This is a small book, about 115 pages and which I almost didn't buy....
Last year , when I was totally into nonfiction , I came across this book on Amazon. It kept on popping in my recommendations. Mr. Shanbhag was called a mixture of Chekhov and R.K. Narayan and that piqued my curiosity. I downloaded a sample from this book and I was hooked . There is a character of a waiter called Vincent in the book which reminded me of Jeeves .
This book is translated from Kannada by Srinath Perur ( whose well written travelogue I purchased in the same order). The translation is very good , I never felt that this was not originally written in English. This may be called as a short novel or a longish short story.
This is a story of a family- our unknown , unnamed narrator , his parents, wife, uncle and a divorced sister. When they had no money , there was love and happiness. With sudden arrival of money , the whole family dynamic changes.The uncle , who is street-smart , slightly crooked and holds the purse-strings becomes the most important person of the family. With elevation of social status , the young man , our protagonist , loses a will to be somebody ,thus justifying his unnamed character in the book. Everything revolves around money and honesty is now termed as insanity...nothing else matters but money ..
I loved the easy, conversational tone of the book.The entire book is actually a stream of thoughts passing through our narrator's mind one day . We know about his childhood , his upbringing , arrival of money and changing family dynamics, his marriage and his aimless -drifting personality.We know that 30 hours have passed since he left home, and we know the suggestive conversation that happened before he left home. We are not given a neat conclusion of the novel , we complete it in our mind - perhaps tame , perhaps sinister or may be perhaps a feminist ending...We only know one thing for sure - our narrator is so used to the money that he will never give up the comfort , he has accepted his spineless existence as the only possible one...
On the whole , a book definitely worth reading...
Last year , when I was totally into nonfiction , I came across this book on Amazon. It kept on popping in my recommendations. Mr. Shanbhag was called a mixture of Chekhov and R.K. Narayan and that piqued my curiosity. I downloaded a sample from this book and I was hooked . There is a character of a waiter called Vincent in the book which reminded me of Jeeves .
This book is translated from Kannada by Srinath Perur ( whose well written travelogue I purchased in the same order). The translation is very good , I never felt that this was not originally written in English. This may be called as a short novel or a longish short story.
This is a story of a family- our unknown , unnamed narrator , his parents, wife, uncle and a divorced sister. When they had no money , there was love and happiness. With sudden arrival of money , the whole family dynamic changes.The uncle , who is street-smart , slightly crooked and holds the purse-strings becomes the most important person of the family. With elevation of social status , the young man , our protagonist , loses a will to be somebody ,thus justifying his unnamed character in the book. Everything revolves around money and honesty is now termed as insanity...nothing else matters but money ..
I loved the easy, conversational tone of the book.The entire book is actually a stream of thoughts passing through our narrator's mind one day . We know about his childhood , his upbringing , arrival of money and changing family dynamics, his marriage and his aimless -drifting personality.We know that 30 hours have passed since he left home, and we know the suggestive conversation that happened before he left home. We are not given a neat conclusion of the novel , we complete it in our mind - perhaps tame , perhaps sinister or may be perhaps a feminist ending...We only know one thing for sure - our narrator is so used to the money that he will never give up the comfort , he has accepted his spineless existence as the only possible one...
On the whole , a book definitely worth reading...
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