love story about an English country gentleman and a Pakistani shopkeeper. Both are of advancing years, and both have lost a spouse. It deals with issues of race relations, small town life, and more basic things like love and friendship.It is not a complicated book, nor does it break any new ground. What it does is create a vivid and believable portrait of small town life in the English countryside, complete with a cast of memorable characters. Having completed the book, I went back to Amazon and read some reviews to see what others thought of it, and the only critical reviews seem to characterize the book as trite and predictable. I think trite overstates it, and predictable is not always a bad thing if done well. And to my mind this was done well. More often than usual I found myself marking pages with passages that I liked.
4.5 stars out of 5. Excellent.
"It's funny," she said, "to be suddenly presented with the possibility of making new friends. One begins to accept, at a certain age, that one has already made all the friends to which one is entitled. One becomes used to them as a static set - with some attrition, of course." [p. 111]
On the major's relationship with his son: "The truth was that now, without his wife to negotiate the space that they occupied as a family, he and Roger seemed to have little common ground. If there had been no bond of blood, the Major felt now, he and Roger would have little reason to continue to know each other at all. He sat at the table and felt the heavy weight of this admission hang about his shoulders like a heavy, wet coat. In the shrunken world, without Nancy, without Bertie, it seemed very sad to be indifferent to one's own son." [p. 190]
"I'm only joking," said Abdul Wahid. "You are a wise man, Major, and I will consider your advice with great care - and humility." He finished his tea and rose from the table to go to his room. "But I must ask you, do you really understand what it means to be in love with an unsuitable woman?"
"My dear boy," said the Major. "Is there really any other kind?" [p. 203]
"Unlike you, who must do a cost-benefit analysis of every human interaction," he said, "I have no idea what I hope to accomplish. I only know that I must try to see her. That's what love is about, Roger. It's when a woman drives all lucid thought from your head; when you are unable to contrive romantic stratagems, and the usual manipulations fail you; when all your carefully laid plans have no meaning and all you can do is stand mute in her presence. You hope that she takes pity on you and drops a few words of kindness into the vacuum of your mind." [p. 298]
On a failing elderly friend who has a tenuous grasp on the present:
"On some days, days that his wife thinks are bad but which perhaps are good, my friend the Colonel is quite convinced that he is back here," said the Major.
"So he dreams himself the life he cannot have?"
"Exactly. But we, who can do anything, we refuse to live our dreams on the basis that they are not practical. So tell me, who is to be pitied more?" [p. 317]
"He might have preferred to stay in this room forever and gaze at this face which wore love like a smile about the eyes, but it was not possible. He straightened his own shoulders and offered her his arm with a formal bow of the head....'Shall we go forth and get married?'" [p. 355]
Books read: 19 [totalling 4,293 pages]
Books by new authors: 13 [including this]
Published in 2010: 11 [including this]
Classics: still 3
the passages you have selected make this seem like a book i would want to read.
ReplyDeleteplease remind me to ask to borrow it next we see each other - and of course, please lend !
leo