The book reviews

The Apothecary’s House
Adrian Mathews
Pan; 720pp

This is a story with something for everyone — like treasure hunts? It’s got one. Like historical themes? Got one of those as well. Like books that focus on the emotional development of characters? We have that too. What about serious issues like repatriation of stolen artworks…in fact, we also have that!
You would think that combination of elements would make for a Heinz 57 sort of book, therefore it is a testament to the author’s skill and devious plotting, that this novel does succeed as an absorbing and intricate story.
The background and star of the novel is definitely Amsterdam in all its soggy and seedy splendour. Canal boats, slums, cobbled streets and bridges are detailed lovingly by the author, as is the constant struggle by the residents of this old city to stay above the ever encroaching water level.
The co-star of the story is Ruth Braams, a researcher at the Rijksmuseum - specifically concerned with tracing the provenance of artworks stolen by Nazis, and recovered after WW2. When an old woman claims that a rather indifferent painting by an unknown artist belongs to her family, Ruth discovers that this painting was earmarked for Hitler’s special collection - a collection that included supposedly magical, alchemical and paranormal items.
The history of the Jewish inhabitants of Amsterdam during World War II is recounted by the author as a subplot to the main story, and adds much to the atmosphere of the novel. But it is above all an intriguing amalgam of historical and action novel set in the hallowed environs of the famous Rijksmuseum.

The Namesake
Jhumpa Lahiri
Mariner Books; 304pp
 
One of the most anticipated books of the year, Lahiri’s first novel (after 1999’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Interpreter of Maladies) amounts to less than the sum of its parts. Hopscotching across 25 years, it begins when newlyweds Ashoke and Ashima Ganguli emigrate to Cambridge, Mass., in 1968, where Ashima immediately gives birth to a son, Gogol-a pet name that becomes permanent when his formal name, traditionally bestowed by the maternal grandmother, is posted in a letter from India, but lost in transit. Ashoke becomes a professor of engineering, but Ashima has a harder time assimilating, unwilling to give up her ties to India. A leap ahead to the ‘80s finds the teenage Gogol ashamed of his Indian heritage and his unusual name, which he sheds as he moves on to college at Yale and graduate school at Columbia, legally changing it to Nikhil. In one of the most telling chapters, Gogol moves into the home of a family of wealthy Manhattan WASPs and is initiated into a lifestyle idealised in Ralph Lauren ads. Here, Lahiri demonstrates her considerable powers of perception and her ability to convey the discomfort of feeling “other” in a world many would aspire to inhabit. After the death of Gogol’s father interrupts this interlude, Lahiri again jumps ahead a year, quickly moving Gogol into marriage, divorce and a role as a dutiful if a bit guilt-stricken son. This small summary demonstrates what is most flawed about the novel: jarring pacing that leaves too many emotional voids between chapters. Lahiri offers a number of beautiful and moving tableaus, but these fail to coalesce into something more than a modest family saga. By any other writer, this would be hailed as a promising debut, but it fails to clear the exceedingly high bar set by her previous work.

The God of Animals
Aryn Kyle
Scribner; 320pp
 
With the sure hand of a seasoned writer, Aryn Kyle has crafted a brilliant debut with her novel, The God of Animals. Alice Winston, living on the family horse ranch, a marginal enterprise in Desert Valley, Colorado, is a 12-year-old girl with more than she can handle and no one to help her cope. Polly, a classmate of hers, drowned in the nearby canal and was carried out by Alice’s father, Joe, a member of the volunteer posse. Her older sister, 16-year-old Nona, eloped with a rodeo cowboy. Her mother never leaves her bedroom, a case of clinical depression. “My mother had spent nearly my whole life in her bedroom... Nona said that one day, while I was still a baby, our mother had handed me to her, said she was tired, and gone upstairs to rest. She never came back down.”
Joe has little time for Alice, other than counting on her to muck out the stalls and be polite to the paying customers. He doesn’t even notice that she has outgrown her clothes. What Kyle does with this scenario is never predictable or clichéd. She writes beautifully of landscapes, interior and exterior, ravaged by extremes: the hottest summer in years, followed by a deluge; a lonely, isolated girl reaching out to a teacher,
Mr Delmar, equally alienated.
Alice starts telling lies, weaving bits and pieces of other people’s lives into the tales she tells the teacher. What we eventually find out about her family is more poignant and tragic than anything she can make up. Horse lore is a large part of what explains each of the people in the novel: separating mares from their foals, the way a stud is treated, breaking a horse, ordinary everyday contact. This bond is explored in depth and each person: Alice, Nona, Joe, Joe’s father, Alice’s mother, is affected by this closeness in a different, unique way, revelatory of each individual’s character. Much more than a coming-of-age tale, Kyle told a story of compromises and dreams that will never come true.

Books courtesy Books Plus