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Books : Fiction : World
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In 1922, F Scott Fitzgerald announced his decision to write "something new--something extraordinary and beautiful and simple, intricately patterned". That extraordinary, beautiful, intricately patterned and, above all, simple novel became The Great Gatsby, arguably Fitzgerald's finest work and certainly the book for which he is best known. A portrait of the Jazz Age in all of its decadence and excess, Gatsby captured the spirit of the author's generation and earned itself a permanent place in American mythology. Self-made, self-invented millionaire Jay Gatsby embodies some of Fitzgerald's--and his country's--most abiding obsessions: money, ambition, greed and the promise of new beginnings. "Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgiastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that's no matter--tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther... And one fine morning--" Gatsby's rise to glory and eventual fall from grace be comes a kind of cautionary tale about the American Dream.It's also a love story, of sorts, the narrative of Gatsby's quixotic passion for Daisy Buchanan. The pair meet five years before the novel begins, when Daisy is a legendary young Louisville beauty and Gatsby an impoverished officer. They fall in love, but while Gatsby serves overseas, Daisy marries the brutal, bullying but extremely rich Tom Buchanan. After the war, Gatsby devotes himself blindly to the pursuit of wealth by whatever means--and to the pursuit of Daisy, which amounts to the same thing. "Her voice is full of money," Gatsby says admiringly, in one of the novel's more famous descriptions. His millions made, Gatsby buys a mansion across Long Island Sound from Daisy's patrician East Egg address, throws lavish parties and waits for her to appear. When s he does, events unfold with all the tragic inevitability of a Greek drama, with detached, cynical neighbour Nick Carraway acting as chorus throughout. Spare, elegantly plotted and written in crystalline prose, The Great Gatsby is as perfectly satisfying as the best kind of poem. Perry Freeman, Amazon.com
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The phenomenal acclaim for Alexander McCall Smith's Botswana-set detective series featuring the 'comfortably built' Precious Ramotswe took the publishing world by storm, notably because the gentle, unforced humour of the books was such a contrast with the far grittier fare on offer from most publishers and crime authors. Of course, it's probably true that readers were ready for something a touch more ingratiating --- that's to say, crime books that didn't always end with the walls painted with blood.The latest book in McCall Smith's highly successful career, The Unbearable Lightness of Scones, is, however, not one of his Precious Ramotswe books, but an entry in the pleasing (and undemanding) Scotland Street series, full of the good-natured charm and inventiveness that is the author's hallmark. Bertie, McCall Smith's precocious six-year-old protagonist, is still at odds with his domineering mother, Irene, but enjoying his time as a cub scout. Matthew is struggling with the demands of marriage, while Domenica has her own struggle with the loneliness that accompanies her somewhat arid intellectual lifestyle. The residents of 44 Scotland St offer a kind of Celtic alternative to the humour of Armistead Maupin's delightful San Francisco-set Tales of the City (although unorthodox sexuality has less of a place here!).
It's a something of an achievement in the often dark world of the 21st century to deliver lightweight (but intelligent) entertainment such as this. There will always be those who want more uncompromising fare, but those attuned to Alexander McCall Smith's more gentle world view need not hesitate. --Barry Forshaw
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In 1975, in an unidentified Indian city, Mrs Dina Dalal, a financially pressed Parsi widow in her early 40s sets up a sweatshop of sorts in her ramshackle apartment. Determined to remain financially independent and to avoid a second marriage, she takes in a boarder and two Hindu tailors to sew dresses for an export company. As the four share their stories, then meals, then living space, human kinship prevails and the four become a kind of family, despite the lines of caste, class and religion. When tragedy strikes, their cherished, newfound stability is threatened, and each character must face a difficult choice in trying to salvage their relationships.
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In her first novel, award-winning Indian screenwriter Arundhati Roy conjures a whoosh of wordplay that rises from the pages like a brilliant jazz improvisation. The God of Small Things is nominally the story of young twins Rahel and Estha and the rest of their family, but the book feels like a million stories spinning out indefinitely; it is the product of a genius child-mind that takes everything in and transforms it in an alchemy of poetry. The God of Small Things is at once exotic and familiar to the Western reader, written in an English that's completely new and invigorated by the Asian Indian influences of culture and language.
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