Facts about fiction

Many may try, but only some writers can actually bring a world alive in their books

 

What can I say? I am a sucker for a good, old-fashioned Regency Romance, all tightly-laced corsets, heaving bosoms, swooning/sassy heroines, and a swashbuckling rakish hero who is eventually reformed by his love of a good woman. So far, so clichéd. But what brings these somewhat hackneyed plots alive is the skill of a great writer, who can create an entire universe in which you are only too willing to suspend your disbelief, let alone your cynicism.

 

You can imagine my excitement then, when I heard that a new series called Bridgerton was being released on Netflix. Set in Regency London and populated with a multicultural cast, this was based on a series of novels by Julia Quinn, recreating what will always be – to me, at least – the world of Georgette Heyer. 

 

So, I cleared my evening and settled down for some binge-watching. But half-way through the first episode I began to experience the first stirrings of dissatisfaction. And that only grew as I ploughed through the rest of the episodes. This was nothing like the Regency romps I had loved for most of my life.

 

Never mind, I told myself. This incarnation of Bridgerton owed more to Shonda Rhimes than it did to Julia Quinn. Maybe I should go to the original and get my fix of Regency-era drama. So, I downloaded The Duke and I, the novel on which the show is based, and settled down to read it in one greedy gulp.

 

At least, that was the intention. But to be honest with you, I found it heavy going. The plot was predictable, the dialogue was clunky, and the characters lacked a certain three-dimensional depth. It had all the tropes of Heyer’s Regency Romances but none of the sparkle and wit that makes Georgette’s books both effervescent and evergreen in their appeal. 

 

Just to confirm my initial impression, I went back to re-read my well-thumbed copies of Heyer’s best work. I started off with The Devil’s Cub, and within minutes I was entranced once again by the exploits of the Marquis of Vidal and his reluctant love interest, Mary Challoner, whose courtship has the most unpropitious of beginnings (she shoots him in the arm with his own pistol!).

 

Once I had started, there was no stopping me! I seamlessly went on to re-read The Grand Sophy and Venetia. I couldn’t find my copy of Regency Buck so I downloaded it on my Kindle and read it again, chuckling anew at the exploits of Judith Taverner and the Earl of Worth. And I am now immersed in The Infamous Army, a book that Heyer set around the battle of Waterloo, and which features Lord and Lady Worth, now a staid married couple, witnessing the star-crossed romance of their brother, Charles Audley with the audacious society beauty, Lady Barbara Childe. 

 

As I slipped effortlessly back into the universe of Georgette Heyer, it occurred to me that when it comes to genres of fiction, the world is divided into Masters of Their Game and The Rest of the Field. And no matter how hard The Rest may try, they can never measure up against The Masters. 

 

In spy fiction, for instance, there is the original Master, John le Carre, who made the Cold War his own, spinning fabulous tales revolving around the twin characters of George Smiley and the sinister Soviet spy, Karla. Since then, there have been many writers who have tried to recreate that universe, but no matter how good the books, they just don’t have the same appeal as Le Carre’s oeuvre. 

 

When it comes to murder mysteries, there is no bettering P.D. James. There is no better exemplar of British humour that P.G. Wodehouse. Nobody examines and elucidates the inner life of women better than Elena Ferrante. And nobody can write a cheery bonkbuster better than Jilly Cooper.

 

Part of their mastery lies in the fact that they make it all look so easy. It’s only when you see lesser writers trying to recreate their magic that you realize just how difficult it actually is. And that makes you appreciate their genius even more.

Age is just a number

For authors like John Le Carre, who continue to produce their best work  well into their 80s

My first introduction to spy thrillers came during my teenage years when I stumbled upon John Le Carre in my local library. It was the title of the book that caught my eye: Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. I was sufficiently intrigued to take the book home. And that night, as I lay down to read myself to sleep as I usually did, I cracked it open and delved into the story. The next thing I knew it was three in the morning and my mother was knocking on my door to ask why my lights were still on. George Smiley, I answered, it’s all his fault.

