Theodore Boone: The Accused - Review in DH

My review of John Grisham's latest Theo Boone novel was carried today by the DH.

 

Theodore Boone: The Accused, John Grisham, Hachette India, Rs.250.

As they say, when it Grishams, it pours.

I reviewed John Grisham’s baseball novel ‘Calico Joe’ in these pages not too long ago and found it a trifle pedestrian. So it was that I picked up ‘Theodore Boone: The Accused’ with nothing approaching tremendous anticipation. But now that I am done with the book, I must admit to being happily entertained for a few hours.

Grisham told The Telegraph, probably only half in jest, that with the arrival of Harry Potter, he was displaced as the number one author in the world and missed occupying that slot. Then, in what was an ‘a-ha!’ moment, he hit upon the character of kid detective Theodore Boone.

Since then Theo has had three outings. ‘Theodore Boone’, ‘Theodore Boone: The Abduction’ and now, ‘Theodore Boone: The Accused’.

By now, readers familiar with Theo will know he’s the thirteen-year old son of lawyer parents and lives in the small town of Strattenburg. He’s an only child with a dog named Judge for company. Happily for his fans, he combines a nose for adventure with an eye for the law, attending the local courthouse often enough to be friends with Judge Gantry - this time, the one with a mild temper, not distemper.

Initially, the accused in ‘The Accused’ is a wealthy inhabitant of Strattenburg charged with the murder of his wife. When he jumps bail and absconds, everybody in town, Theo included, is intrigued. But Theo is robbed of the pleasure of following the course of the law from the side lines, when, in a cruel perversion, he becomes the accused himself thanks to an elaborate and devious plot. Laptops and other electronic items are stolen from a local store and all the leads point to Theo. Laced with a spine tingling dose of malice, this is no ordinary prank, as the plotters spare no effort to malign Theo’s fair name in the local media. Overnight, Theo’s world not only turns upside down as he finds himself at the centre of a controversy he has no clue about, there is also a hint of possible physical harm. The pressure on him is so intense that he thoughtlessly gets into a brawl in school, something from which he stays usually away.

Theo’s allies in such testing times are his maverick uncle Ike, a couple of schoolmates and thankfully, the principal of the school. They provide him with crucial information, analysis and moral sustenance which all help him come through the ordeal.

While he battles to find answers to this dangerous riddle, Theo gets a welcome break by appearing in Animal Court, a petty judicial forum so casual that even a student like Theo can represent litigants. This time, his client’s pet llama, Lucy, has landed her keeper in a spot of bother by spitting at unfriendly security personnel. Theo convinces the judge and the parties to come to a most agreeable compromise.

While I enjoyed this piece of YA fiction from Grisham much more than his regular fare for the not-so-YA, my bright young friends may find a few loopholes in the plot. For one, what detective work did Theo actually do in this story? To me, it appeared he managed well only because of some convenient coincidences and some inspired work by friends. ‘Kid Detective’ didn’t seem too apt a sobriquet for our young friend, at least not in this adventure. For another, the yarn about the missing murderer didn’t seem really relevant to the rest of the story.

Grisham weaves into the plotline situations where Theo’s sense of ethics is put to the test. But in welcome contrast to the monochromatic fulminations in ‘Calico Joe’, Theo’s dilemmas are presented in a more nuanced fashion.

All said and done, I would pick the Theodore Boone series over the fare Grisham churns out these days for us adults. After all, it’s not often that I get to meet spitting llamas in Animal Court.

 

John Grisham's 'Calico Joe': my review in DH

Today, the Deccan Herald carried my review of John Grisham's 'Calico Joe'.

Beanball as sin

John Grisham, “Calico Joe”, Hachette India, Rs.350

It is the 70s. Baseball fans, like those in Calico Rock, Arkansas, tune in to the radio to follow the game. Televised games are few.

The people of Calico Rock usually root for the St. Louis Cardinals. Naturally, they hate the Chicago Cubs, the long-standing rivals of the Cardinals. But when the Cubs beat their favourite team, the locals celebrate the loss, for their local boy Joe Castle is on the winning side.

