Family Matters ***

By Rohinton Mistry.
Published 2002 by Borzoi Books/ Alfred A. Knopf a Division of Random House.
Originally Published in Canada by McClelland and Stewart.
434 pages.

I like novels by Indian authors.  They tend to be really sad.  Two books in particular are so sad that they reach into your chest and pull your heart out and then jump on top of it to smash it to pieces.  They are incredibly powerful and sad.  One is (forgive me the full names - they are Indian and I don't remember very well) Roy's God of Small Things about an illicit love affair between disparate castes and the horrific consequences.  The other is A Fine Balance by this same author as the book I am reviewing now in which two characters from the Untouchable class also have horrific consequences for their behavior and actions.

This book, Family Matters does have it's tragic moments but it is a decidedly lighter book in feeling, though not necessarily in content.

My son has been teasing me about how I like sad or dark books as of late "Why do you always read those kinds of books" he said to me while I was reading this one.  I said, "hey, this isn't so dark it's all about a faimily who are just trying to survive and even hopefully thrive".I have heard this comment before about books being to sad or dark.  When I facilitated a book club for teachers, one of the comments was why we couldn't  ever read anything fun or happy.  One person, I think a co facilitator, said that great literature is not usually light and whimsical.  That may be true, but I would also add the explanation I gave to my son.  Part of the structure of all stories is that they all have problems that need to be resolved.  From these problems come the darkness.  We all have darkness in our hearts becasue we all have problems, even the perkiest person in the world, and all books have a darkness that results from the problem that is trying to be resolved.  True some are darker than others. That would depend on how the author decides to end the stroy.  Will it be resolved with a happy ending or will the ending be less obvious, hence darker?  I ramble I know but those are the thoughts that this book has inspired in me.

So this story goes that an old man, Nariman, is living with his step children, Coomy and Jal, who are unmarried.  When he seriously gets hurt and winds up bed ridden, the selfish siblings, especailly Coomy, foist him off on their half sister (and daughter of Nariman) Roxy becasue he is too difficult to care for.  Roxy has a complete nuclear family but she loves her father and takes him in their much smaller apartment.  Nariman is well loved, and well cared for but his presence causes problems and the family struggles with lack of space and less income.  While there are some tragic events, funnily enough, the book ends with your tradtional happy ending.  Everything is resolved.  But the author adds a very intriguing epilogue.

It's five years later, and Nariman has passed away, but the family seems to be embroiled in trouble once again.  The son of Roxy is continously battling with is father (Roxy's husband) over a girl that is from a different religion.  The signifiicance of this is that much of Nariman's tragic troubles started in the same way. He when he was younger he also had a love with a girl that was not of his caste and he and his family suffer for it greatly.  This ending seems to say several things to me.  Life is cyclical in that problems get resolved and then new ones arise.  So happy ending and all life continues and new crap comes up.  Of course it also says something to the idea of religious intolerance anf the fact that the family hadn't learned from ther grandfather's troubles.

My only real criticism is that I didn't care for the parts where Roxy's husband started to become religious.  It had described the scene and rituals of the religion, which I know should be interesting because I know nothing about Zarathustra religion, but I found all the details a bit of a chore to read.  Of course this conversion of the father was necessary for the important ending, but I wonder if the point could have been made in a shorter way (damned American attention span I got).  Other wise, this seems to me an almost flawless book.

Solar **1/2

By Ian McEwan.
Published in 2010 by Nan A. Talese / Doubleday a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
originally published in Great Britain by Jonathan Cape, The Random House Group Ltd., London.
287 Pages.

On Face Book there is an application called Shiite gifts for academics and it's really funny.   You can send really crappy gifts to your friends in academia.  For example you can send obsolete and broken technology and there will be a picture of a beat up old overhead projector.  You can also send people as gifts such as the creepy, ogling colleague or the spoiled coed with the car that's nicer than yours.  There's one i really like.  You can send a professor who behaves like a character in a Phillip Roth novel.  The implication is that these characters are pretty despicable (and I tend to relate to Roth's character - oh no!)  This book reminds me of a Philip Roth book because here we have a character that behaves pretty despicable, yet the reader is attached to him because we see everything from his point of view.

So the story goes that this middle aged, balding and fat man named Michael Beard is a scientist who many years previously won the Nobel Peace Prize for some formula or concept he had thought up.  After that he had been pretty much resting on hi laurels and accepting institutional positions and opportunities to speak to make money.  The book starts out with him involved in one of many marriages and affairs.  He's constantly cheating on his wives and lovers - despicable.  He's fat bald and middle aged yet he's still able to get the girls (writer's fantasy?)

He's appointed to be head of a new facility that is opened in England to compete with America's program on alternative energies.  After some faltering first steps, the organization decides to put it's energies into Micheal's idea of producing wind turbins on a small scale so that every home in London can afford one.  After a while Beard realizes that it is a horrible idea, but everyone is so gung ho about it, he decides to go with the flow.

That is until one of his young superstar upstarts starts to talk with him about an idea of using Solar Energy that is converted to electricity in a unique and efficient new way ( I can't remember the exact process).  Beard is reluctant though he knows his idea is a terrible one. 

Then there is a freak accident and the young man is now out of the picture.  Beard decides to take the kid's idea and run with it claiming that it is all his own in hopes to garner attention and to frankly save the world (from global warming of course).  Despicable!  The novel progresses by describing his current relationship/s and the onward march to the revelation of his project to the world.  But with all the bridges he's burned (he doesn't do well in social situations either) and all the hearts he has broken, everything catches up to him at the finale when he is ready to unveil his much loved project.

I like McEwan's sense of humor, something that has not been a focal point in any of the books I have read by him previously.  Some of the technical jargon gets to be a little too much and can be a bit frustrating, but I can manage to follow most of it.  Not his greatest work but funny and thought provoking.  And current in today's science and politics.

Here are two videos. One is an interview and one is a reading by the author.



And an excerpt...



here's an interview.