Page-turners

Here’s a list of the best books I read this year; you might enjoy some of them

So, it’s that time of year again. The time when I look back on the last 12 months through the prism of my reading list and compile my own list of Top Reads of The Year for you. Needless to say, this list is completely arbitrary, totally subjective, and entirely a creature of my personal preferences when it comes to authors and genres. That said, I am a pretty promiscuous reader, so am pretty sure there will something in there for everyone. Read on – and then, read on again. 

The New Girl
Daniel Silva

Regular readers of this column will know just how big a fan of Daniel Silva I am. And I am happy to report that after a couple of formulaic turns, Silva is back on cracking form. The Other Woman, which came out last year, was a rollercoaster ride in the best sense. And this year’s offering, The New Girl, is even better. Written with one eye on cable news and with a main character clearly based on the Saudi Prince Mohammad Bin Salman – who enters into an unlikely alliance with Israeli avenging angel, Gabriel Allon – this thriller will keep you up at night, turning page after page until you come to that very unexpected end. Sorry, no spoilers. You’re going to have to find out for yourself. 

After The End
Clare Mackintosh

This is a bit of a departure for Mackintosh, who usually excels in murder mysteries and psychological dramas with a twist that no one ever sees coming. This tells the story of a couple with a terminally sick child, who can’t come to an agreement on how his medical treatment should go. Even though they love and respect one another, they can’t see each other’s point of view in this case. And as their relationship unravels under the strain, we are forced to ask ourselves some fundamental questions about the human condition. What is love? And how far will you – and should you – go to keep someone you love alive?

Fleishman Is In Trouble
Taffy Brodesser-Akner

Divorce, dating, depression, this has it all. The Fleishman of the title is in the throes of a divorce battle with his high-flying wife, who appears to have abandoned him (and their children) to go off on some sort of retreat. As he deals with being dumped, he seeks solace in Internet dating sites and is astounded by just how much sex is on offer – and how many women are willing to have sex with him. But, of course, sex is never simple, and love is always complicated. And oh yes, it is far from clear which of the two Fleishmans is the one in trouble. 

Three Women
Lisa Taddeo

This non-fiction book delves into the intricacies of female sexual desire by following the stories of three women. Lina, a homemaker and mother of two, whose marriage has become a passion-free zone, seeks solace in an affair; Maggie, a 17 year old high school student who allegedly had an affair with her married English teacher; amd Sloane, a restaurant owner married to a man who likes to watch her have sex with other people (both men and women). But this is far from a salacious – or even erotic – read. Taddeo spent eight years covering the lives of these women. And she tells their stories with empathy, nuance, and a deep understanding of the impulses that govern them. 

A Beginner’s Guide to Japan: Observations and Provocations
Pico Iyer

Japan remains one of the most mysterious civilizations on earth. My lasting memory of the country on the one trip I made there is of a culture that was sophisticated, mired in good manners, and yes essentially opaque to the rest of us. Pico Iyer, who has lived there for decades (he famously wrote The Lady And The Monk about falling in love with a Japanese woman – whom he later married), has a better understanding of it than most people. And his new book, aptly titled A Beginner’s Guide, is brilliant because it captures the contradictions of Japanese society without trying to make sense of them. Written as a series of short vignettes, it is both profound and affecting.


Inside Out: A Memoir
Demi Moore

I am usually not one for celebrity autobiographies – which tend to be self-serving and self-involved in equal measure – so I almost didn’t read Demi’s Moore’s account of her life. I mean, who needs to know more details about her break-ups with Bruce Willis and Ashton Kutcher than have already appeared in the gossip magazines? Certainly not me. But I overcame my reservations and started reading – and was hooked. This is an (often brutally) honest memoir by a woman who has often been dismissed as being hard and grasping (‘Gimme Moore’ she was dubbed at one point). But the recounting of her hardscrabble, dysfunctional childhood makes us understand her motivations, and Demi herself, a little better.

Me
Elton John 

Yes, I know I said I didn’t really do autobiographies – and here I am, recommending two. But what can I say? It’s been that kind of year. And Elton John’s memoir of his life is gloriously candid and self-deprecating, in a way that celebrity autobiographies rarely are. It is all in here: the drunkenness, the drug-taking, the tantrums, the libel suits, the heartbreaks, and of course, the hit-making. Even if you have no interest in his music, this is worth a read.