‘Calico’ Joe is the boy next door who becomes a sensation without losing his taste for home cooked food. In a game against the Giants, Joe celebrates with dignity after rewriting the record books. The lone tear he sheds only endears him all the more. By the time the Cubs take on the New York Mets at Shea Stadium in New York City many records have taken a beating from his bat; the fans are hungry for more.

Pitching for the Mets is Warren Tracy. In contrast with Joe, whose star is on the ascent, Warren’s career is flickering towards an unremarkable end. His sole entry in the record books – as the pitcher who has hit the most batters – is, obviously, not a happy one. His bland career on the plate is made only worse by his foul temper. He has an ego disproportionate to his meagre accomplishments. He acts pricey when requested for autographs. At home he often drinks and abuses his wife and kids; womanises too. In short, Warren is a foul tempered loser and a bad man.

Little Paul Tracy is like any American kid who is mad about the game. He memorizes every statistic worth noting, he collects every picture and story of every baseball star worthy of adulation. He even plays the game in the Little League, that is, until one day when his father takes it out on him for being sissy enough not to hit a batter. Not surprisingly, while he is proud that his father plays for the Mets, Joe Castle is Paul Tracy’s true idol.

The boy is in the stands in Shea Stadium, waiting for that moment when his hero faces his father. That moment arrives, only to result in tragedy and trauma. Joe’s career ends abruptly. Warren Tracy becomes a toxic name, though he stoutly denies he did any wrong. Only Paul knows for sure that all along his daddy meant to do what he did.

Seguing between the early 70s when the ‘incident’ took place and sometime thirty years on in the present, John Grisham’s ‘Calico Joe’ is the story of how Paul Tracy seeks redemption for his father’s deed most foul. Taken at face value, it is a light, pleasant read. The baseball primer at the beginning of the book is both educative and enjoyable, and in the context of the novel, a must-read even before starting the story.

However (there had to be one). It may not be too far-fetched to read ‘Calico Joe’ as the quintessential Christian parable. After all, John Grisham was raised a devout Christian and continues to abide by the faith, teaching Sunday School at Oxford, Mississippi. He has acknowledged that his Christian upbringing may influence his plotlines sometimes. ‘Calico Joe’ is certainly one such time and this is the problem with the novel. As with all plain vanilla morality tales, there is no greyness to the characters. Joe Castle is virtue personified. Warren Tracy lives in darkest sin until, thanks to terminal pancreatic cancer, he sees the light. Paul is the good shepherd who saves his father’s soul by taking him on a road trip to redemption. Like the truly noble, Joe gets boring after a while and is promptly consigned to the margins of the plot. Like most of the fallen, Warren Tracy has much more to say and do in the story. And like most insistent moralisers, Paul Tracy is nauseously self-righteous and heartless.

It all depends on how we read.

Trek to Narayanagiri

A few weeks ago we trekked up Narayanagiri, a rocky hillock near Ramanagaram, 40 kms from Bangalore. Here is my report as published in the Deccan Herald.

An Evening in Lucknow: Book Review

My review of K. A. Abbas' 'An Evening in Lucknow' as it appeared in the Deccan Herald on Sunday, September 25. 

Reading a Forgotten Voice

An Evening in Lucknow, K. A. Abbas, Harper Collins, 2011, Rs.299

This anthology of short stories introduces us to a writer who has faded from popular memory. To a few old timers who are perhaps familiar with a piece or two by Khwaja Ahmad Abbas, the collection offers an opportunity to become better acquainted with his writing.

As if to acknowledge that Abbas is no longer widely known, the book has a few chapters at the end which helpfully give us an insight into the man. We learn that Abbas found his bearings in pre-independent Bombay as a journalist, writing short fiction, novels, plays and film scripts of a high calibre on the side, including the screen play for ‘Dr. Kotnis Ki Amar Kahani’ which was made into a hit film by V. Shantaram. Abbas was drawn to the freedom movement in the course of which he cultivated a lifelong association with Pandit Nehru that combined a deep friendship with hero-worship. Those who feed off Hindi cinema trivia may remember Abbas as someone who gave Amitabh Bachchan his debut cinema role in ‘Saat Hindustani’.    

