Category: Books

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D for Gerald Durrell

(1925 – 1995)

Finally, I host a gentleman author and he’s certainly one of a kind – a zookeeper author. Meet Gerald Durrell. He was born to an
English father and an Irish mother in Jamshedpur, India. His love affair
with animals began after a visit to the zoo. He maintains that the first word he could speak out was ‘zoo’. In fact he and
his wife, Jacquie, wrote only to collect funds for wildlife conservation. Yet he must have had a special gift considering he was shortlisted for the Nobel prize for Literature in 1961 and ’62, despite writing not being his first love.

My family
and other animals

After his
father passed away the family moved to England and subsequently, when Gerry was
about 10, to the Greek Island of Corfu. If you’ve read his book My family and
other animals you know his life thereon. 

His family became his subjects. Larry, Leslie, Margo, Gerry himself and their indomitable mother together created one of the funniest books I’ve ever read – the kind that makes you laugh out loud not just while you’re reading it but also later when a scene suddenly springs up in your memory and you cannot stop laughing. The book is the first part of a trilogy that includes Birds, Beasts and Relatives and The Garden of the Gods.

Life with a young animal lover at home is fraught with dangers for his family like finding a bunch of scorpions in a matchbox just as you’re about to light up your after dinner smoke or snakes in the bathtub after you’ve undressed for your bath. Obviously the book has generous doses of Corfu wildlife and you get to go on many a nature walk with Gerry.

His life in
his books

Like in the
book Gerry was homeschooled by his brother Larry’s friends. In fact many
characters of the book were real and remained life-long friends like the Greek
doctor and scientist Theodore Stephanides. A number of his other books were
also based on his real life experiences like Beasts in my Belfry from the time
he worked as a junior keeper in a zoo or A zoo in my Luggage, when he couldn’t
find a site for his zoo and had already collected the animals. 

A true
conservationist is often broke

.. and so was he. He used up his
father’s inheritance to finance his wildlife expedition and continued to go on
many more bringing back animals which he sold off to various zoos.

Rather than making a profit, he aimed at animal conservation – collecting not just those animals that would fetch him a good price
but those that needed to be saved. As a result he was soon broke. Worse, he
was black listed by the London zoo community because of a fallout with the
London zoo keeper and couldn’t find work. His writings came to his rescue while he worked at an aquarium.

His own zoo

He wasn’t
too happy with the way zoos were managed and decided to start his own. He founded
the Jersey Zoological park now called the Durrell Wildlife Park. If you’re a Durrell fan you might be interested in this site here that I stumbled upon.

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Tomorrow’s author is an easy guess, dear readers. Peek into your early years and if you don’t find her there you’ve had a sad childhood indeed.

This post is part of the April A to Z Challenge, 2014 for the theme AMAZING AUTHORS.


Also linking to the Ultimate Blog Challenge.

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B is for Bronte

Today it’s B for Bronte and I pick Charlotte Bronte (of Jane Eyre) over her sister Emily (of Wuthering Heights). Plenty of comparisons have been made between the sisters and I side with Charlotte simply because I prefer Jane’s level headedness to Catherine’s waywardness.

If Austen’s works lacked emotion here was an author who could most certainly not be blamed for that. Jane Eyre is proof enough. Whether it was Rochester passionately in love, enough to hide away his first wife or Jane herself who hears his impassioned cries across the miles – oh yes passion there’s a plenty.

Her life in her books

Charlotte drew heavily from her life while writing. At 8 she and three of her sisters were sent to the Clergy Daughter’s School in Lancashire. She hated it there. Two of her sisters died there of Tuberculosis. This school makes an appearance in Jane Eyre as the Lowood School. Her experiences as a governess became Jane’s too.

Charlotte, Emily and Anne..

.. made for quite a literary threesome. After Charlotte and Emily were brought back from the school, the girls read at home. They created an imaginary world and wrote about people who lived in that world. The three were all accomplished writers and poetesses as well. They even financed and published a book of poems together under the names of Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell – keeping the same initials as their real names.
Charlotte wrote Jane Eyre under the same pen name, Currer Bell. The book was an instant success. She wrote three other novels – Shirley, Villette and The Professor – and some poetry, however none was as popular as Jane Eyre.

Her heroine was a plain Jane

Charlotte felt very strongly, that it wasn’t right for the heroine to always be beautiful. Her sisters insisted it was impossible to make a heroine interesting if she wasn’t beautiful, Charlotte vowed to prove them wrong. Said she, “I will prove to you that you are wrong; I will show you a heroine as plain as small as myself, who shall be as interesting as any of yours.” And so Jane was made plain (and named ‘Jane’!) yet how enchanting was she! Like Austen’s heroines she too was no weakling demanding to be judged for who she was rather than where she came from.

