Book Review – Collected Short Stories of Aadhavan

My reading in January hasn’t been going well because I’ve been distracted by life. My reading plans crashlanded before they took off. But I managed to find time to go to the local book fair and get some (= many, too many!) books. I also somehow managed to find time to read one of the books I got. It was the collected short stories of Aadhavan.

Aadhavan was a well-known Tamil writer during his time. He started writing from the 1960s and he wrote till the late 1980s. He wrote mostly for small, serious literary magazines. So his fan base was small but loyal. He was famous for his short stories (this book has 60 of them), but he also wrote a few novels (3 of them), some novellas (5, I think) and a play. Most of his short stories featured an introverted person who lived a rich internal life, but who struggled with the day-to-day demands placed by everyday life, by family, by religion, by the workplace, by the state. His protagonists struggle to balance the contradictions between these two. If you are an introvert, you’ll be able to identify with most of these stories.

I loved this book. It took me a long time to read, but I loved it. It is hard to pick some favourite stories from the book, because the book was huge and there were so many favourites. Some top-of-my-mind favourites are these –

(1) An Old Man; a New World (Oru Pazhaiya Kizhavar; Oru Pudhiya Ulagam) – It is about an old man who struggles with the changes in the world, and how it is hard to even find a good saloon to get his hair cut

(2) The Story of Black Amba (Karuppu Amba Kadhai) – it is about a dad telling his daughter her favourite story every night, and how the story keeps taking new shapes everytime it is being told

(3) Pugaichalgal – it is about a newly married couple, whose relationship changes in a complex way after the initial honeymoon period gets over

(4) After the Movie Ended (Cinema Mudindha Podhu) – it is about what happens when to a family of three, a husband, a wife, and a kid, when the movie gets over

(5) Sivappaga, Uyaramaaga, Meesai Vaikkaamal… – it is about a young man and a young woman who are attracted to each other in the workplace, but this is what it seems, because there is more to it than meets the eye.

I want to share some excerpts from the book, but I’m too lazy to translate right now 🙈 Hopefully, another day…

This is the first chunkster (>= 800 pages) that I’ve read this year, and so I’m very happy. I’ve read probably only 17 chunksters in my whole life and so this is a significant event for me. Yay!

Have you read Aadhavan’s short stories? What do you think about them?

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Book Review – The Wild Goose by Mori Ōgai (Translated by Burton Watson)

I discovered ‘The Wild Goose‘ by Mori Ōgai through Caroline’s (from ‘Beauty is a Sleeping Cat’) review. The translation that I read was by Burton Watson. There is another translation of the book called ‘The Wild Geese’. I read this for ‘January In Japan’ and ‘Japanese Literature Challenge’ hosted by Dolce Bellezza (which is in its 17th year this year, and is one of oldest reading events on the internet. Yay!).

The story goes like this. Otama is a beautiful young woman who is the mistress of Suezō. One day when she opens the window, she spots Okada taking a walk. Okada is a university student. Their eyes meet and something happens. Otama has never felt like this before. What happens after that forms the rest of the story.

The story brings vividly to life the Japan of that era. The unspoken, unrequited love that Otama feels for Okada is very beautifully depicted. The ending is haunting and makes our heart ache. The narrator of the story who is Okada’s friend, says something at the end and it makes us wonder what happened after the story ended. That adds to the beauty and the poignancy of the story. The whole story evokes a feeling of ‘Saudade‘ (I’m sure there is a Japanese equivalent for ‘Saudade’, but I’m not able to find it).

(From Wiki – “Saudade is an emotional state of melancholic or profoundly nostalgic longing for a beloved yet absent something or someone. It is often associated with a repressed understanding that one might never encounter the object of longing ever again. It is a recollection of feelings, experiences, places, or events, often elusive, that cause a sense of separation from the exciting, pleasant, or joyous sensations they once caused. It derives from the Latin word for solitude.”)

I loved ‘The Wild Goose’. I’m glad I read it. Edward Seidensticker described the book beautifully –

“I have long been fond of The Wild Goose. For more than a quarter of a century I have had an apartment at the top of the Muenzaka slope, where Otama lived and up and down which Okada had his evening walks. No house survives that is old enough to have been hers, but the Iwasaki wall still runs along one side of the narrow street, and people speak of her as if she were real and still among the inhabitants of the neighborhood.”

I got goosebumps when I read that.

Have you read ‘The Wild Goose’? What do you think about it?

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Book Review – The Wreck of the Mary Deare by Hammond Innes

There are times when some of us take the sanctuary of comfort reads, when we want to read something light and fast-paced with an interesting plot, but which doesn’t tax our mind too much. For many of us this comfort read is a cozy mystery. For me, it is the thriller.

Thrillers were a staple diet of readers during the Cold War era and even till the end of the 20th century. These days thrillers seem to have disappeared quietly (or it is possible that they are still popular but I see them less and less). The definition of the thriller has changed these days and today the word refers mostly to books which are similar in some ways to ‘Gone Girl’ or ‘The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo’. But once upon a time, a thriller looked different – there were ships and planes and spies and adventure and action. Sometimes the story happened in the middle of a war zone. At other times it happened in a peaceful world. These days there are movies that have these plots, but the traditional thriller novel seems to be mostly dead.

Hammond Innes was one of the popular thriller writers during the Cold War era. I’ve never read any of his books though. There used to be so many thriller writers around that it was hard to read even a sample of them all. I missed out on Hammond Innes. Sometime back one of my friends recommended Hammond Innes’ ‘The Wreck of the Mary Deare‘. It is probably Innes’ most famous book. As I always try starting the year with a comfort read, I decided to read this one.

A yacht is sailing in the sea. There are three people in the yacht. One of them suddenly spots a big ship coming out of the fog, heading straight towards them. They swerve and somehow avoid being hit. Later, after a few hours, they see the same ship. This time the ship’s engines are off and it is quietly drifting in the water. One of the sailors in the yacht suggests that they board the ship and see whether there is anyone there and if they need help. One of them boards the ship.

How many movies like this have we seen? There is an unknown ship which suddenly appears in the middle of the ocean. People board it and they discover that there is no one inside. Then bad things start happening! So we want to scream  when this yacht sailor boards the ship. Our instinct says that it is not going to end well for anyone. So what happens after that? Is there anyone in the ship? Do bad things happen? You have to read the book to find out 😊

I enjoyed reading ‘The Wreck of the Mary Deare’. The first part of the story happens in the sea, the second part is a gripping courtroom drama, and the third part happens again in the sea. I read the whole book in one breath. The story was not at all what I expected. If you like ships and sea, this is a great book. This book has also been adapted into a movie. I want to watch that sometime.

I’ll leave you with one of my favourite passages from the book.

“It is difficult to be scared of something that is inevitable. You accept it, and that is that. But I remember thinking how ironical it was; the sea was to me a liquid, quiet, unruffled world through which to glide down green corridors to the darker depths, down tall reef walls with the fish, all brilliant colours in the surface dazzle, down to the shadowy shapes of barnacle-crusted wrecks. Now it was a raging fury of a giant, rearing up towards me, clutching at me, foaming and angry.”

Have you read ‘The Wreck of the Mary Deare’? What do you think about it?

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