The cougar effect

Why do older women always end up being dumped by their much-younger spouses?

Cast your mind back, if you will, to the televised proceedings of the British House of Commons committee that was grilling Rupert and James Murdoch about the phone-hacking carried out by their newspapers. Remember the most compelling image that emerged from that meeting? Yes, it was the moment when Rupert, the ageing patriarch of the Murdoch clan, was attacked by a man who pushed a ‘foam-pie’ into his face.

But it wasn’t the sight of a powerful media mogul subjected to public ridicule on international television that enthralled us. It was the image of his young wife, Wendi Deng, seated behind her husband, leaping to his defence like a protective tigress and hitting his attacker flush in the face. The look of murderous intent in her eyes said it all: she would kill, if that’s what it took, to protect her man.

In an instant, all those who had scoffed at their December-May pairing when they wed in 1999 – Rupert, 37 years older than Wendy, is now a sprightly 80 to her youthful 43 – were forced to eat their words; or should that be humble (foam) pie? This was no gold digger out to make her fortune by marrying a rich old man. This was a woman who loved her husband and would do anything to defend him – yes, even use her powerful right hook.

Now contrast this with another portrait of a marriage. Demi Moore was 41 when she fell in love the 25 year old Ashton Kutcher. They married a couple of years later despite their 15-year age difference. Predictably, the sceptics scoffed and prophesied that the union would not last. But Demi and Ashton seemed determined to prove them wrong, with their endless public displays of affection, and avowals of eternal love. Demi went by Mrskutcher on twitter and Mr Kutcher did such playful things as snap her white-bikinied bottom as she ironed his shirt (ah, the joys of domesticity!) and post the picture on Twitter as if to prove what a fit wife he had.

Fast forward to their sixth wedding anniversary and what do we see. Demi’s husband is far away in San Diego, cavorting in a hot tub with a bunch of 20-something, near-naked girls, one of whom he ends up in bed with (apparently, after having failed to persuade her friend to join them for a threesome). Not surprisingly, Demi announced that she was filing for divorce soon after.

Not that Demi is the first older woman – or cougar as we are told to call them these days – to be publically humiliated by her much younger husband. Even the ageless Madonna had to suffer the same ignominy when Guy Ritchie celebrated his impending divorce by telling his friends that his wife was so skinny that sleeping with her was like ‘cuddling a piece of gristle’ (charming man, right?). And then he did one better by running off with a much younger model and having a baby with her (that’s one in the face for the much-menopausal Madonna, then).

Courtney Cox hasn’t had much joy out of her marriage to a younger man, David Arquette, either (though she did manage to have a daughter, Coco, after years of trying). Arquette has been in and out of rehab throughout their 11-year marriage. And no sooner had they separated than he was calling in at shock jock Howard Stern’s radio show to announce that he had sex with a bartender/actress while still married and how Courtney (sob!) just didn’t fancy him anymore. And then, like most men fresh out of a relationship he moved on to another girlfriend with the speed of light (or should that be neutrino?)

Perhaps the only celebrity older woman whose marriage with a much-younger man seems to have remained on track is Joan Collins who is now 78 to her husband Percy Gibson’s 46 (yes, you read that right). The pair still appear devoted to one another and when asked about the huge age gap between them, Collins famously declared: “Well, if he dies, he dies.”

Other than Collins, I think of a single famous woman who has managed to live happily ever after with a much younger man. Sooner or later, she ends up being cheated on, publicly humiliated, and then traded in for a younger model. Rich men, on the other hand, have no problem holding on to much younger wives. And some of them, like Murdoch, are lucky enough to inspire absolute devotion in their much younger spouses.

Why should this be so? Why is it that older men are more successful at this younger spouse gig than older women?

Well, if you ask me, it all comes down to these ladies choosing to marry little boys – and here I am referring to their mental as well as their chronological one – perhaps in an attempt to re-capture their own youth. But then these boys refuse to grow up – and the problems begin. As Courtney Cox famously declared to David on their 11th anniversary: “I don’t want to be your mother any more”. Well, in that case, Courtney, you should not have married a child.

In fact, that’s probably a salutary lesson for all older women out there. If you don’t want to play Mummy, ladies, then don’t marry little boys – or men who behave like little boys. Pick someone your own age instead. You’ll probably be much happier in the long run.

