A good time to be young

Gone are the days of Briget Jone's Diary or Sex and the City. The impossible world of Young-Adult (YA) literature has taken over the chick-lit sphere. The YA books target all in the age group of 14-25 while chick-lit was meant mainly for young women. Though YA fiction too treads the chick-lit line (teen romance, popular culture) but places it in a complex world of vampires, fairies, or wizards. Given its simple narration, complex and multiple climaxes, considerable love factor and magic, the genre has developed a considerable adult cult following too. Here is a list of YA paperbacks ready to burst on the Indian scene and those not of the "happening generation" remember one is never too old to become younger.

NEARLY DEPARTED by ROOK HASTINGS
If you like your dose of creeps unmorphed by vampires or witches, then here is a ghost tale complete with flickering lights and eerie woods. The story that mainly targets young-adults is set in a British town Woodsville, also locally known as Wierdsville for its quirk-factor.

A set of unmatched youngsters are thrown together for a school assignment. The much-bullied and "invisible" Emily has a problem. She thinks her house is haunted, so the others: Betham, Jay, Hashim and Kelly, decide to give it a ghost-check and dispel her fears. But that’s not the simple story. The gang finds that Emily’s mother is missing and strangely, no one knows of it.As the story unfolds the five keep running into things that go bump in the night. The woods seem to be the centre of all the unexplained in the town. To top it all Jay’s grandfather Albert is the only grown-up who is ready to believe the young gang and help them.Each of the gang-member has a distinct, identifiable trait which makes the characterization engrossing, though straight. The story is swift and language is just what would roll-off the tongue of a British teenager. The ghost seekers won’t be disappointed with this book as the group practically fights off a horde of light-emanating ghosts. As the Scooby-style group solves the Emily-puzzle what emerges is a thrilling plot, if not necessarily a hair-raising one.

RADIANT SHADOWS by MELISSA MARR

Radiant Shadows is the fourth book in the Wicked Lovely series and for those who have been following the chain, there is nothing about Aislinn and Seth (on whom the first book was based) in this story. Those who haven’t been following will find this book tedious as the story deals with the complex workings and squabbles of various faery courts. A quick view of Marr’s faery world for the benefit of all: Faeries live alongside the human world, though invisible. The faery world is divided into courts that have their own typical traits and are ruled by immortal faery kings and queens. Faeries like to stay invisible to humans and can be evil.The present book focuses on Devlin, assassin-cum-adviser to Scorcha, Queen of Faerie, and Ani who is   a half-mortal half-faery. Something about Ani’s blood is different as she strangely feeds on both humans and faeries and has an appetite for both emotions and touch. As she grows, young Ani finds it harder to control and satisfy her appetites. Emotion-denying Devlin, (styled like Dr Spock of Star Treck) who has been ever loyal to his queen, had years ago spared Ani when the Queen had ordered him to kill her.Now, decades later he realizes his fate is somehow intricately tied to hers and he must protect her from Bananach (war) who also wants Ani for her unusual powers.

Marr gives us a complex but engaging world of magic where steeds change into cars, dreams can be woven together and reality keeps changing. A rewarding read only if you have an imagination to cope with the brisk narrative and patience for the unexplained.

SPELLS by APRILYNNE PIKE

Another weave from the faery-land, Spells is a sequel to Aprilynne Pike’s debut Wings. It has nothing of the complex world of Radiant Shadows, and the atmosphere is brighter as faeries flower like plants and carry blossoms on their backs. Those uninitiated to the first volume can easily begin with the second, but other than the faery-life tid-bits there is little original here.The story is more or less a Harry Potter redo as a young Laurel is in a Hogwarts-style academy to learn the faery arts she missed on while growing up with a human family. In the first volume Laurel had saved the gateway to faeryland Avalon. The threat from "trolls" lead by Jeremiah Barnes still exists and she must be ready for it. Everything is not fine on the personal front too.Laurel finds her mother getting increasingly distant with the revelation that she is faery. Also, while  Laurel has her human boyfriend David, she is unable to deny the connection she feels to faery guard Tamani.

Laurel herself is a fall fairy and the more she learns about the winter, summer and spring faeries the more she finds herself at odds with their system. Hormones run high in the novel as kissing and snogging appear frequently even at the expense of the plot. 

Freshness comes only in kicks and starts as Tamani shows Laurel around Avalon and explains to her the faery discipline of classes. Towards the end Laurel has successfully vanquished the threat to her two worlds and resolved the complexity of her love life for the time. The end leaves room for another sequel but with little promise.

THE POISON DIARIES by MARYROSEWOOD

Young and mysterious Weed is dropped at the doorstep of an apothecary Luxton who takes him in for his curious talent with plants. Luxton has a 16-year-old daughter Jessamine, who finds a rare, young friend in Weed as opposed to her distant and cold father. But Weed, much like her father, is riveted to the gardens where Luxton stocks rare plants. As Jessamine tenders to Weed, the couple begins to fall in love. However, there is something strangely inhuman about Weed’s compassion for plants. While he seems to be able to feel plant pain he is numb to humans. Jessamine is appalled with Weed’s behaviour and he is forced to confesses his secret: He can hear plants. He tells Jessamine that her father’s poison garden is a dangerous place as malevolent plants have stuck allegiances and wanted to control all. He promises her he will never go back in again. On the night Luxton announces their betrothal, Jessamine falls sick. 

Weed must go back to the poison garden and release her from the delusion of dream where she is with Oleander, the prince of poisons. As Weed undertakes the heartless tasks assigned to him by the plants of poison garden in exchange of cure, he must also unveil the real villain and sacrifice his love.

The ending is heartbreaking, perhaps in its bid to leave room for a sequel, but the adventure holds its fort well. The story transforms from a brooding Jessamine (first 30 pages), to a coy love and finally breaks into a dark mystery.   A refreshing read, The Poison Diaries is just the sort of book one wants on a rainy Sunday afternoon with a warm cup of coffee.

The death of a slice of history I The Dollmaker's Island by Anuradha Kumar I

They are on the government records but no one has seen them for ages. Their craft seems to travel places but no one remembers hearing them. Yet, everyone has heard about the Dollmakers, or at least some version of their tale. Anuradha Kumar gives us an island that moves with the river and carries with it a drifting story. On the Dollmakers’ Island a voice, a ladder and some boats are missing. What is also silently lost is the history and identity of the dollmakers. Kumar says she sees the dollmakers as symbolising the neglected and the faceless of the society. They could, however, also be seen to symbolise the fringe that doesn’t want to be institutionalised.
The Dollmaker’s Island is Anuradha Kumar’s fifth work. Books for children have been among Kumar’s earlier works. In her latest, she gives us a curious mix of genres, a novel that could perhaps be called a fairytale for adults. The novel moves like a puzzle through a maze of history which is familiar yet has an Alice-like feel. What Kumar does with time is both intriguing and amazing. In her hands, time seems to lose its properties. It is neither linear nor perpetual, neither persistent nor final. She audaciously sidesteps it at one time and dresses it up in her story at another. In a span of 240 pages, her novel resurrects the great kings from Ashoka to Aurangzeb, and the mighty British from Clive to Curzon. She compresses time and trivialises what is known in the adult world as facts and physics. Her story places all the three — the kings, the British and the government —
on the same pedestal, i.e. the ruler, and projects their continuity against the losses of the ruled, Dollmakers.
The Dollmakers are a notorious pack. They have stayed away from the government and caused it pin-pricks for ages. Leela, the protagonist, has lived timelessly and now moves into the era of emails and Internet as she acquires a computer. But Leela’s voice is lost on the day the government finalises the fate of the island. Government representative Ronen Ghito swings into action and is determined to solve the mystery.
While the story, at one level, works as a strong social and political satire, it also, on the other hand, has a love theme as Leela awaits the return of Shyam, a playwright, imprisoned for writing an “ambiguous” play. The story opens in the partition-era with Lord Mountabatten, Radcliffe and others attempting to draw a line through the Dollmakers’ Island. At the island, years later, Leela has lost her voice while the Headman and the Mouldi play out their years-old rivalry. They both have their credentials: the Mouldi, a letter from Curzon while the headman, Gandhi’s glasses. In an Orwellian style, the government is on the island and Leela must cooperate with them in the probe. The plot deepens while Leela looks for Shyam on the Internet as she is also suspected of hiding secrets in her tightly-bound braids.
The climax sees a computer virus annihilate history, turning the island and Leela “ahistoric”. The progress of the story alternates with the history of the island. In a parable-like set-up, the novel simplifies and attempts to understand conflict on one hand and ridicules its history on the other.
Kumar’s prose has a flavour of poetic ambiguity. Each character and event serves as an independent symbol yet mingles smoothly into the story. Kumar doesn’t weigh down the symbols with meanings, she allows them a life of their own. As the symbols remain open to the readers’ interpretation, a distinct style emerges.
In this state of free meanings, Kumar brings in the discipline of consistency and pattern that makes her work truly remarkable. The book compels second and third readings as symbols stay fecund. Her brand of poetic ambiguity is not that of an abyss of dark meanings, but that of multiple analogies and the reader enjoys the unravelling of the puzzle prose that is almost solved yet isn’t.

