Sept_13

Etcetera
BOOKSHELF
It seems Dan Brown has cracked
the code of writing bestsellers—borrow
your theme from the
world of art and letters, pepper
the plot with clues and symbols,
and set Harvard professor of
symbology Robert Langdon on the
job. INFERNO (Random House
India; ` 750; 461 pages) is no
different. It has the elements one
associates with Brown’s earlier
works like The Da Vinci Code and
The Lost Symbol; Langdon is on
a mission deciphering symbols
borrowed from Dante Alighieri’s
14th century epic poem The Divine
Comedy. With all due credit to
Brown, the blockbuster formula
doesn’t disappoint; it gets you
to turn the pages as breathless
action unfolds across Florence,
the birthplace of the Renaissance,
and Venice and Istanbul. With
only a few lines from Dante’s
epic masterpiece to guide him,
and the super intelligent Sienna
Brooks with an eye-popping IQ of
208 by his side, Langdon glides
through the secret hideaways of
museums, cathedrals and monuments
to uncover the weapon of
mass destruction created by an
overzealous transhumanist as an
answer to the world’s booming
population. Along with Dante’s
classic, the Malthusian theory on
population forms the backbone of
Brown’s latest racy thriller.
The real mystery of THE CUCKOO’S
CALLING (Hachette India; ` 599;
449 pages) was the true identity of
author Robert Galbraith who was
unmasked as J K Rowling, propelling
the book to the top of bestsellers’
lists overnight. It’s easy to understand
why Rowling used a pseudonym. The
anonymity that came
with it would indeed
have been liberating
for the writer, who
was weighed down
by expectations while
crafting Casual cancy. . True to her
reputation,
Rowling
crafts an entertainer
that holds your interest.
She sketches her
characters
vividly,
endowing them with
minute details. Her
hero is the oversized
Cormoran Strike, a
wounded war Vaveteran
turned detective with a disintegrating
personal life. His sidekick Robin is the
perfect foil, and the platonic relationship
between them is easily one of the
most enjoyable aspects of the book.
Together, they investigate the death
of a young supermodel Lula Landry
(Cuckoo). While the Potter series
dealt with the classic
clash between the good
and the bad and the
loss of innocence, this
one deals with matters
mundane and midlife
crises besides the glit-
tery world of glamour
and the fascination of
the paparazzi with ev-
erything famous, rich
and beautiful. This may
not be a fast-paced
thriller, but it definitely
takes you back to the
good old detective sto-
ries you relished while
growing up.
The follow-up to the Breadwinner trilogy, MY NAME IS PARVANA (Hachette;
` 299; 199 pages) is a simple but haunting narrative about Parvana’s life after
reuniting with her family. This book opens at a US military detention camp in
Afghanistan, where her tight-lipped resolve confuses her captors into thinking
that she was involved in aiding the Taliban. But, as Deborah Ellis’s narrative
tells us the story through flashbacks, nothing is as it seems. Ellis shows us the
helpless but stubborn resolve of women activists and teachers in war-torn Af-
ghanistan who stop at nothing to achieve their dream of
a peaceful, progressive society in healthy competition
with the rest of the world. Parvana’s mother embodies
the change-seekers of Afghanistan; she singlehand-
edly starts a school for girls and encourages parents
in the town to educate their daughters. Even when the
Taliban put up posters all around town threatening
and denouncing the school, Parvana, her sisters and
her mother put on their smiles and ran the school with
the certainty of a new tomorrow. There are triumphs,
such as when Parvana’s older sister gets a scholarship
to New York University, and then there are tragedies
lurking right outside the school’s gates. Ellis captures
the lives of young girls yearning for a future—some
who dream of lavender fields in France, some who are
running away from child marriages, some who are still
innocently young—and presents to us a picture that
we don’t get to see or read about in the midst of news
about drone attacks and suicide bombers.
harmony celebrate age september 2013 71