GHACHAR GHOCHAR, an unnerving look at how success corrupts the successful

GHACHAR GHOCHAR
VIVEK SHANBHAG tr. Srinath Perur
Penguin Original Fiction/Penguin Books
$15 trade paper, available now

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: A young man's close-knit family is nearly destitute when his uncle founds a successful spice company, changing their fortunes overnight. As they move from a cramped, ant-infested shack to a larger house on the other side of Bangalore, and try to adjust to a new way of life, the family dynamic begins to shift. Allegiances realign; marriages are arranged and begin to falter; and conflict brews ominously in the background. Things become "ghachar ghochar"—a nonsense phrase uttered by one meaning something tangled beyond repair, a knot that can't be untied.

Elegantly written and punctuated by moments of unexpected warmth and humor, Ghachar Ghochar is a quietly enthralling, deeply unsettling novel about the shifting meanings—and consequences—of financial gain in contemporary India.
Longlisted for the International Dublin Literary Award
One of the BBC's "10 Books You Should Read in February"
One of Publishers Weekly's "Writers to Watch Spring 2017"
One of the NewYorker.com contributors' "Books We Loved in 2016"

My Review: India is an amazing country. Its many peoples are in constant creative ferment. Its immense democracy, largest in the world and most complex imaginable, is in turmoil at every moment and in every segment of a society that is ancient, intricate, and at odds with itself. That the country produces amazing literature is, given all these facts, unsurprising. That we as Americans are largely unaware of that literature is unsurprising, sadly. It's part of the US's long-standing resistance to reading translations at anything like the rate that other countries' readers do. I hope that trend will change as the millennials grow into their armchair-and-novel years.

I am a sucker for rags-to-riches stories. It's almost always interesting to see how changing fortunes reveal true character. The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit and Revolutionary Road are classics for a reason. Our unnamed narrator is the son of a starchy, honorable man whose hard work has enabled the family to survive without hunger but also without luxury. Amma and Appa and Chikappa (Appa's younger brother), the three adults, are always frugal and sensible with their spending, and the children...sister Malati and the narrator...absorbed this quality without any need to formally teach it.

When Chikappa rises to the occasion of Appa's forced retirement from his job by proposing the family start a spice-packaging business, their fortunes change rapidly and upwards on the economic ladder. The result is a classic clash of expectations:

Appa enjoys our current prosperity with considerable hesitation, as if it were undeserved. He’s given to quoting a proverb that says wealth shouldn’t strike suddenly like a visitation, but instead grow gradually like a tree.

Appa's attitude is at variance from everyone else's. His deeply ingrained suspicion of luck is absent from the free-spending rest of the family. Well, Chikappa isn't profligate with anything except his time, which he lavishes on his business. He no doubt is motivated by memories of the old standard of living the family endured:

It didn’t seem like [the ants] were here to find food. Nor did they have the patience to bite anyone. Left to themselves, they’d quickly haul to particles of mud and built nests here and there in the house. You could try scuttling them with a broom, but they’d get into a mad frenzy and climb up the broom and on to your arm. Before you knew it, they’d be all over you, even under your clothes. For days on end there would be a terrific invasion, and then one day you would wake up to find them gone. There was no telling why they came, where they went. I sometimes saw them racing in lines along the window sills in the front room, where there was nothing to eat. Perhaps they were on a mission of some sort, only passing through our house in self-important columns. But not once did I see the trail of a column, an ant that had no other ants behind it.

That's a wonderful image, the column of invaders with no tail in sight. The endless demands of life for more when all that you have is fixed or shrinking:

We had no compunction toward our enemies [the ants] and took to increasingly desperate and violent means of dealing with them. If we noticed they'd laid siege to a snack, we might trap them in a circle drawn with water and take away whatever they were eating, then watch them scurry about in confusion before wiping them off the floor with a wet cloth. I took pleasure in seeing them shrivel into black points when burning coals were rolled over them. When they attacked an unwashed pan or cup they'd soon be mercilessly drowned. I suppose initially each of us did these things only when we were alone, but in time, we began to be openly cruel. We came around to Amma's view of them as demons come to swallow our home and became a family that took pleasure in their destruction. We might have changed houses since, but habits are harder to change.

When you have little, protecting it becomes justification for any act.

One of the many besetting issues in Indian culture today is violence against women. I'm always appalled at the notion of rape, and the act itself is heinous beyond belief. The scope of violence against women in the immense cultural landscape of India is so much wider than just rape that it causes a kind of paralysis in my thinking. Our unnamed narrator's arranged marriage is strange to me, given the absence of such a tradition in modern American culture; but it begins so well, so promisingly:

That single moment's intensity hasn't been matched in my life before or since. A woman I didn't know had chosen to accept me, in body and mind. Perhaps it is this instant that forms the basis of traditional marriage—a complete stranger is suddenly mine. And then, I am hers, too; I must offer her my all. I want her to wield her power over me as an acknowledgment of my love. The rush of those feelings all at once is too much to describe. Language communicates in terms of what is already known; it chokes up when asked to deal with the entirely unprecedented.

