World of Reviews: Games, Movies, And More!!

When I first picked up the Hollow from the bookshelf, it was only because of the Hercule Poirot marking on the side. Wow, a new detective story, I thought. Little did I know then what it was about.

For the Hollow isn’t really a detective story. Of course, there is murder, but there is no mystery. Maybe this is Hercule Poirot’s book, but he’s absent except in a few scenes. He doesn’t solve anything; like the wise old man he is, he stands back to let human nature take its own course.

The Hollow is a singularly compassionate study of human nature. It dwells at length on the murdered man, who, even in death, was “more alive than the living”; his mistress, and his seemingly dimwit wife. The characters are not just grey – they are of various patterns that are ever changing like the Rorschach inkblots; of different colours that blend together to form iridescent hues that finally take the tinge of blood with the doctor’s murder. The hero is an adulterer, the culprit is the one fighting for justice, yet sympathies flow different ways than expected – such is Christie’s magic.

Poirot himself is absent except in a few scenes towards the middle of the book – indeed, the book could’ve done perfectly well without him. He just acts as the connecting link, the one who explains the curious workings of the characters in a sympathetic light. When Poirot becomes redundant in his own book, you can guess how good the story must be to stand on its own. Actually, this should’ve been classified under Christie’s romantic novels rather than detective. The poetry in the book is fast-paced, deep, pondering and vivid with images of hope in the darkness of jealousy and hatred. Don’t miss this.

Rating:

“beauty is nothing
but the start of terror we can hardly bear,
and we adore it because of the serene scorn
it could kill us with…”

That would be the fitting description of the beauty of the Hungry Tide, another marvel from Amitav Ghosh. It is hard to describe what the book is about, because there are hardly any occurrences. Ghosh’s narrative weaves in and out of the lives of several people, over months, years and generation, as they all tend to the same point like a slowly rising crescendo and end in a cruel climax, claiming the most eloquent character in the novel.
For the most part, the book deals with life in the Sunderbans – a place known exclusively for its tigers and mangroves, and so where the price of human life is much less than that of a tiger. It takes time to build up pace. Amitav Ghosh magnifies the wide spectrum of human life in the tide country, at once proud of its racial multiplicity and cowering from natural terrors; it’s not long before the reader’s life with the city becomes one with the characters’ plain living in the salty islands. In Ghosh’s description, even the drudging details of cetaceans come to life. You’re lured by these messengers of Bonbibi, and you can feel the excitement, the passion and the sense of unrewarded joy that Piya felt, or indeed, any cetologist must feel after their seemingly uninteresting work.
In this narrative, some parts stand out immediately due to their depth – “where do we belong, except the place we refuse to leave?” The beauty of this line, and lines as such that the book is filled with, are so potent, as to unearth some spring of emotion within you. Rilke’s quotations match the beat of the story perfectly as they appear relentlessly in Nirmal’s works.
Yes, the tide is indeed hungry. It demands the greatest sacrifice of all, but in that destruction, seeds of new life are sown – for this is the “bhatir desh”, the country of the ebb tide. It’s the devastation at Garjontola and Fokir’s death that reforms the other characters. While life goes on as usual, a new breath enlivens the tide country that can only be seen if scrutinized minutely, and would’ve been imperceptible except for Ghosh’s pen.
Moreover,, Amitav Ghosh makes Benglish sound fashionable. Anything more to be said?

Rating: