THE MOUNTAIN SHADOW by GREGORY DAVID ROBERTS

 

Book Review

This big, sprawling novel, with a cast of thousands, re-connects us with GDR’s alter-ego, the Australian Lin a.k.a. Shantaram, and his exploits in the Bombay underworld.

Some of the characters from the first novel, blockbuster Shantaram,  are re-assembled, plus squads of new ones.  There are few quirky, attractive new characters , the Zodiac Georges. Two street people, who are undying friends, both named George and differentiated by their birth months, hence Gemini George as opposed to Scorpio George. The new characters also provide arch villains. There’s the deeply unpleasant Lightning Dilip, the sadistic police sergeant , who routinely beats up suspects, and extorts bribes on every occasion. Concannon, the homicidal Irishman, wants to beat Lin to a pulp.  I could never quite understand why. There are many others, but as I said, there’s a cast of thousands.

Testosterone and violence permeate the first third of the book; thereafter we have holy men, spiritual teachers and quests for love and faith, mingled with bouts of violence. It’s an uneven mix.

The story revolves mainly around the convoluted, not to say torturous,  romantic  relationship between Lin and his soul-mate, Karla and one of the novel’s major weaknesses are the pages and pages of waffly dialogue between them when they have verbal sparring matches. Boring. As are the  tedious passages about earnest philosophical issues, with spiritual overtones.  GDR needs to make up his mind whether he wants to write a Philosophy 101 textbook, an exposition on his personal  brand  of spirituality, or a ninja novel. A mix of all three ingredients doesn’t work and we have to toil through 873 pages to confirm this for ourselves.

Mercifully GDR is restrained when it comes to writing about sex.  He does not indulge in pages of soft porn as so many blockbuster writers do. He keeps his purple passages for  one  dreadful poem  and for emotional or soulful pages.

When  Mountain finally staggers to a halt, with all loose ends tidied up, it’s an anti-climax. A review on Goodreads  said something about a possible third Shantaram novel. No. Enough already.  I enjoyed Shantaram, but his second outing on the theme is way, way too long.

What does work is GDR’s pages about the city of Bombay itself, its vibrant street life, its slums, mansions, and inhabitants; the myriad mini-stories of human struggles.  I was intrigued to read about the business activities of the Bombay underworld, and the pervasive graft and corruption at all levels throughout the  city.  Even subtracting 50% of the accounts as literary hyperbole, it made me realise that the country I live in is in the junior league, compared to the shenanigans in Bombay. Which, in a weird way, makes me feel a little better. Maybe.

At the end of 2015, which has been a tough year, I needed a relaxing, escapist read. I guess GDR’s novel was it, but, boy oh boy, it was a long haul!  Where was his editor, I wondered? Maybe if you’ve written a  wildly successful blockbuster first novel like Shantaram,  your editor treads softly.

Speaking of which, there’s an intriguing final page titled Proclaimer  where GDR makes it crystal clear he does not endorse the criminal lifestyle, drugging, drinking or smoking, and has merely used them as foundations for his story.  There’s a terse note on the back jacket flap that says GRD has retired from public life to pursue other projects and writing.I was intrigued, and a Google search  led me to an in-depth interview with GDR by the Sydney Morning Herald. The interview was tagged ‘The final Interview with GDR’.You can find it at:

http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/books/gregory-david-roberts-final-interview-on-the-mountain-shadow-by-shantaram-author-20151005-gk1o20.html

As ever, GDR has plenty to say.

 

 

 

 

 

RE-DISCOVERING TREASURES ON MY BOOKSHELVES

Sometimes events have unexpected side effects.  For instance: I recently had my house re-carpeted. This meant I had to pack away all loose items, my collection of cat memorabilia, and oh woe – the bookshelves. The Carpet Man took one look at the overloaded shelves, shook his head, and said We can’t move those – too heavy. You’ll have to pack them away and then we’ll move the empty bookcases. Fair enough – I knew how heavy they were. Amazing how sheets of paper within cardboard covers have such a cumulative dead weight. But they do.

So: Clement came into my life. His day job is working for the window cleaners who come once a month to clean my windows (note: I don’t wash windows or cars; I’m too short to reach. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.I engaged him to come and help pack the books. He’s a skinny little Malawian, who works all the hours/days that he can, in order to send money back to his family in Malawi; speaks beautiful English and works with vigour. In a couple of hours the job was done, the boxes stored in the spare bedroom, and every flat surface covered in towering stacks of books. We ran out of boxes, so we got on to Plan B. Just love Plan B.  I noticed Clement eyeing the books with interest, and offered to lend him a novel, which he took with alacrity.

New carpeting duly installed, I arranged for Clement to help unpack the books, which we speedily did. We pretty much just shoved them into shelves, and left it at that. Since then I have had a delightful time re-arranging them into themed shelves –  novels, travel, poetry, cookery books (I discovered a brand new Jamie Oliver which I don’t appear to have even opened let alone read or cooked from; I have a vague memory that I won the book in a competition). My Tarot books have been packed into suitcases and banished under the spare room bed. Right now I’m not in the mood.

My Buddhist books have returned to their previous shelf in the bedroom. I’ve made a mammoth pile of fat, oversized books and stacked them on top of the case, behind the bedroom door. What’s there? Dombey & Son  (I keep meaning to …) . The Gary Snyder Reader (wilderness, eco-Buddhism) Shantaram , Collected Short Stories of the World – 2 vols,  IQ84 ( a Murakami triumph) The Collected Saki  (that bitter twisted wit) a Georgette Heyer Omnibus (comfort reading when I’m in bed with ‘flu) The Alexandria Quartet (I really DO want to re-read this). And so on. I tend to be put off by very thick books, but usually enjoy myself once I pluck up the courage. A good case in point is The Swan Thieves  by Elizabeth Kostova, a historical mystery/romance, featuring the French Impressionists – I couldn’t put it down, and read ‘til I was cross-eyed.

I chucked more books into the Diabetes SA Donations Box. They’ve done well out of my recent housekeeping efforts. The comic novels I dusted off and stacked together. I have a weakness for them, for which I make no apology. We all need to laugh a great deal more often.

Then there was a big, dusty pile of magazines with the word ‘KEEP’ scrawled on the covers. Sorting through those I came upon a trove of The Lady .  I paged through one after breakfast this morning, and enjoyed the wide variety of articles that are seldom found in other mags, which tend to focus on health, beauty and self-improvement. At one point I subscribed to The Lady, because I so enjoyed the cosy time-warp feel and look of the mag, it was like being back in the late 50s to mid 60s. And then the mag appointed a new, young, hot-shot MALE editor (big mistake!) who revamped the format and image, gave it a bright new look and turned it into a facsimile of every other magazine on the market, missing the point entirely. The whole point aboutThe Lady  was the fact that it wasn’t trendy, that it had a lot of black and white pics and illustrations, that it was old-fashioned.  So I cancelled my sub and went off in a huff. As a wise man I know often says, in his Tennessee twang: “If it ain’t broke, don’t tinker with it.”  Too right.

RECENT READS #10 : INDIA

  SHANTARAM by Gregory David Roberts

I bought the book in 2006 after drooling over it in airport book stalls on my 2005 Australia trip. I didn’t buy it at the time because it was literally too heavy to cart around airports and hostels.  Having  bought it in 2006 the book languished on my shelves for a year. I think I was intimidated by its sheer size.  I finally tackled it, and staggered to page 923, THE END,  Phew!

I can see why it was so popular. Lots of manly brawling and crime – hardly any sex, more about romantic love actually – plus a somewhat juvenile exposition on “why are we here, what’s it all about?” which GDR (as per his website) has now rather grandly spun into a full-blown philosophy. And of course, a full-frontal tour of Mumbai at its squalid, dirty, fascinating worst.  I’ve crossed it off my Cities to Visit List.

Best of the book were the descriptions of life in the Mumbai slums, and good works in a slum clinic, life in the Indian Mafia, insights into the war in Afghanistan, some of the character sketches.  And GDR’s realization that his father figure, Khader, had used him as a pawn – quite ruthlessly, despite all the love and devotion from GDR. It’s a big, epic sprawling book filled with colourful characters, spiced with the Indian backdrop.

GDR was a convicted Australian bank robber and heroin addict, who escaped to India and spent eight years in the Mumbai underworld, living in a Mumbai slum – so his story is based on solid experience.  However, I can’t help suspecting that some of the tales were gathered in bars, over the years, or in jail cells, and quietly woven into the fabric of the novel. But isn’t that what novelists do? Embroider reality to suit their purpose.

I was curious to see the author of this Boys’ Own extravaganza, so Googled him, and was disappointed to see a small, triangular face, big ears, and a surprisingly unscarred face, given all the beating he endured in the Mumbai jails.  I suppose it was too much to hope for that he’d look like something out of Raiders of the Lost Ark, but I had hopes …

LAST MAN IN TOWER – Arvind Adiga

I love Indian novels for their quirky characters, for their Indian-ness, but this is an Indian novelist I approach with caution.  I didn’t like his White Tiger (a much acclaimed book, his debut novel, which won the 2008 Man Booker prize: it was too brutal and too realistic for me) I like my Indian novels more cinnamon scented in a swirl of cerise saris …

Anyway, this recent novel, although dealing with moral issues, was lighter in touch, even though it displays Mumbai in all its corrupt, thrusting vitality. In short, a property developer (corrupt through and through) wants to tear down an old apartment building near the airport, and build a smart new complex in its place.  He makes the residents of the building an offer they cannot refuse, literally the fabled opportunity of a lifetime, to move on, to move up the social ladder, to become (modestly) rich!  Of course, they excitedly accept his offer – all except one man, a retired schoolteacher.  He won’t budge. Hence the title.  And the book takes off from there.

The book displays  Mumbai’s gritty, greedy, thrusting vitality. It exposes the sad truth that money can corrupt everything, even the oldest, deepest friendships are not proof against greed. Loyalty flies out of the window. We also see the immense value placed by Indian society on family; everything the characters do – or don’t do – are motivated by FAMILY. I’d never appreciated before just how family minded Indian society is. The novel also made me ponder: at what point is the struggle simply not worth the price? When should we decide to give up the fight? And another thing: at which point does a principled moral stand dissolve into a futile Quixotic gesture?

Arvind Adiga writes disturbing books.  There is no sugar coating in this one.  The ending is shocking, but hey!  Life goes on. Despite the darkness in this book, I enjoyed it.