the singly mind numbing aspect of My Favourite Wife is its inane predictability as the whole plot spirals towards the inevitable liaison between Bill and Jin Jin, a neighbour and kept woman at Paradise Mansions and of course subsequent discovery by his wife. Instead of a complex interplay between a meeting of cultures and people, we are presented with a hackneyed story written crudely to provoke sympathy, despair and disgust. It occurred to me that I would have enjoyed this story thoroughly if I was an expat wife sipping a Bellini at the Breach Candy Club, staring at the indifferent brown of the Arabian Sea, pondering about the indifference of people to the brown bodies that partition the pavement outside. It’s so gosh darn difficult taking home a monthly paycheque that could feed a village for a year and wanting to save the helpless denizens of the third world.  

Just Words