Reading Wednesday
Nov. 20th, 2013 01:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
brigdhWhat did you just finish?
The Thing about Thugs by Tabish Khair. AH THIS BOOK WAS SO GOOD. So, the English word 'thug' comes from thuggee, a murderous, thieving cult of Kali-worshipers that practiced human sacrifice and almost certainly never actually existed outside of the imaginations of some British imperialists. This novel takes advantage of that situation to tell a story with multiple narrators, almost all of them unreliable: the English captain writing a book about thugs, the reformed 'thug' who is spinning a story to the captain for his own advantage, the nobleman who is collecting skulls to open a phrenology museum, the Resurrection men providing the skulls, the policeman investigating the mysterious murders where the victims have all been beheaded (surely the work of some foreign cult!), the Irish opium-addict married to an Indian woman, and more. Ah, I loved this. The story is fantastic, and the writing was beautiful. Here's a passage from the main character, Amir Ali, the 'thug':
You see, jaanam, in those hours of imprisonment, a frightening thought crossed my mind. I felt that I had become my own story; my life had turned into the lie I had narrated to Captain Meadows. Suddenly, I was the thug I had claimed to be.
It felt strange to become something else. Is that all it requires? A few words, a few stories? Is our hold on reality so weak, so insecure? Can stories — told by yourself, told by others — turn us into something else? Why is it that, no matter how we grasp reality, no matter what reality we grasp, we need to don the glove of stories? Is that all we are: stories, words, breath?
Perhaps it was the suddenness of the events, the circumstances I found myself in, the taunting voices from the other cells, but thoughts crossed my mind like the delirious images one sees when tossing in a high fever. I almost came to believe that by deceiving Captain Meadows and his circle, I had become the master of deceit that he wished me to be; a thug. It frightened me: I feared that by hatching a thug in words, I had brought to life a real thug, one who was now stalking London and beheading victims. For a moment, I was no longer sure if the story I had told the Captain was not, after all, the true one, and the stories I told you and myself, simply lies.
Now that I have been released, and especially when I can hold you and feel the evidence of your reality as something not defined solely by words, I find my fears diminishing. But when I look back on my hours in prison, I find myself staring into a mirror, and from the mirror stares back someone who is me and not me. I find myself unable to say who I really am, if I am not also the thug brought into being by stories of my own making. Are we then nothing but the playthings of language? When do we tell stories, and when do stories tell us?
Mirror Dance by Lois McMaster Bujold. AH THIS BOOK WAS SO GOOD ALSO. The next in the Vorkosigan series; Mark, Mile's clone, disguises himself as Miles to go on a rescue mission for another group of clones, and everything promptly goes to hell. I love Mark, and I love how he finds himself over this book; I love Cordelia (buying Mark a ship!) and Aral so much; I love Miles, proposing to every woman who shows interest in him; I love poor Bel, making the wrong choice; I love Ivan (hiding away to cry!); I love poor little Lily, figuring out that she wants to live. Basically everything about this book was amazing and perfect.
What are you currently reading?
Riot: A Love Story by Shashi Tharoor. A novel about communal riots during the whole Ayodhya mosque thing, and also an Indian/American relationship.
Etiquette & Espionage by Gail Carriger. A YA novel in a steampunk world with vampires and werewolves. Taking a brief break from the Vorkosigan series because I loved Carriger's Parasol Protectorate so.
The Thing about Thugs by Tabish Khair. AH THIS BOOK WAS SO GOOD. So, the English word 'thug' comes from thuggee, a murderous, thieving cult of Kali-worshipers that practiced human sacrifice and almost certainly never actually existed outside of the imaginations of some British imperialists. This novel takes advantage of that situation to tell a story with multiple narrators, almost all of them unreliable: the English captain writing a book about thugs, the reformed 'thug' who is spinning a story to the captain for his own advantage, the nobleman who is collecting skulls to open a phrenology museum, the Resurrection men providing the skulls, the policeman investigating the mysterious murders where the victims have all been beheaded (surely the work of some foreign cult!), the Irish opium-addict married to an Indian woman, and more. Ah, I loved this. The story is fantastic, and the writing was beautiful. Here's a passage from the main character, Amir Ali, the 'thug':
You see, jaanam, in those hours of imprisonment, a frightening thought crossed my mind. I felt that I had become my own story; my life had turned into the lie I had narrated to Captain Meadows. Suddenly, I was the thug I had claimed to be.
It felt strange to become something else. Is that all it requires? A few words, a few stories? Is our hold on reality so weak, so insecure? Can stories — told by yourself, told by others — turn us into something else? Why is it that, no matter how we grasp reality, no matter what reality we grasp, we need to don the glove of stories? Is that all we are: stories, words, breath?
Perhaps it was the suddenness of the events, the circumstances I found myself in, the taunting voices from the other cells, but thoughts crossed my mind like the delirious images one sees when tossing in a high fever. I almost came to believe that by deceiving Captain Meadows and his circle, I had become the master of deceit that he wished me to be; a thug. It frightened me: I feared that by hatching a thug in words, I had brought to life a real thug, one who was now stalking London and beheading victims. For a moment, I was no longer sure if the story I had told the Captain was not, after all, the true one, and the stories I told you and myself, simply lies.
Now that I have been released, and especially when I can hold you and feel the evidence of your reality as something not defined solely by words, I find my fears diminishing. But when I look back on my hours in prison, I find myself staring into a mirror, and from the mirror stares back someone who is me and not me. I find myself unable to say who I really am, if I am not also the thug brought into being by stories of my own making. Are we then nothing but the playthings of language? When do we tell stories, and when do stories tell us?
Mirror Dance by Lois McMaster Bujold. AH THIS BOOK WAS SO GOOD ALSO. The next in the Vorkosigan series; Mark, Mile's clone, disguises himself as Miles to go on a rescue mission for another group of clones, and everything promptly goes to hell. I love Mark, and I love how he finds himself over this book; I love Cordelia (buying Mark a ship!) and Aral so much; I love Miles, proposing to every woman who shows interest in him; I love poor Bel, making the wrong choice; I love Ivan (hiding away to cry!); I love poor little Lily, figuring out that she wants to live. Basically everything about this book was amazing and perfect.
What are you currently reading?
Riot: A Love Story by Shashi Tharoor. A novel about communal riots during the whole Ayodhya mosque thing, and also an Indian/American relationship.
Etiquette & Espionage by Gail Carriger. A YA novel in a steampunk world with vampires and werewolves. Taking a brief break from the Vorkosigan series because I loved Carriger's Parasol Protectorate so.
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Date: 2013-11-21 03:44 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-11-21 10:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-11-22 01:07 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-11-22 03:20 am (UTC)But I'm constantly putting books on my 'to-read about India' list, so it's always good to have more!
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Date: 2013-11-22 03:25 am (UTC)