My flatmate was reading Coetzee's 'Disgrace'. That is the first time i heard of him.
I read the initial 20 pages with a sense that this a fast paced read with some pithy statements emdedded in between. But by the time i finished, which i did faster than ever in last few years, you are in awe of the man: the author. The character David Lurie is strangely at moments idealistic, predatory and most interestingly unabashedly honest. Honest to himself; again at moments. You know its one person but there is no predictable fashion in which a person behaves, not in real life, in fiction yes.
Not since i read Anna Karenina have i come across such an astute observer and portrayer of the workings of human mind, of how society and institutions' web tightens and molds you into what is deigned acceptable. Both for David and David's daughter. Though David does not bend, he casts himself off. As for the daughter, inspite of the cruelty inflicted upon her she seems to be calmly content accepting a primeval role for herself.
The helper, the animals finish the portrait of Luries months from and after the 'disgrace'.
I came across A.S Byatt browsing through the bookshelf of our hotel in Pokhara,Nepal while i was waiting for my dinner to arrive. And it rescued me. Those two days the 'touristy' feel of Pokhara had left me cranky and pissed off. The Matisse Stories trasported me to the sketchy and vivid world of a middle-aged woman, her visits to her hair dresser who is tired of facing age at some level, of a sense of panic, of exasperation of trying harder than ever to keep 'her looks together'.
In one hand there was the banality of experiences in Pokhara or maybe my dislike towards having companions while i travel, on the other was Byatt! Even while i would be reading her story, i would stop go back the last few sentences and then scratch my head. How did she create all that she did! I went looking for a book of hers in my library just to figure out how she does it, but they seem to have misplaced the only book of hers they have.
I read "The Chinese Lobster", in a little clearing on my way to Kahun Danda, top of a hill in Pokhara. By the time the villagers had directed me to the base where i should start my climb for Kahun Danda i was beginning to lose my excitement to get to the top. And more disappointing was the fact that it was dust road, of the finest powdery dust.
"Medusa's Ankles" was more intoward. I remember it as the tired taut thoughts of Susannah and the chatter of Lucien the hair dresser, the cracks in her thought from within. The walls and the pink nude. The change in Lucien's design of the salon. And all the scared floating thoughts, glances and thoughts in between. It was also the first piece of Byatt that i read. Hence the novelty.