Does my baby make me look fat?

Pregnancy has become another style statement

I’m sure it has happened to all of us at one point or another. We congratulate a friend, colleague or neighbour on being pregnant only to be told that she is not – or that she’s already had the baby a few months ago. It’s happened to me on more occasions than I care to recount. So, these days I err on the side of caution even if someone appears on the verge of giving birth, preferring to wait until she mentions the p word herself.

But even so, I was surprised when a friend arrived at lunch the other day, looking svelte in black and silver, and announced that she was pregnant. Even as the rest of us were stammering our congratulations while sneaking a peak at her suspiciously slim figure, she went on: “I don’t know what to do, I’ve already put on 5 kilos. I don’t know how much I’m going to weigh by the time I’m ready to give birth.”

Of course, we did the only decent thing possible. We assured her that she didn’t look any fatter, that no one could even tell that she was pregnant, and that the post-baby weight would come off without any problem.

It was only afterwards that it struck me that the only pregnancy-related conversation we had indulged in had revolved around weight.

Could she go to the gym during her pregnancy; how many kilos was the absolute minimum she should put on; would a yoked kurta be more flattering or should she direct attention to her bump with a tight T-shirt; was it wise to stay off carbohydrates; was a skirt more flattering than boyfriend jeans; what should she do to get rid of all those extra tyres once the baby was born; did breast-feeding help in keeping the weight off; was Pilates a better post-baby regime than yoga; etc., etc.

The women around the table had their own weight-related pregnancy stories. And those who had never been pregnant, weighed in with their weight-control tips. But either way, the focus was on weight: how bad it was to put on too much; how great it would be to lose it in record time; and how best to camouflage it with some clever dressing.

Clearly, pregnancy has gone from being a time about babies and the joy they bring to becoming a time of worrying about the extra weight that comes with them. The time when women could eat for two with a clear conscience is gone. Now being pregnant is seen as no excuse for being fat.

You are allowed a nicely-rounded baby bump to put on proud display after about the sixth month. But just be sure that you have a tightly-toned ass and nicely-muscled biceps to go with it. Any other wobbly bits just show you up as a lazy so-and-so who can’t be bothered to keep in shape.

Part of this pressure is, of course, created by celebrity yummy-mummies who go around parading their near-perfect figures with obligatory bump stuck on, right up to until their waters break. Demi Moore kicked off the trend with her now-iconic cover of Vanity Fair, when she posed nude while heavily pregnant, her still-slim arms coyly covering her breasts. Since then, we have had a parade of stars, both Indian and international, proudly showing off their pregnancies with barely a sliver of cellulite in sight.

Ujjwala Raut – more recently in the news for her less-than-amicable split from her husband – sashayed down one Fashion Week ramp barely weeks after giving birth, looking as skinny as ever. Hrithik’s wife, Susanne, took next to no time to lose all that pregnancy flab once she had produced baby number two. Ditto Gauri Khan and Twinkle Khanna. And now Padma Lakshmi is doing her best to show up other pregnant women as greedy Gretels, who have no self-control when it comes to their food cravings. (And by the way, did you know she starts her day with a butter bath, so that she doesn’t develop any ugly stretch marks?)

But mostly, the pressure comes from our peers, all those women around us who look radiant while they are pregnant and even better once they’ve rid themselves of the bump. You know the kind, I’m sure. They float around in sexy chiffony numbers or tight little slip dresses, which make it clear that their bellies are the only things that have changed in size and shape. And then, to add insult to injury, they simply shrug off that post-pregnancy weight even as you’re struggling to get into your biggest-ever pair of pants.

Are you surprised then, that all pregnancy talk these days revolves around weight?

After all, what can you expect when women are more worried about not putting on too much weight rather than on achieving a healthy pregnancy? And when there is so much pressure to lose weight after the birth that young mothers are more focused on their bellies rather than their babies?

Honestly, it makes you long for a simpler time when being pregnant meant being able to eat all you wanted, sleeping in until late, getting no exercise at all, and slobbing around all day in a shapeless salwar kameez. A time when the phrase yummy mummy hadn’t been invented. And when pregnancies were about the baby rather than the baby weight.