On Austen

Charlotte was critical of Jane Austen’s Works saying they lacked ‘heart’. She mentions as much in one of her letters in 1850, “The passions are perfectly unknown to her,” says she.
So pick your favourite now.. Charlotte, Emily or good old Austen – Jane, Catharine or Lizzy – Rochester, Heathcliff or Darcy?
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Tomorrow dear readers, for the letter C, I jump forward in time and pick a contemporary Indian author. Guesses, anyone?

This post is part of the April A to Z Challenge, 2014

Also linking to the Ultimate Blog Challenge.

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C is for Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

Born 1956

After two
days of delving in the past I fast forward to current times and pick a modern
day favourite, an Indian American this time and a lady yet again.. I really
hadn’t realised I preferred women writers with women protagonists.

Today it is
Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni the author of the award winning The Mistress of Spices.
She has authored over a dozen books including novels and short stories as well
as some poetry. Her subjects are often Indian American immigrants. Her books include Arranged Marriage (short stories), Sister of My Heart, The Vine of Desire and Oleander Girl among others.

India to
America

She was born
in Calcutta (now Kolkata) and after finishing her graduation she moved to the
United States. It wouldn’t have been easy for her there and she took up various
small jobs to put herself through college – ‘menial and minimum wages’ is what
she terms them. However had she not moved, she just might not have become a
writer at all

On being a
writer

In her blog
she says, “In India, growing up in a traditional family, I had never considered
being a writer.” In America she came across other immigrants like her. She
identified with their struggles, struggles to fit into this new country yet to
keep their values intact at some level. And that’s where she started weaving
her stories and her first book ‘Arranged Marriage’ was born. Some of her stories
have a nagging melancholy, I don’t particularly are for, but they do paint a vivid picture of immigrants.

My favourites

I love the quaint
mix of India and America she serves up in her novels. I enjoyed The Mistress of Spices. That mix of magic and exotica coupled with
human longings and failings made for a compelling read.

However my absolute all time favourite is the one novel that doesn’t talk of immigrants. It is The Palace of Illusions –  a retelling of the Mahabharat, from a woman’s
perspective. Banerjee simplifies the epic once more talking of human failings and human relationships.

Her protagonist Draupadi is a princess ‘born to destroy’, the ‘ill-fated’ one. Yet how strong she is – a woman who refused
to take the name Draupadi (from her father’s name Drupad) and preferred to call
herself Panchali (after the kingdom of Panchal, where she was born). That must
have been quite a rarity in those days when women spent their lives in the shadow
of their fathers, brothers, husbands or sons. Forced to marry five men instead of the one she truly loved she strives to be a good wife to each. I loved her special relationship with Krishna too – his cool responses to her heated ones. She is passionate and outspoken, rash and vengeful too. Yet you cannot but fall in love with Banerjee’s Panchali.

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PS: I have
to add just a tiny bit about my other favourite ‘C’ author – the lady from
Nigeria Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Interestingly her latest novel Americanah
also deals with the issue of immigrants to America. Talk about connecting across
continents!

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This post is part of the April A to Z
Challenge, 2014 for the theme AMAZING AUTHORS.

Also linking to the Ultimate Blog Challenge.

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A is for Austen

Jane Austen

1775 – 1817

Can a book written in the
19th century find admirers in the 21st?… two hundred years later? Sure, if
Austen is anything to go by. And so I let Jane Austen kick off my A to Z
challenge. It was a tough choice from among greats like Ayn Rand, Aldous Huxley
and more recently the controversial yet highly enjoyable Amy Chua.
But when I let my heart choose it has to be her.

Isn’t it unbelievable that
she was first published in 1811 and we’re still reading her and enjoying her
novels?

The beginning

Jane came from a large family of six brothers and two sisters. She was born at Steventon, a small village in North Hampshire England. Apart from a few years at Oxford when Jane was just 8, she spent all her life within the circle of her family. Even before she hit her teens she was writing short plays and stories. At about 14 years (1789) she had made up her mind to become a professional writer. However her first novel, Sense and Sensibility (earlier known as Elinor and Marianne), went into print some 12 years later, in 1811. 
Her other works include, Pride and Prejudice (earlier titled First Impressions), Mansfield Park, Emma, Northanger Abbey and Persuasion.
Like regular women of her times and like her heroines as well, Jane could play the fortepiano (an early version of the present day piano), was a decent enough seamstress and could dance pretty well too.