Since that initiation, I have lost count of the number of nights I have lain awake reading John Le Carre until the wee hours of the morning. But little did I suspect in those early days that Le Carre would keep me entertained for quite so long; that he would still be churning out novels and memoirs well into his 80s. And yet here he is, at the venerable age of 88, with a new book out this month.

Agent Running In the Field is vintage Le Carre, with the novelist at the height of his powers, now writing against the backdrop of Brexit rather than the Cold war, but with the same vim and vigour. As I galloped through the book, staying up till dawn because I just could not put the damn thing down, I couldn’t help but marvel at the author’s mastery of his medium, which has only got better with age.

I guess that is the difference between great songwriters and great authors. Song writers hit their peak in their 20s or, at most, their 30s. Rare is the songwriter who continues to produce great songs after the age of 40. No, seriously, go on, try and think of one great anthem that Mick Jagger or Paul McCartney have written in their later years. Yes, that’s right, you can’t even come up with one.

But with great writers, the longer they live, the more life experiences they accumulate, the better they get at their craft. It’s not just Le Carre, though he is the most recent example. Think back to that other master of suspenseful story-telling: Agatha Christie. She too kept writing well into her old age, and her books just got better and better with every decade. Sure, they were rooted solidly within a certain genre – a murder takes place; there is a surfeit of suspects; there are plenty of red herrings; and the least likely person is found to be guilty – but within those narrow confines, they sparkled and shone with an effervescence that was Christie’s alone, no matter how old she got.

Maybe it is something about murder mysteries as a genre, but they seem to encourage longevity among its practitioners. Take P.D. James, for instance. She only began writing her crime thrillers when she was in her 40s. But once she started, it was as if she could never stop. Her books kept coming till she was well into her 70s, with Adam Dalgliesh ageing gently along with his creator. James’ last book, Death Comes to Pemberley, a homage of sorts to Jane Austen, with James revisiting Elizabeth Bennet and Darcy six years after their wedding, as they are caught up in a mysterious death on their estate, was published just three years before she died at the advanced age of 94.

But while it could be said that Death Comes to Pemberley was far from James’ best work – with the murder mystery being the weakest link in a book that attempted to recreate the world of Jane Austen – there are other authors who have produced their best works in what should be the twilight of their lives.

The first such name that comes to my mind is Elizabeth Jane Howard. A brilliant writer, her professional work was always overshadowed by her personal life, given that she was married to Kingsley Amis, and stepmother to Martin Amis for a while. It was only after her divorce, when she was freed from the shackles of enforced domesticity, did the writer in Howard flower completely.

The result was a set of five books, a family saga set in the aftermath of the Second World War, dubbed The Cazalet Chronicles. This traced the lives of an extended clan of brothers and sisters, cousins and siblings, governesses and maids, as they dealt with a rapidly-changing world, in which the old certainties they swore by did not hold. Howard allowed the sprawling cast of characters – all of them fully fleshed out with dreams, desires and motivations of their own – story arcs that extended over a ten year period, showing how completely family fortunes can change over a single decade. If you haven’t read these books yet, you’re in for a treat when you finally do.

All of this makes me wonder how things would have turned out if Jane Austen hadn’t died at the age of 41. What if she had grown into her 70s or even 80s; what if she had married and acquired a family, or even a step-family; what if she had dealt with the indignities of ageing; what if… How many more masterpieces like Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility would she have produced if only she had been allowed the gift of old age? Sadly, we will never know.

  

Fine print

The story of our lives is intricately bound with the books we read along the way

There are some people who find cooking therapeutic. They love the mechanical peeling, chopping, cutting, grinding that allows them to switch off from the work day. They enjoy the meditative process of stirring the pot and watching their labours evolve into a dish that their family can enjoy. They love the rituals involved in putting a meal together.

I am not one of these people. What I find therapeutic is rearranging my bookshelves ever so often. Well, okay, now that you mention it, I do suffer from a mild form of OCD, but that’s neither here nor there (not there! Move it an inch to the right. Ah, that’s much better!) I find joy in going through my books, cataloguing them under categories and arranging them according to size or subject matter depending on my mood.