The age divide

Men get away with dating younger women; but older women are laughed at for dating younger men

You’ve probably heard about the incident as well, given that it was splashed all over the entertainment media. At an after-party at the Oscars, Madonna finally came face to face with former husband Sean Penn, one of the victors of the night. The couple – known as the Poison Penns in their heyday – was meeting for the first time since their spectacularly acrimonious break-up. And nobody was laying any bets on it being an amicable meeting.

And of course, it wasn’t. Sean took one look at Madonna’s new boyfriend, the 22-year-old model named Jesus (honestly, you couldn’t make this stuff up), who was accompanying the Material Girl to the event and sniggered, “What Madonna? Another kid already?”

Yes, I know, hilarious, isn’t it? How incredibly funny to see a 50 year old woman cavorting with a man in his 20s, right? I mean doesn’t the woman realize that she shouldn’t be going to bed with someone she could have given birth to?

I mean, really, when you do this kind of thing you’re just asking to be sent up – and not just by bitter ex-husbands, but by the rest of the world.

Ask Demi Moore, who has been the butt of jokes ever since she took up the much-younger Ashton Kutcher. Much mirth was occasioned by the fact that her boyfriend was closer in age to her daughter, Rumer, than he was to Demi herself. And when Kutcher posted a picture of his wife’s bikini-clad bottom on his Twitter feed, everyone duly tut-tutted that this was what a woman got for marrying a child.

In fact, the jokes got so bad at one point that the couple even appeared on Saturday Night Live to mock themselves in a skit. Ashton joked about being married to a much older woman and the camera panned to where Demi was sitting in the audience, kitted out as an old crone in her 90s.

Oh my, how we laughed!

But when you sit back and think about it, what is truly funny is how men with much younger wives are never made the target of such low-brow humour.

Look around you. The world is littered with examples of old (in some cases, very old indeed) men who are cavorting with women young enough to be their daughters, hell, even their granddaughters. But this is somehow seen as proof of their sexual magnetism, their virility that survives even into old age.

Media tycoon Rupert Murdoch has a wife about three decades younger than him. Rolling Stone Ronnie Wood left his 50-something wife for a 20 year old Russian waitress. Donald Trump’s wives get younger with every decade. Hollywood star Tom Cruise’s wife Katie Holmes is much younger than him. And now Mel Gibson has to give away half his billion dollar fortune to his 50-something wife after being caught canoodling with a 30-something called Okasana (honestly, what is it with these Russians?), with whom he now has a child -- his eighth, in case you're wondering.

But these men never become the target of tired old (no pun aimed at) jokes the way that the women do.

Have you ever asked yourself why?

Well, I’ve been thinking about it since I read that the Madonna-Jesus coupling is a thing of the past. Why is it that woman in their 40s and 50s stir up such strong sentiment when they go out with younger men? Why are we so unfazed at the sight of an older man squiring a young woman? And why are we rendered so uncomfortable at the thought of an older woman dating a younger man that we have to seek refuge in humour?

If you ask me, it’s because society demands that women above a certain age – once they’ve got married and had their babies – should become invisible to the predatory eye. Once they’ve served the purpose of procreation and have crossed their early 30s, they should retire gracefully into Mommyland and never be seen again as sexually active creatures with desires and cravings of their own.

And God forbid, that they should ever be seen with younger boyfriends. That is the last taboo, and one which can only be dealt with by a steady dose of humour.

Popular culture mimics this prejudice. You can have a 60-something Amitabh Bachchan romancing the 30-something Tabu in Cheeni Kum, and nobody thinks much about it. In fact, the audience is encouraged to think of her crusty old father, who opposes the matches, as a stupid spoilsport who doesn’t seem to get that true love trumps age.

But there’s shock, horror, all around when the gender roles are reversed in Hindi cinema. When Akshay Khanna falls in love with the much-older Dimple Kapadia in Dil Chahta Hai, everyone from his friends to his mother to the disbelieving viewer is outraged. What can he see in that old wrinkly anyway?

And I find it telling that while Amitabh gets his happy ending with Tabu, Dimple Kapadia is killed off at the end of the movie so that order can be restored to the universe.

Older men can get away with dating younger women. Hell, we probably even admire them for it. But an older woman who lays her eyes on a younger man, must be taught a lesson – and shown her place in the natural order.

Clearly, when it comes to sexual politics, the gender divide is as strong as ever.