Jane, the romantic

Strangely enough for someone whose romances are so popular Jane never married. She did have one not-quite-proper romance with Tom Lefroy a law student. However they were both penniless and his family had him sent away. They never saw each other again.
She received a proposal of marriage too, the only known proposal. Though she accepted it, she later withdrew her acceptance. The reason is not known. However later in a letter to her niece who had asked for advice on a relationship, Jane told her not to commit as “… Anything is preferred or endured rather than marrying without affection“, she cautioned. 
Sounds so much like Lizzie from Pride and Prejudice.

Finally..here is why

I love Austen

.. for her wit

It’s not the laugh out
loud kind of thing. It’s way more subtle and unexpected. It’s an ironical kind
of wit that makes you smile sentence after sentence.
Check out these gems.. 
Selfishness must always be forgiven you know, because there is no hope of a cure
Or Mr Darcy’s 
I do not want people to be very agreeable, as it saves me the trouble of liking them a great deal.

..for her heroins

They follow their heart.
They’re strong and passionate yet gentle and sensitive. I wonder how that went
down with the gentry two hundred years ago but it sure sits well with women of
the 21st century.

.. for her plots that always end happily

I’ve always maintained I’m
a sucker for happy endings. I love that ‘All is well’ feeling by the time her
books wrap up.

.. because her books are still
relevant

I can certainly vouch for
India in this regard. How becoming an old maid is considered such a horror (Maybe
not by the woman herself, quite like Lizzy in Pride and Prejudice, but by her
family, her relatives, her neighbours and her neighbour’s neighbours). Not for
nothing is she Helen Fielding’s (of Bridget Jones fame) favourite who famously
said.. “Jane Austen’s plots are very good and have been market researched over
a number of centuries, so I simply decided to steal one of them. I thought she
wouldn’t mind and anyway she’s dead.” In a sense Austen in the mother of all modern day chick-lit. (Yikes I hate that term, so! Makes women sound like hens).

On the other side are her
critics who maintain..

…her novels lack
‘passion’.

Well she did skim over
that bit but then I’m sure she never intended to write sexy books. (She would
probably be reaching out for her smelling salts hearing that Fifty Shades was
inspired by her Pride and Prejudice). 

… she suffered from a
narrow vision 

because she only drew upon the small society she lived in for inspiration.
Yet, how well she did it! And that her heroines could think beyond what was expected of them, speaks
of her broad mindedness.

So which side are you on?

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This post is part of the April A to Z Challenge, 2014, for the theme AMAZING AUTHORS.

Also linking to the Ultimate Blog Challenge.

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I am Malala – A review

Title: I Am Malala
Author: Malala Yousafzai and Christina Lamb
Price: Rs 295/-

How often does it happen that you’re just finishing a book and a reviewing challenge comes up? First, I’m not big on reviews.. writing them that is. I love reading them though.

‘I am Malala’ is a book I’ve been wanting to read for a long time for lots of reasons. Though I’m not much for autobiographies I love women protagonists and one as brave and inspiring as this one made it a sure read for me. Also, I have always been curious about life in Pakistan because they are so close and so like us yet so very different in many ways.

All those reasons made the book a compelling read.

This is the story of Malala, a young Pakistani girl, who is passionate about the cause of Women’s education. 

Malala was the eldest of three children. Both her younger siblings were boys. Despite the bias against girls that was/is prevalent in Pakistan, much like India, she remained her father’s favourite. Her mother was illiterate yet a very forward thinking woman. However, it was her father who influenced her most. He was a speaker and an educationist and ran schools of his own. She would sit near him and listen to him as he told stories or later, discussed politics. As she grew older she started going out with him to deliver talks on the need for education. They would talk at rallies and meets and at radio stations.

She traces the political upheavals in Pakistan – Musharraf’s coming to power, Benazir’s assassination, the Taliban rise, 9/11 and it’s effect on Pakistan and also Osama’s capture. 

Her relatively happy life as the brightest student of her class, changed when the Taliban took over the Swat valley.
“I was ten when the Taliban came to the Valley. Moniba (her friend) and I had been reading the Twilight series and longed to be vampires.”
What it must have been for a free-thinking, Twilight reading, bright young girl to suddenly be barred from school, is hard to imagine. From worrying about whether she would top her class yet again she had to start worrying about how long she would be able to go to school at all. 

However, Malala and her friends refused to be cowed down by the Taliban. They would hide their books under their shawls along the way to school. She talks at length about life under their rule. She derived her strength from her father who canvassed tirelessly against them. She also wrote a blog for the BBC under the pseudonym Gul Makai.

When she was 15 in 2012, on her way back from school, the Taliban shot her in  the head at point blank range. Nobody expected her to survive. But she did and despite her experiences, continues to champion her cause even today.

Her’s is a very fascinating journey and that makes the book a great read. 

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Linking to Write Tribe Festival of Words. 


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