A letter from Mulk Raj Anand written in January 1947 praises Abbas’ short story ‘Sparrows’, which at one time was included in a collection of the great short stories of the world. The senior writer observes, “The strength of your short stories, my dear Abbas, lies in the fact that you have grasped the weaknesses of your characters amid their strengths.” A couple of interviews of Abbas help us understand his involvement with the left-leaning Progressive Writers’ Movement among other things.  

In order to appreciate Abbas’ craft, the current generation of Indians who read English short fiction may need to keep aside their sensibilities derived from a staple diet of Western fiction. Reading him is like seeing a black-and-white Hindi film of yesteryears. His stories empathize with the poor and the disadvantaged and palpably show a social concern. Most urban Indians, cut off as they are from poverty not merely in rural India but even in their own cities, may find this difficult to relate to.

The most celebrated among the stories is ‘Sparrows’. It tells us of Rahim Khan, a loutish man who is feared and shunned by his family and village. When he discovers a nest of fledgling sparrows in the rafters of his humble home, he shows towards them a tenderness he is not known to possess, saving them from a downpour at the cost of his own life.

In ‘Sylvia’, the eponymous nurse feels so passionately about her calling that she is willing to say no to a marriage that would force her to quit her job, even if that means that she will stigmatized by society. In ‘The Sword of Shiva’ four caste men gather beneath a tree as a storm rages. Together, they are symbols of caste oppression in rural India – priest, landlord, the record keeper and moneylender. They are even willing to kill people of ‘low caste’ rather than let them into the shelter of the tree. But the forces of nature strike them down, thereby instilling a sense of justice in the old Hindi cinema way.

This O. Henryesque style meets a Shantaram-like cinematic sentimentality in many of the stories. Contemporary readers may find the sentimentality a little too much in-your-face.  But these stories certainly deserve a place in our bookshelf for their humanism.

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My review of "Carte Blanche", the new Bond novel, was carried on Jul 24 in the Deccan Herald.

Carte Blanche, Jeffery Deaver, Hodder & Stoughton, 2011, Rs.499

Orbis­ Non Sufficit – The World Is Not Enough. At least for Double Oh Seven on celluloid when he’s doing all those things other boring spies don’t do. And without getting his gabardines soiled.  The twenty two films released so far have fans worldwide wanting just one thing more; the twenty third.

As for James Bond between the covers he always plays catch-up to his on-screen doppelganger. The buzz surrounding the making and release of the next Bond movie isn’t quite there when it comes to the written word, perhaps because nobody has thought of issuing press communiqués announcing the galley proofs. So the good man on the Clapham omnibus was ruffled mildly to see Royal Naval Marine Commandos, presumably on shore leave, rappelling down the tower of St. Pancras International to hand over the first copies of the latest Bond novel to author Jeffery Deaver, who was waiting patiently below in a red Bentley Continental GT with a Bond girl in black leathers at his side. It must have been a nice change for Deaver after all those gruesome, bone collecting, Lincoln Rhyme books.

For two months every year, Fleming vacationed at ‘Goldeneye’, his estate in Jamaica and used the time to write twelve James Bond novels during the years 1953 and 1964, beginning with Casino Royale. Possible sources of inspiration for the dashing spy are many, but it is generally agreed that Fleming borrowed considerably from his own persona to craft the character. Like Fleming, Bond rose to the rank of Commander in the Royal Navy, loved fast cars, exotic locations and women, and above all, was a spy.   

After Fleming died in 1964 “of living too much” as he commented on his lifestyle, his literary executors had Kingsely Amis (writing under the pseudonym ‘Robert Markham’), John Gardner, Raymond Benson and Sebastian Faulks write Bond novels. Deaver, the second American Bond author after Benson, joins them as bearer of the Fleming torch (cigarette lighter would do nicely but the new Bond does not smoke).  

In Carte Blanche, Deaver gives James an anti-aging reboot that keeps him in his thirties and simultaneously gives him a contemporary past. So our master spy is now a veteran of the Afghan war who lives in a flat in Chelsea. Officially, he is a security and integrity analyst with the Overseas Development Group charged with assessing business risks. M continues to be his boss and is male.

