Critics' Choices for Christmas
Mcgowa, Jo & Colish, Marcia & DeConcini, Barbara & Krupnick, Mark & Steinfels, Margaret O'Brien & Imbelli, Robert
C r i t i c s ' choices f o r Christmas - - ~ - ~ .2.~-- l o McGowan ]o McGowan, a frequent Commonweal contributor, writes from Dehra Doon, India. y ears ago, when I first moved to India, my...
...C r i t i c s ' choices f o r Christmas - - ~ - ~ .2.~-- - l o McGowan ]o McGowan, a frequent Commonweal contributor, writes from Dehra Doon, India...
...As usual my speech has taken on a more stately tone, my admiration for valor and courage has increased, and my tolerance for mass mayhem in the service of His Royal Highness shocks even me...
...By now, his Aubrey-Maturin series (all published by Norton, $11.95) must be very well known, but the pleasure I have received from these eighteen volumes of historical fiction (early nineteenth-century British naval history at that...
...when it appears in paperback...
...Things have changed a lot in the past few years and many more American and European books are now available here, often at a fraction of their cost abroad...
...I look forward to reading O'Brian's most recent addition, The Hundred Days (Norton, $24,280 pp...
...is so enormous I cannot pass up the opportrinity to convert more readers to the cult...
...Although the plot is occasionally contrived and a little farfetched, it is held together by writing of such beauty and arresting detail that I was able to ignore what might have been irritating devices in the hands of someone less skilled...
...I have read each one at least three times (value for money indeed...
...If you want to know what it's like to live in a small North Indian town, this is the book...
...and the story is set here (although he names the town Drummondganj...
...It is the characters of Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin and their friendship, which grows and changes throughout the eighteen volumes, that really fascinates...
...By this measure, no author has ever delivered for me as Patrick O'Brian has...
...Not that it mattered--very few of them ever made it to the Dehra Doon shops...
...Each issue took at least four months to arrive by sea mail, and often I would get six or seven weeks' worth in the space of three days...
...Since this is true for me, too, I depend less on reviews than on the recommendations of trusted friends...
...It is an amazing (and humbling) experience to see so many of the things I have tried unsuccessfully to describe to friends and family over the years rendered by Sealy so effortlessly and exquisitely...
...The Everest Hotel by I. Allen Sealy (who also wrote The Trotter Nama) is the story of a hotel-turned-convent in the foothills of the Indian Himalayas which serves as a home to a collection of unwanted people...
...Sometimes very funny books of this type get so carried away they become caricatures of themselves, but Fielding manages to maintain a genuinely human note...
...Allen Sealy actually lives in Dehra Doon (his wife is in my parish...
...It is a hilariously funny book which made me laugh so hard I felt sick to my stomach...
...Her characters are warm and, in spite of their silliness, loving, witty, and intelligent...
...And I look for books I will want to read more than once: value for money is far more important now that the price of a book is 10 percent of my income...
...Cammonweal 2 0 December 4, 1998...
...On a lighter note: Bridget Jones" Diary, by Helen Fielding (Viking, $22.95, 291 pp...
...I am presently on round four, volume seven...
...chronicles a year in the life of a young single woman in London and chiefly concerns her relentless desire to find a boyfriend...
...I didn't expect to like these books, having no interest in war, sailing, or the British navy, but O'Brian's writing is so wonderful, his sense of humor so sharp, and his ability to draw characters so amazing that the details of the battles fought and the technicalities of sailing a ship in the 1800s float right by those readers not inclined to bother...
...But with an exchange rate of forty-two rupees to the dollar, the cost is still prohibitive for most people...
...y ears ago, when I first moved to India, my parents gave me a subscription to the New York Times Book Review...
...I could never resist reading them all in one go and then I would wander around in a daze, my mind a sea of titles either to be had at any price or avoided at all costs--I could seldom remember which...
...and I am almost embarrassed by the depth of my passion for the series...
...I was reading it while riding around Delhi in auto rickshaws and twice the drivers pulled over, full of concern, thinking I was choking to death...
...The last book on my list is, according to amazon.com, not yet available in the United States, in spite of having been nominated for England's prestigious Booker prize...
Vol. 125 • December 1998 • No. 21
