The Frozen River by Ariel Lawton

Last week I read "The Frozen River" by Ariel Lawhon. According to the sticker on the cover, this is a Good Morning America Book Club Pick. I, however, discovered it by accident at my Library on its new books shelf. As I was checking out, the librarian said that one of the readers had told her that this is a good book.

The novel is written as narrated in first person by Martha Ballard, a midwife in the late 1700s. Martha Ballard was a real character in Hallowell, Maine, who delivered over 1000 babies and never lost a mother. She kept a daily journal for 27 years about her days, weather, work, and significant events in her life that happened around her. Ballard was very much a feminist, educated by her husband and she also taught other women in the town. Besides being a midwife, Martha was the local doctor in this small town in Maine of about 1000 people. Lawhon stumbled upon an article about Martha Ballard and then researched her. Lawhon was so inspired by the life and the journal kept by Martha Ballard that she decided to write a story around the events chronicled in the journal. The Author's notes at the end of the book state that about 75% of the events mentioned in the novel must have been true since they were reported in the journal. So, this novel should classify as historical fiction.

One of the entries in the journal was (is) about the accusation by Rebecca Foster that two men, Joseph North and Joshua Burgess raped her when her husband was away. North was also the judge in town with eyes on acquiring all the surrounding properties by hook or by crook. Nine days after the alleged rape Rebecca called upon Martha to tend to her injuries suffered during the assault. Rebecca's account of the assault and her injuries were consistent, so much so that Martha believes in Rebecca and stands by her throughout subsequent months as a witness. Rebecca lodges a formal accusation and the novel is about what follows. 

Within a few days, Burgess's body is discovered in the freezing river. As the local doctor, Ballard examines the body, declares that Burgess was first beaten, then hanged and subsequently thrown in the river. North got a Harvard-educated doctor from Boston to move to the town, who declared that there was no hanging and the body-injuries were sustained in the river from rocks and ice. The novel is about what ensues as hearings and trials have to be conducted according to the arcane and male-favored justice system that existed at the end of the eighteenth century. The narrative is quite gripping and you will want to know how it ends.

In those days, women were supposed to be seen and not heard. Most women were not given any education unless their parents provided it themselves. If a woman bore a child out of wedlock, she was accused of "fornication" and fined, while the father, if known, had to provide for the child. Accusation of rape had to be proved by testimony of witnesses, as if such assaults would ever be conducted in presence of others. If convicted, the convicted rapist's sentence was death by hanging. Needless to say that very few women brought such an accusation and if they did, very few men were convicted. You will learn a lot about how life was in the seventeen-hundreds. Whether you want it or not, you will also read a lot about midwifing. The novel contains quite a few descriptions of easy and difficult deliveries that Ballard conducted. It is a gripping story and a good read.

 

 

The Calcutta Chromosome by Amitav Ghosh

I found this book in the Viking Cruise lines Venus ship's library. Never heard of the book or the author, but the blurb on the inside of the cover sounded interesting. Not only that, but the copy on the ship is autographed by the author. 

I had hopes, but they did not pan out. The premise is this. Major Ronald Ross, born in India, discovered the manner in which malaria is conveyed by mosquitoes in 1808 . Ross was awarded the Nobel prize for his discovery. And, Murugan, known to his friends as Morgan, has taken it upon himself that there is more to this discovery of the connection between malaria and mosquitoes. The story attempts to connect an Egyptian in New York, Antar, a former colleague of Murugan, who is working in a company that has a highly advanced data analysis computer, AVA in the present time, and Murugan who disappeared about 25 years ago, along with Urmila, a reporter and Anjali, an actress. But, the interlocking story never really connects well in the first 200 pages of the 300 page book. I stopped reading the book at least three times and picked it up again because I really wanted to finish it before the end of my cruise. The book became interesting after about 200 pages but some parts really did not make sense, like the ghost train. What did that have to do with the story? Yeah, it connected to Lachman, another mysterious character in the novel. But, then again, why the ghost train? Anyway, most of the first two thirds of the book is difficult to get through and keep it straight in your head. The end is unsatisfying. But then, maybe Ghosh wants the reader to draw his own narrative at the end and construct a scenario about what really happened. Many books do that. So, if you want to read it, be my guest.

Moby Dick by Herman Melville

The book I just finished last week was "Moby Dick" by Herman Melville. That was a 800-page weighty tome to read and I have been thinking about reading it for a long time. I saw it in my daughter's bookcase and she said that she had slogged through it few years ago. If she can read it then so can I.

Moby Dick was first published in 1851. When it was first published it was not an immediate success and Melville was not a financially successful writer during his lifetime, unfortunately, similar to many artists who were not financially well-off during their lifetimes. Elizabeth Hardwick, one of the founders of The New York Review of Books who also taught writing seminars at Barnard and Columbia, has called it the "the greatest novel in American literature". That's high praise. I don't think I will go as far as that. What about Steinbeck, Hemingway, Twain and so many others. Maybe, ONE of the greatest. Don't you have to read ALL the novels ever published to call one the greatest? I am quibbling. 

My problem with the novel is its size. Not that it is so big, but Melville seems to be bragging about his knowledge of whaling. The novel contains over 100 chapters and not all chapters are small, like in a mystery novels by the likes of Patterson and Baldachi, with a minor cliffhanger at the end of each chapter. There are chapter upon chapter that digress into details of whaling which, although pertinent to the subject, are not pertinent to the obsession of Ahab and his monomaniacal pursuit of the whale. I read somewhere that Hemingway said something to the effect, "one does not need to put everything one knows about a subject into the novel". Could have been an off-handed comment about Melville's Moby Dick,  So, you can skip many chapters without losing the thread of the story. In fact, Ahab stars in very few chapters! But, who doesn't love the opening line? "Call me, Ishmael." That's just three words in a 800-page novel. 

The novel does feel like it was really experienced by Melville. He did not want to write himself in it, and hence the first line of novel, maybe? His knowledge of whaling of the time was quite phenomenal. I believe, Melville, was on a whaling ship at least for a while before bugging out at some foreign port. The whaling terms he uses in the novel must be very specific to the time and the industry. Often, I would Google a word that was obviously a whaling term, and Google circled back and gave an example of the very sentence I got the term from.

I wonder if Melville created the characters in the book from his whaling encounters, especially, Queequeg the "cannibal", Starbuck his first mate, Stubb, Flask, to name a few. They are all very queer to have been just been imagined. 

I found myself wishing that the digression chapters would end and we would get back to the story. It's too intimidating to write about this novel since it has already been written about, analyzed, examined, critiqued, a million times. If you are a book-lover then you have to read it at least once and slog through the writing style of the 19th century.

Ranjan Reads Books

 So? 

You say. Big deal. Everyone does. 

Well, not really everyone. Many. 

I have been reading for years since I read my first novel. I still remember that it was "Jamaica Inn" that my English teacher gave me to read in 1964. There, I have revealed my age group. But, all those novels, hundreds, thousands, maybe. And nothing to show for it.

So I have decided to blog about the novels that I will read in the future, whether anyone reads the blog or not. At least I will be able to look back at the blog and recall what a book was about.

I will not try to be a "critic". Far from it. I will write what I like about the novel, hate about the novel, what I think about it. If you have landed on this blog while researching a book that you are considering to buy and/or read, I hope that reading my blog will provide one more data point in making your decision about whether you buy and read the book or not.

If you have landed on this blog and would like to suggest any books you have read, please by all means, do so by commenting.