Book 44 - Kevin Jared Hosein "Hungry Ghosts"

Kevin Jared Hosein "Hungry Ghosts" (Bloomsbury)






Gruesome story set on the island of Trinidad around the 1940s when there is a presence of white landowners living close to those in dire poverty. A mixture of Hindu; Christian and indigenous beliefs. Hans and his wife live in the barracks along with other families - so closely that every sound is heard from room to room. Hans manages to get a job on the property of the Changoors, a wealthy family. When Mr. Changoor disappears, his wife, Marlee entices Hans to stay overnight for protection due to some strange happenings in the area. Hans' son, Krishna, is especially upset and embarrassed about his father.

The conditions of the people are sad and miserable, yet there is a strong sense of family, duty, and loyalty to their kind.

I didn't particularly like the writing style as some of the sentences simply didn't seem to make sense. The story is sad, but I never really could build up a feeling for the characters.

Book 45 - T. Coraghessan Boyle "The Road to Wellville"

T. Coraghessan Boyle "The Road to Wellville" (Granta Books)







This novel features the interwoven stories of Dr Kellogg, director of a health sanitarium in turn-of-the-century Michigan; Will and Eleanor Lightbody, upper-crust patients from New York; and Charlie Ossining, a lovable and well-meaning conman. All is not as serene and eudaemonic as it appears at "the San": Kellogg has some familial and administrative problems that threaten his vision for a vegetarian utopia.

Boyle has a unique ability to make the repulsive funny. I like humour but I don't always like "funny" writers because they feel like they're trying too hard. Boyle never really feels that way; he has this great talent to probe visceral human emotions and poke at them and mock them and finally make us laugh at ourselves. There are a lot of enemas in this book, and some of them are pretty funny enemas. But there are also tender enemas and harrowing enemas and enemas filled with ennui. And if you don't think you would laugh at an enema, then maybe you would titter at a vegetarian wolf, an earnest conman, a German "womb manipulator," or a healthful cure based on the inhalation of radium vapours?

Hidden under all this is a satire probably even more relevant today than when the book first came out c. 20 years ago about our ability to fool ourselves, especially when it comes to our self-image and physical health. The novel does go on a bit longer than it needed to--there's a section about 3/4 of the way through where I felt it started to get repetitive--but the climaxes revive the breakneck energy promised in the opening chapters.