What can be said about this except that it is immensely entertaining, very simple and of all the things, real. Language, unlike the Rushdies and Rands of this world has been relegated to the background whilst a truly beautiful panorama of human lives in a human world is painted by the author. Let us take it one at a time:
The characterization is the first strong point of the book. Without the various members of the Belsey and Kipps household and their distinct eccentricities, the storyline would have fallen into the mundane category of other American novels, with its share of heartbreaks and infidelities and Conservative-Liberal debates. But alas! The characters, and the way the author serves them to the world definitely lends a sort of authenticity to the novel. The characterization being such that neither of the characters are exaggerated, nor are they under sketched. Rather, they sway and move appropriately to their own natures lent to them by the author, and according to the various ups and downs in the real-life tale of human beings as it happens. There are no magically born Midnight’s Children, nor are the intellectuals hell-bent on sticking onto their ‘individualistic’ beliefs and strive for a new world. For instance, Howard Belsey, the most typical middle-aged man and by en far the ‘most judgemental Liberal’ one can come across, cheats on his wife, twice, and yet one can’t help sympathise and frown at his ‘weak’ arguments and far-fetched intellectual mumbo-jumbo whenever it comes to sitting by the table and quietly discuss the ‘problem at hand’. And then, there is Monty Kipps, the other half of the Liberal-Conservative dipole; just as flawed, but slightly less brittle than his polar counterpart, Howard. Guess, since the author is a woman, the female characters in the book, namely Kiki Belsey, Howard’s wife, Zora, his daughter, and Carlene and Victoria, the Kipps-women, are more substantial, better sketched, and garner far more awe and empathy than the brittle, floating, indecisive males, who have a way of succumbing to situations that is common amongst the ‘common-men’ of the world. Kiki, by en far, is sympathetic, thoughtful, sensitive, and more than anything else, strong. Sort of, the ideal 21st woman who’d be best suited for the uncertainties of this Age. Zora, probably, seems to be the author’s self-image of her childhood; or maybe a reflection of what girls go through in that volatile 16-19 year age bracket! As the author sketches a pen-picture of Zora, “And yet in college, she knew she was famed for being opinionated, a ‘personality’-the truth was she didn’t take these public passions home, or even out of the room, in any serious way. She didn’t feel the she had any real opinions, or at least not in a way other people seemed to have them. Once the class was finished she saw at once how she might have argued the thing just as viciously and successfully the other way round. Was anyone ever genuinely attached to anything? She had no idea…”
Another interesting excerpt: “…it was either only Zora who experienced this odd impersonality or it was everybody, and they were all play-acting, as she was…and nervously rumbled through possible topics of conversation, a ragbag of weighty ideas she carried around in her brain to lend herself the appearance of substance…”, she makes her sound more like a human being than just a girl. Kudos! To Ms. Smith for rising above the gender-bracket for once!
Another important feature of the book is its treatment of marriage. Not the version of marriage that half the love-sick bachelors and spinsters long to get to; I mean, not the romantic extravaganza full of surprises and exotic adventures and ideal coexistence! Ha! Rather, Zadie chooses to deal with the most difficult version of it all: the middle-age period of their lives, when neither are couples gung-ho about practicing new positions from the KS, nor are they old enough to recline in their rocking chairs over dreamy fireplaces. Rather, it the age of transition; the age wherein the mind is desperately trying to believe in the shadow of ‘youth’ one last time and the body inches towards the portals of decay. Plus, their children too are undergoing the transition of youth. Where does the average middle-aged man and average middle-aged woman find solace?
In each other’s company. Or are they too bored of that as well! And that is the author’s point. Wherein, the crises doesn’t lie on the outside, like in many-a young relationship. The crises, or rather the lack of it makes the ‘insides’ so utterly predictable and mundane that try as they might, but a couple just cannot analyse what is it that has gone missing between the both of them. Some of them resign to it and continue to live life as it happens! Other, the likes of Howard Belsey helplessly try to rebel and end up having clumsy sex with girls more than half his age. Alas! the beauty of the book lies in the fact that not only does the author splendidly pose the possibility of a healthy marriage, but answers it as well with her vivid, surprising storyline that is sure to dazzle and shock the readers. The strength of the author and the whole narrative here lies in the fact that she strikes splendid balance between social responsibility and individual choice, between the ‘strength-of-the-human-will’ and ‘the strength-of-situational-fallacies’ that bend them.
A point worth mentioning is the treatment of various kinds of ‘love’ that the author engenders in her characters and makes am attempt to show what exactly is it to love and feel loved. The sort of understanding that Kiki shares with her sons, Jerome and Levi, in spite of the generation gap and their relative aloofness is heart-warming. So is the bond between Kiki and Carlene Kipps garnering so much goodwill and faith, amidst their constantly warring husbands! In essence, the author has tried to make various portholes into the way life moves from point to point, as seen flittingly through the way of the heart and the way of the mind. Interesting point being, that both the heart and mind know how to love, albeit in their different ways.
There are certain parts where a man by the name of Jean Paul Sartre is quoted here. His “We don’t know what we want, and yet we can’t help being who we are…”, from his Critique of Dialectical Reason makes us view the whole book from an existentialistic dimension. And so, this book too, reflects the characteristic uncertainty that looms at the centre of the ‘solitary’ man’s life. He may be married(Howard), widowed(Monty), in his teens(Jerome and Levi), greying(Harold, Howard’s father), in love(Jerome), in lust(Howard), two-faced(Erskine) or anything else that man is supposed to be, but the reason, and this gets tough, of his being what he is, still remains a mystery, to solve which he makes one choice after another, only to end up with the same sort of question in the end, as to what exactly was the essence of existence? Smith tries and succeeds in almost answering that question; that the essence of existence lies in loving and being loved, in giving and forgiving, in truthfully being whoever we are, and striving to be more than what we were yesterday. And yet, it’s not that simple; as Sartre wasn’t that simple. If being ‘good’ could have answered his query, probably a few pages of the Bible would have done the trick. But alas! Choice, as understood in the realm of existence, is the motif that binds him and frees him at the same time. What he chooses, and this applies to all the characters in the book, ultimately gets him closer or farther than the ‘truth’, which again, according to Sartre, is an emptiness lurking at the centre of his existence. The question is a circle, and unfortunately this is where Smith fails, like many others, in making her characters break through it!
Anyway, happy reading! If not for anything else, then for its strong, youthful flavour, sensitive characters and some real-time story-telling…
Cheers and Godspeed
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