That's an entire experience I can't fathom, but Shanbhag's description enables me to get a handle on the positives that could ensue from such a contract. That Anita, the bride, comes to the family without a dowry is made explicitly a source of conflict. Amma announces to Anita's parents that their prosperity means the family will not be asking for a dowry; Anita's father, an academic and modern thinker, says he would not have given his daughter to them had they demanded a dowry.

That made me pause. "Give" his daughter to them? Yes, vastly superior to the notion of selling her for a dowry; but give her to them? Clearly I have a lot of learning to do. The concept...it's so foreign that I can't wrap my head around it. But it's this very subject that sets up the book's intense cliffhanger ending, which to this moment gives me heebie-jeebies. It's such a tightly written book that ending on a cliffhanger should be grounds for complaint from chronic ending-moaner me. Not so in this case. It's exactly the right note to strike, and it keeps the book resonating inside my skull.

I don't suppose that should surprise me, really, as the author offers this insight into the art and science of translation:

I believe the essence of translation lies in taking what is unsaid in a work from one language to another. Words have memories, a history of their own. There are no two words with exactly the same meaning. To recreate the unspoken in another language, one needs to understand what went into making the original; then one must dismantle it and rebuild it in the other language.

Someone who sees so very clearly the purpose of writing is someone who can be trusted to create a book's proper ending. I cannot wait for Shanbhag and Perur to finish his next English translation. I'll be first in line at the till, waiting only to get coffee and snacks before diving in to the next exploration of story and meaning.

THE FABRIC OF REALITY, twenty years on, presents the Multiverse argument clearly and concisely and still freshly

THE FABRIC OF REALITY: The Science of Parallel Universes--and Its Implications
David Deutsch
Penguin Books
$17.00 trade paper, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: For David Deutsch, a young physicist of unusual originality, quantum theory contains our most fundamental knowledge of the physical world. Taken literally, it implies that there are many universes “parallel” to the one we see around us. This multiplicity of universes, according to Deutsch, turns out to be the key to achieving a new worldview, one which synthesizes the theories of evolution, computation, and knowledge with quantum physics. Considered jointly, these four strands of explanation reveal a unified fabric of reality that is both objective and comprehensible, the subject of this daring, challenging book.

The Fabric of Reality explains and connects many topics at the leading edge of current research and thinking, such as quantum computers (which work by effectively collaborating with their counterparts in other universes), the physics of time travel, the comprehensibility of nature and the physical limits of virtual reality, the significance of human life, and the ultimate fate of the universe. Here, for scientist and layperson alike, for philosopher, science-fiction reader, biologist, and computer expert, is a startlingly complete and rational synthesis of disciplines, and a new, optimistic message about existence.

My Review: I report that The Fabric of Reality by David Deutsch is simply wonderful. Clear, well-turned prose, ample illustrative examples of his points, and a beautifully thought-out explication of the bizarre nature of reality as explained in the far reaches of physics. The fact that Richard Dawkins is cited as an inspiration for Mr. Deutsch's work should forewarn the spiritual seekers in the audience to avoid this book at all costs. It takes a very clear stance against there being a supernatural agency in the workings of the Multiverse.

Instead, Deutsch says that the Multiverse is weird enough to contain answers to all questions couched in numinous terms and to explain all phenomena and experiences the species has filed in the "supernatural" bin. His arguments are presented without condescension or hectoring, which is a common failing in the prose that wishes to "debunk" the spiritual experience. He simply explains how the experiences fit into the framework of the Multiverse. From there, he says, it's up to you the reader.

THIS is an attitude I can endorse and enjoy. I dislike the spiritual imperialism that says, "My way is Right and all others are Wrong," and equally dislike the materialist dogma that "There IS no spiritual and those who imagine there is are deluded and foolish." (I reserve that dismissive and rejecting locution for religion, not the spiritual, as they are unrelated things.) I want the arguments presented and then leave it up to me to decide what to do with the information presented. Please don't do my thinking for me! And that, laddies and gentles all, is what I feel Mr. Deutsch makes an overall successful stab at NOT doing. He favors the material explanation, and makes no bones about it; but he is very reasonable and reasoned in his advocacy, not shrill or hectoring.

A well-done work of enduring value in the cultural conversation about the nature of reality as we find it. And for reasons that I can't understand, not a gigantic bestseller. I hope that will change....

More Motherhood Propaganda: THE HEN WHO DREAMED SHE COULD FLY. Buy it for the illos.

THE HEN WHO DREAMED SHE COULD FLY
SUN-MI HWANG translated by Kim Chi-Young, illustrated by Nomoco
Penguin Books
$15.00 trade paper, available now

Rating: 3* of five

The Publisher Says: This is the story of a hen named Sprout. No longer content to lay eggs on command, only to have them carted off to the market, she glimpses her future every morning through the barn doors, where the other animals roam free, and comes up with a plan to escape into the wild—and to hatch an egg of her own.