But ever so often I find myself distracted by a book I haven’t picked up in years. I start to leaf through it, and before I know it I am engulfed by memories: of the time I bought it, where I was when I first read it, the friend I lent it to, the discussions we had about it.

See, that’s the thing about books. They don’t just tell a story, they become stories in themselves. A whole history develops around them in your mind. They spark memories, they evoke emotions, they make you happy, they make you sad. They become the stuff of nostalgia.

And that’s before you even start to re-read them. Then, there’s the pleasure of coming across a line that made such an impact on you the first time you read it. There’s the added bonus of concentrating on language, style, characterization and plotting, because you are not intent on galloping to the end (you already know how the story goes). There are those rare moments when an oft-read book yields up new gems of wisdom because you are now in a different stage of your life. And then, there’s the added poignancy of reading an author who is now dead, but still speaks to you from beyond the grave. (Picking up a P.D. James at random, I stumble upon her meditations on the best kind of death, and I start to wonder if she achieved that in her own life.)

I glance through the memoirs of Cherie Blair and am struck by the impermanence of politics; less than ten years after it was written Speaking For Myself already seems dated and of little historical relevance. I start reading Jodi Kantor’s book on the Obamas, and wonder why this collection of tittle-tattle once removed made such an impact at the time.

And then, there’s the ‘What was I Thinking’ section. Did I really pay good money to buy a hardback copy of Judith Krantz’s Dazzle? It’s hard to believe that I was so young and so stupid at any time? Why on earth do I have so many Jackie Collins paperbacks, when I have no recollection of reading a single one? I must have done so, since my motto is to leave no book unread on my shelves. But, as I glance briefly through one, I can’t comprehend why I ever wasted my time on this drivel.

But I am happy to report that I wasn’t always stupid when I was young. My well-thumbed copy of To Kill A Mockingbird stands testament to that, as do the tattered pages of Gerald Durrell’s My Family and Other Animals (which still reduces me to tears of laughter, no matter how many times I read it). My copy of Truman Capote’s Breakfast At Tiffany’s may be falling apart but the tale of Holly Golightly remains as fresh and effervescent as ever with every re-reading.

I wander into the next room to visit my collection of Agatha Christie (every book she ever wrote) and I am transported back to the high ceilinged room that was my school library, where I first discovered the queen of mystery writing. The book was The Ordeal of Innocence, and I still remember the edge-of-the-seat suspense I felt as I raced to the utterly-unexpected end, reading by torchlight in my bedroom so that nobody could tell I was up way past my bedtime.

It was my early love for Christie that led to my subsequent discovery of – and pleasure in – such suspense writers as Val McDermid, Elizabeth George, Donna Leon, Minette Walters, and yes, P.D. James. The lone copy of Dorothy L. Sayers bears mute testimony to the fact that I tried – and failed – to get into the adventures of her creation, the perfectly named Lord Peter Wimsey.

I made much the same journey with the spy thriller genre, and that is dutifully recorded on my books shelves. I came to it via John Le Carre, starting with The Spy Who Came In From The Cold, written before I was born, and going on to such classics as Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, and Smiley’s People. My appetite suitably whetted, I went on to feast on Charles McCarry’s tales of super spy Paul Christopher (if you haven’t read him yet, do read the books in order; I didn’t and still bitterly regret it), and then went on to revel in the tales of Israeli spy/assassin Gabriel Allon (though I must confess I am now beginning to tire of Daniel Silva’s increasingly formulaic take on the spy novel).

But whatever my current views on authors and books, I could never bear to give away a single title. These books don’t just tell the stories that the authors wrote; they are also the story of my life so far.

Ladies Special

Let’s celebrate Women’s Day by celebrating the women we admire and love

As you may well have noticed, today is International Women’s Day. Yes, yes, we’ve all heard that tired old refrain: Every day is Women’s Day. And no, it wasn’t funny a decade ago, and it’s not funny now. Nor are the annual fulminations of how Women’s Day is a farce because we really haven’t come a long way (baby) very helpful.

So, this year, I decided to celebrate the day by listing some of the women I think are worth celebrating.