In his choice of wardrobe and accoutrements, James judiciously mixes the venerable with the chic. So we have Canali suits comfortably coexisting with the wares of Turnbull & Asser. Though he has his father’s E-Type Jaguar, he prefers a new granite grey Bentley Continental GT. Technologically, James is minimalist. He does not run around with too many groovy gadgets, relying on some nice tech services supplied by Q, his Indian gizmo wiz.

Befitting our times, the evils James has to contend with are not so much persons as scams. One of them is a waste disposal scam presided by Severan Hydt, he of the long, yellowing finger-nails and decay-fetish, who leaves no one in doubt from the start that unlike his rubbish he must be disposed of sans recycling. James follows Hydt and his operations across Serbia, the UK, the Emirates and South Africa.

Our latest Bond lady combines brains and beauty with a good scam; she almost had to, with a name like Felicity Willing.  Not as subtle as Honey Rider and Kissy Suzuki, but still. Deaver is the quintessential Brit writer manqué, hoping to sound authentic by employing the idioms of old Blighty and references to cricket, curry and Bollywood. All of which make his book a bit like a curate’s egg.

2 States

The Deccan Herald published my review of Chetan Bhagat's '2 States' this last Sunday, 6th December. Here it is.

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Chetan Bhagat says he will only write for the Indian middle classes with their moderate understanding of English. He has even quipped that he could not say much about Salman Rushdie and he was more like Salman Khan. So it is that ‘2 States’ reads like the script of a timepass Bollywood movie, with Chetan Bhagat erroneously thinking that if he must eschew verbosity, he must also give up anything else that makes for good fiction.

‘2 States’ is told in the first person by Krish Malhotra, a Punjabi boy from a dysfunctional family in Delhi. At IIM-A, Krish meets Ananya Swaminathan, a Tamil girl from Chennai. They fall in love. The parents meet at their children’s convocation and alerted to something in the air, decide to be very nasty to each other, thereby putting an end to all hopes of a quick wedding. Rather than take the easier route of elopement, the young couple rough it out because they want to see their parents smiling at their wedding. Predictably, this leads to hectic parleys, tears, rude words and plenty of compromise. Krish relocates to Chennai to make it happen, successfully woos his in-laws to be and moves back to Delhi with his sweetheart to iron out the few creases that remain. Just when all the pieces appear to be falling into place, disaster strikes. It is back to square one, only this time Krish is an emotional wreck. But then he pulls through thanks to help from unexpected quarters and from there on it is not too far from a happy ending.

Throughout all this Krish the Punjabi says a lot that you may find rib tickling or offensive, depending on the orientation of your funny bone. On the other side of the divide, Krish’s Tam in-laws are not given a chance to say anything ‘funny’. Lacking as they do in a sense of humour, they are simply nasty whenever they are not quiet, which is most of the time. All this means that Krish’s brand of humour encourages and perpetuates the opposite of what is supposedly the ostensible moral of the story. Rather than promote the feeling of oneness among Indians belonging to different states and cultures, the book revels in the racial and cultural differences between them.

Maybe this is a reflection of the times, but the story also seems to celebrate unscrupulous deal-making. Do not worry if you have to maliciously lie or scheme, or be rude, sycophantic or hypocritical, but make the right deals and you will get what you want. Krish strikes deals with most people who cross his path – Ananya, her parents, his mother, his boss, anyone. And these deals compromise them in many ways, sometimes subtly, often openly. The only exception to the dealing appears to be his loathsome father. Okay, Chetan Bhagat may not want to use his influence to elevate his readers, but maybe he needs to rethink some of the messages he conveys through his books.

In any case, ‘2 States’ is a page turner in more ways than one. If you are a Chetan Bhagat fan, you may well like the story and finish the book at one sitting, stopping only to contemplate the profundity of his punch line. On the other hand, even if you are not someone waiting for the next Bhagat bestseller, there is little else to do with this little book, other than turn its pages quickly and see it through to its end.