An anthem for freedom, individuality and motherhood featuring a plucky, spirited heroine who rebels against the tradition-bound world of the barnyard, The Hen Who Dreamed She Could Fly is a novel of universal resonance that also opens a window on Korea, where it has captivated millions of readers. And with its array of animal characters—the hen, the duck, the rooster, the dog, the weasel—it calls to mind such classics in English as Animal Farm and Charlotte’s Web.

Featuring specially-commissioned illustrations, this first English-language edition of Sun-mi Hwang’s fable for our times beautifully captures the journey of an unforgettable character in world literature.

My Review: Jonathan Livingston Seagull meets Babe. To compare the book to Charlotte's Web is damned near heresy. In every generation, there's another fable of Independence Declared by ____ and the Struggles of _____ to xxxx. This is the 21st century's international publishing phenomenon in the genre, which the provincial, smugly self-satisfied Murrikin Megapublishers got 15 years after most places did.

If you're 14 and a sad, lonely, misunderstood girl, this is ideal to stuff into your locker. Also a grandmother's ideal gift for same. Older folks who've just become grandparents, adoptees and their mommies, those who are sentimental as all get-out, queue up for your copy.

The illustrations are so very spare and lovely and evocative that I gave the silly text 3 stars. But my serious objection to the book is that the hen's one true dream, the longing of her soul, the reason she's ready to fight a weasel fagodsake is:

She want to become a real hen and hatch an egg.

So, in other words, Motherhood Makes the Hen.

This is not a message I think needs further spreading. It has metastasized in our various cultures to the point that rich first-world folks go buy themselves a baby girl at the Chinese Baby Bazaar, or spend absurd amounts of money doing medical hoo-hah and get themselves their very own genetic descendants.

With seven billion people on the planet, this obsession, this personal value marker, needs to be re-thought and revised.

Man Booker winner, movie adaptation box-office disaster: DISGRACE, well named.

DISGRACE
J.M. COETZEE
Penguin Paperbacks
$16.00 trade paper, available now

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: A divorced, middle-aged English professor finds himself increasingly unable to resist affairs with his female students. When discovered by the college authorities, he is expected to apologize and repent in an effort to save his job, but he refuses to become a scapegoat in what he see as as a show trial designed to reinforce a stringent political correctness.

He preempts the authorities and leaves his job, and the city, to spend time with his grown-up lesbian daughter on her remote farm. Things between them are strained - there is much from the past they need to reconcile - and the situation becomes critical when they are the victims of a brutal and horrifying attack.

In spectacularly powerful and lucid prose, J.M. Coetzee uses all his formidable skills to engage with a post-apartheid culture in unexpected and revealing ways. This examination into the sexual and politcal lawlines of modern South Africa as it tries desperately to start a fresh page in its history is chilling, uncompromising and unforgettable.

My Review: (One-line summary from Book Circle days) Wonderful writing, is there a story here?

I think I must have been in a foul humor when I wrote that. There is indeed a story here. And after seeing the 2009 movie, I decided to revive this review to get to that story.

About disgrace, about the taking of grace from another being, about the horrors of which grace, in its religious meaning, is capable of holding back.

David Lurie, fifty-two, isn't a bad man. He isn't a good man, either. He is a human male possessed of a libido and enough facility of mind and tongue to service that libido's demands. This means he is also capable of performing, to the absolute minimum standard, the demands of teaching the youth of Cape Town, South Africa, a subject barely worthy of attention: "Communication." Not, you will note, English, or a language, but the abstraction of communication, whole and entire.

Bah. Modern "education" rots. So David, after he loses his erotic focus Soraya, leaves it and Cape Town behind to join his daughter Lucy in the countryside. She has a farm there, and it is the farm that leads to dis-grace, the shedding of grace, the negation of grace, for father and daughter alike. Horrors occur that I have no desire to relate to you, and that should keep those readers whose anxiety buttons are easily engaged far, far away from this book.

I don't think Coetzee likes people too terribly much.

The ending is the final act of dis-grace. I strongly strongly urge dog-lovers not to read the ending. Put it this way: I'd love the ending had it featured a cat. Now, does that scare y'all off? Good.

But the writing. Oh me, oh my.

A rik to own anything: a car, a pair of shoes, a packet of cigarettes. Not enough to go around, not enough cars, shoes, cigarettes. Too many people, too few things. What there is must go into circulation, so that everyone can have a chance to be happy for a day. That is the theory; hold to the theory and to the comforts of theory. Not human evil, just a vast circulatory system, to whose workings pity and terror are irrelevant. That is how one must see life in this country: in its schematic aspect. Otherwise one could go mad.

Thus the musings of a father after a horrific crisis. David Lurie is dis-graced. Grace is no longer part of David Lurie's mental furniture, and while he fights it for over 100pp, in the end, at the ending, David Lurie accepts his fate:

He is disgraced.