Nora Ephron

Her most famous saying was: “Be the heroine of your life, not the victim.” But I have to confess that Ephron is the heroine of my life, and has been ever since I first read her in college. She had the brilliant knack of tapping into her own life to come up with universal truths that every woman could identify with (take the title of her book, “I Feel Bad About My Neck”, for instance). So, her story became our story, and our stories became hers. There could be no greater tribute to any writer.

P.D. James

There is much to admire in Phyllis Dorothy James’ fiction: her intricate plotting, her mastery of suspense, her writing style, and her ability to create characters (Adam Dalgliesh, Cordelia Grey) that we fell in love with. But there is even more to admire in James’ life. A civil servant whose husband died early of a drug and alcohol overdose leaving her to bring up their two young daughters, she published her first book at 42, having written it while working full time. And then, there was no stopping her. She wrote 14 books featuring Dalgiesh, two featuring Grey, and wound up her writing career with a Jane Austen tribute novel, Death Comes To Pemberly, at ripe old age of 91.

Smriti Irani

If a fiction writer made up a story like that of Irani’s, she/he would be accused of over-egging the pudding. She left the family home after finishing school, heading to Mumbai to make a living (where she famously worked at McDonalds). She participated in the Miss India pageant, and then hit the big time with her role as Tulsi in the TV serial, Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi. In 2003, she joined the BJP, and had such a meteoric rise that 11 years later, at 38, she became the youngest Cabinet minister, in charge of the crucial portfolio of Human Resources Development. That’s an impressive resume by any standards. But what is even more impressive is Irani’s amazing ability to shrug off the many unpleasant personal attacks on her and concentrate on doing her job.

Mamata Banerjee

I can hear those gasps of disbelief all the way from Calcutta to Delhi. But bear with me a moment and let me tell you the story of a young woman, born in the most humble of circumstances, who took on the might of the Communists in a state which they had ruled for decades, without a thought for her own personal safety. She stuck to the task until she had driven them out of office. But even after assuming office as West Bengal chief minister, she never forgot where she came from. She still lives in her old, two-room house, wears the same crumpled cotton saris, and has the same fiery zeal that she displayed as an activist.

Mary Kom

It takes a special talent to excel in a sport at an international level. And Kom’s achievement is even more special because of the many obstacles she had to overcome to become a champion boxer: her early life in the disturbed area of Manipur, the lack of training resources, the paucity of support for her chosen career. But not only did Kom triumph, she also made a comeback to boxing after having twins, shutting up all those who had written her off.

Sania Mirza

Her achievements in tennis are there for everyone to see, but what I admire most about Mirza is the way she has chosen to live her life completely on her own terms. She wore short skirts on the tennis court despite the attacks by Muslim conservatives. She stood firm by Shoaib Malik, the Pakistani cricketer she fell in love with, marrying him amidst a swirl of controversy. And she showed both grace and courage, standing up to the bullies who would deny her Indian identity post her marriage.

Madonna

What an absolute trouper she is! She took a tumble down the stage at the recent Brit awards, landing on her head and shoulders with an almighty thwack. Lesser beings would have been rushed straight to hospital after that. But not Madonna: she stood up, shook off the dust, and carried on with her act as if nothing had happened. No wonder the Material Girl has been a star longer than most pop stars of today have been alive!

Farah Khan

Say what you will about Farah Khan’s school of filmmaking (yes, it’s full on escapist masala fare, but so what?) but there is no denying that she is one of the most bankable names in the movie business now. Her last release, Happy New Year, was the biggest grosser of 2014, raking in a record-breaking Rs 350 crores. And with it, Khan proved that while it may be hard to gain entry into the Big Boys Club that is Bollywood, it is not impossible to beat them at their own game.

Death Comes To Us All

But a good measure of a person’s life is how they are remembered after they are gone

When I wrote about P.D. James a fortnight ago in my column, the last thing I expected was that she would be dead in a matter of weeks. There was something about her that seemed immortal and immutable, as she produced murder mystery after murder mystery in a writing career spanning over half a century. But, in the end, death comes to us all, and it came to Phyllis Dorothy James as she reached the venerable age of 94.