Maria’s Room by Shreekumar Varma

Give me a dream and make it come true...


Shreekumar Varma’s latest work circles around dreams in different stages: Nurtured, pursued, shattered. The story hinges on the impact of dreams on life, both imaginary and real. The protagonist, Raja Prasad, is a writer. Haunted by an agonising past, he clings tenously to the present through his writings. As he embarks on his newnovel his peresent gets inextricably tied to the story he weaves in his mind. The book's 300 pages come together gradually, like pieces in a puzzle. The puzzle here is both the life of the protagonist, who is a writer, and the novel he aims to produce. In the process we are handed a writer’s enthralling pursuit of his manuscript.

"A novelist looking at life is like a child playing with his numbered drawing book. It is upto him to connect the dots and make the picture;"

In the first 150 pages, the protagonist arrives in Goa and begins to focus on real people as characters for his novel. Raja is a recluse and his vision of the world is like that of an overexposed camera. We are given glimpses into his traumatized mind but the character seems incomplete and weak. It takes an effort to wad through this section of the book. However, brilliant flashes of Varma's creativity make the journey a little less tedious. He imparts an ethereal radiance to his descriptions. Conceits like, "A black Tata Estatedrove up and paused like an animal at a waterhole," provide the much needed succor in this section which could have been compressed to 50 pages. It is like watching a flower blossom, an experience few would sit through, though a satisfying outcome is assured.

There is no turning back once you are past the 150 mark. It is after this point that the novel-within-the-novel format begins to take a clearer shape. Raja Prasad, the protagonist, begins his novel titled Maria’s Guesthouse. Varma however, turns this format upside down. The developments in Maria’s Guesthouse now begin to affect life of Raja and of those around him.

Shreekumar Varma is a Chennai-based writer, poet and teacher. Amonghis other works are Lament of Mohini and Devil’s Garden. Shreekumar is the grandson of the last ruling maharani of Travancore. In Lament of Mohini he dealt with the story of a royal family and its escapades. His debut work, like his latest fiction, used novel-within-novel format. Both the works have at their core a writer’s engagement with his work. Pre-occupation with the past and struggle to free oneself of it, is also a common thread that runs through both the books. In Maria’s Room past is mysterious. It beckons from across the border of memory where it has been banished. Its attempt to cross over into present through the ministrations of mind forms an engrossing plot. Curse is another recurring motif in Varma’s work. Lament of Mohini brings up a family curse wherein women are left behind to suffer. In Maria’s Room too, Raja believes there is a family curse where men are left alone.

The fact that Varma is a descendant of reknown painter Raja Ravi Varma speaks through the heightened visual quality of his work. His vision brings out distinct moods of episodes, much like a painting.

Varma picks on universal subjects of love, loss and death. He adds to this generous scoops of mystery and delectable strokes of word-masonry. Dialogues flow in and out of the narrative inconspicuously. He plays around with words easily and is able to mould the language to his ends. Speech of each character is uniquely and distinctly sculptured. So, on one hand a little boy’s call is transcribed as "Oos there" the female protagonist’s speech is given a pleasing desi twang, "I don’t like phones only". The writer’s pen is free of inhibitionsand complexes. He brings out the neurosis of his protagonist with a poetic flourish.

The reader is not given the benefit of many voices as the narrative runs in first person. An acute sense mystery is evoked as everything is seen and told through the eyes of the protagonist. It becomes difficult to put down the book as a reclusive Raja pieces together the disturbing past. While mystery has an instinctive appeal for readers Varma balances it with insight and creativity. His own words go on to best describe what he has attempted with this novel:

"What wouldn’t we do
To uncoil the coiled
And then coil it up again."