The moment I heard about her passing, I pulled out the first book she had ever written (and the first P.D. James I had ever read), Cover Her Face. And there on page two was the prescient phrase: “…there was wisdom in knowing when to die with the least inconvenience to others and distress to oneself…”

I can only hope that that was the kind of death she had. But what I am quite sure of is that she will never really be dead to those of us who loved her books. And even a hundred years down the line, when someone picks up one of her titles –  Shroud for a Nightingale, Murder Room, Devices and Desires are just some of my favourites – the justly-chosen words, the sharp observations, the tautly-worked plot, the nail-biting suspense, will bring her back to life in yet another reader’s imagination.

What better legacy could an author ask for than to live on in her books? I am quite certain that James would ask for no more (or less) than to be remembered for her literary oeuvre. After all, this was a woman who was such a fan of Jane Austen that she took off from where Pride and Prejudice left off to write a murder mystery, Death Comes to Pemberley, set a few years after Darcy and Elizabeth have settled down to domestic bliss in their sprawling estate. Maybe two centuries down the line, another author can pen a similar homage, in which Adam Dalgliesh finally finds marital happiness and settles down to cosy domesticity with Cordelia Gray. (Though why wait so long; maybe Elizabeth George can get cracking on this right now!)

But as I read the many obituaries of James, and began re-reading Cover Her Face (the perfect start to reading all her books yet again, in chronological order), I began to think about the nature of death itself. In James’ books it is inevitably violent, sometimes brutal, and always shocking. There is no sugar-coating, no polite side-stepping, no euphemisms, and certainly no discreet aversion of the authorial gaze. James wants us to confront the horror of murder upfront and realize the violence – both physical and emotional – it brings in its wake. In her books, death strips away all dignity and privacy from those it visits, leaving their lives open to the vulgar, even voyeuristic, curiosity of others. In a sense, her murder victims lose more than their lives; they lose all control over how they are viewed in death and after.

And in some ways, that is a more terrible loss. All of us, at some level, want to remembered in the best possible way when we finally pass over. We want our loved ones to cherish our memory, we want our grandkids to remember us as more than a yellowing picture in a silver picture-frame. We want our lives to have had some meaning. We want our legacy to live on after us.

But the funny thing about legacy is that it can mean so many different things to different people. Some want to be remembered for the businesses they built; others for the kids they raised. Some want to live on by establishing charitable trusts in their own name; others seek absolution in leaving all their worldly belongings to the children they neglected while alive. Some want to be remembered for their kindness, others for their talent, and yet others for their power and prestige.

But, at the end of the day, none of us has control over how it ends. So, while some like P.D. James are celebrated for having led a long and fulfilling life others like Phil Hughes are mourned for having had their life cut short by cruel fate. Even as obituaries for James flooded the papers, Hughes, the Australian cricketer who died days after being hit on the head by a bouncer, was commemorated the world over with the hashtag #putoutyourbats . Everyone from cricket legends like Sachin Tendulkar and Shane Warne to ordinary folk who loved the game, posted a picture of their bats with a cap on top to pay tribute to the batsman who would forever remain 63 not out.

As I scrolled through all the tributes, my thoughts went back to a funeral I had attended only a few days before when my dear friend, Murli Deora, passed away suddenly after a brief illness. There was sadness in the air; how could it be otherwise? And yet everyone only had happy memories of Murli to share. There was the tearful old man who remembered the time the young Mayor of Bombay had helped get his son a school admission. There was a young woman, escorting her grandmother, who had had her cataract removed at one of the eye camps he organized.

Everyone I spoke to had wonderful stories about how he had touched their lives.  Maybe, when all is said and done, that is the best legacy any of us can ask for. To have touched even a single life – and left it better for your presence. And yes, to live on in the hearts that you have touched.

Murder, she wrote

The spirit of Agatha Christie lives on…in a new Hercule Poirot book by Sophie Hannah

It probably marks me out as irredeemably middle-brow, but I am a complete and utter devotee of Agatha Christie. The queen of the intricately-plotted murder mystery, Christie is a past mistress of setting the scene just so, littering the story with red herrings, before pulling together all the clues (and false clues) together in a denouement that I never ever saw coming. I read my first Christie when I was still at school, and ever since, I pull out her books every couple of years or so to re-read them, just so that I can experience once again the thrill that I felt when I first came upon them. And Christie, bless her dear departed soul, never disappoints.

Of the two staples of her fiction, I always preferred Hercule Poirot, the quirky, eccentric, French-expostulating, terrifying bright, and brilliantly (or should that be Brilliantined?) moustachioed Belgian detective, to the English spinster, Miss Marple, whose inquisitive disposition and propensity to meddle made me feel positively squeamish on occasion. So, you can imagine my delight when I read that Hercule Poirot was being brought back to life by the Christie estate, with his new adventure being assigned to the British writer, Sophie Hannah, who is quite the dab hand at writing psychological crime thrillers.

I have been a fan of Hannah as well, though she doesn’t inspire the same devotion as Christie, but I wasn’t quite sure if she could bring the spirit of Christie and the personality of Poirot come alive once again on paper. Well, I have just finished reading The Monogram Murders (as it always is with every ‘Agatha Christie’, in one greedy gulp) and I am happy to report that, for the most part, Hannah succeeds very well indeed.

The turning-and-twisting plot is worthy of Christie herself, the portrayal of Hercule Poirot is dead-on (is it just me who can never read the name without conjuring up the image of David Suchet in my head?), and Hannah – a big Christie fan herself – does a splendid job of conjuring up the atmosphere of England between the two wars, a society in flux in which the old moral certainties are fraying rapidly. Where she fails is in replicating the classic simplicity of a Christie whodunit. The devices are all intact but the plot is much too convoluted and the denouement stretches credulity a tad. That said, I was glad to have read the book and sad when it finished – which is sometimes all you can ask of a novel.

But would the story have worked just as well if the detective had been an Italian called Gianni Pirelli? And if the only author credited was Sophie Hannah? Yes, it would. And perhaps it would have worked better because the reader wouldn’t constantly be referencing Agatha Christie in his or her head.

Which brings me to this week’s question: does it make sense to rework old classics by having them reinvented by new authors? Or should we leave them well alone?

Speaking for myself, I always believed that classics were best left well alone. If you needed to tell a story, why not do it with through characters that you had dreamed up? Why cannibalize those that had their birth in other people’s imaginations?

What made me change my mind was P.D. James’s homage to Pride and Prejudice, a murder mystery called Death Comes to Pemberley. This opens six years after the protagonists of Jane Austen’s magnum opus, Elizabeth Bennet and Fitzwilliam Darcy, have married and settled down to blissful matrimony in their sprawling Derbyshire estate, Pemberley. They are all set to host the autumn ball when an ugly, violent death intrudes upon their perfect ordered world.

Like all P.D. James’s suspense thrillers, this one was immaculately crafted as well, but what brought particular pleasure to an Austen fan like me was the glimpse into the married life of Mr and Mrs Darcy, now the proud parents of two young boys. For all of us who wonder what happens after the happily ever after, this was a big bonus, indeed.

For some reason, of all of Austen’s novels, Pride and Prejudice is the one that exercises the maximum hold on our hearts. But even so, it took particular guts and an amazing leap of imagination for Jo Baker to write Longbourn, the book that tells us the story of the servants who served the Bennet household. And it worked because Baker didn’t just indulge in Upstairs-Downstairs conceit, but instead fleshed out the staff as living, breathing characters with stories of their own (though I still haven’t forgiven her for the needless calumny heaped on poor, old Mr Bennet – no sorry, I’m not telling, you’ll just have to find out for yourself!)   

But while these may be triumphs of imagination over hope, do all such recastings of old classics work? I have never been a fan of Ian Fleming – or James Bond, for that matter – but those who love the spy with a license to kill tell me that William Boyd’s recreation of James Bond is immeasurably superior to that of Jeffrey Deaver’s.

For my part, I have just discovered Jill Paton Walsh’s resurrection of those legendary characters of detective fiction, Lord Peter Wimsey (later the Duke of Denver) and Harriet Vane, created by the inimitable Dorothy L Sayers. And I have a horrid suspicion that they are going to keep terribly busy in the foreseeable future.