A Review: The Cuckoo Calling, by Robert Galbraith

It has been a while since I've last updated, and I would like to apologise. A move to a new place isn't easy and it took a while to settle down. But change is scary and new jobs carry with them a kind of uncertainty that takes time to figure out, after the initial euphoria of graduating and landing a job settles down.  In short, I felt a bit similar to Robin, a lead character in Robert Galbraith's first mystery novel, The Cuckoo Calling.

 When Robin goes to work temporarily for a private detective, she discovers many things, about the detective, the work they do, and her own abilities. Her boss, Cormoran Strike, was an ex-army intelligence officer , a beefy man who was trying to establish himself as a detective.

So when the brother of an old friend of Cormoran Strike's turns up, requesting an investigation into the alleged suicide of his celebrity sister, Strike and Robin are thrown into the mayhem of the celebrity world, of inheritance, family and motive, to try and solve the crime at hand when few cooperate and everyone has something to hide.

We are introduced to a detective with no abnormal observation powers or Sherlock Holmes-ian attitude, but a sharp man working hard at his job. He has hangups and stories, and none of the mysterious aura. As the story progresses, we know more of the person solving it.  Robin is no Dr Watson, but Della Street of Perry Mason's make, and with a story of her own . They are real rounded characters who enrich the story from a human angle. Who is the murdered girl, really? And why did things turn out the way they did?

Galbraith's writing is mature, for a first time writer, too mature perhaps. The descriptions are lucid, imagery like a painting , of industrial , grey, multicultural and many-faceted London. The city is written about with a lot of love. The people woven into the story are flesh and blood as well, we may encounter them at some point, and they are each specimens on their own. A lot of research seems to have gone into it, and if I dare say, one of the few murder mysteries lovingly written.

It is a refreshing departure from the caper stories that come out these days. I was left wondering not only about the story, but also of the choices and fates of the lead characters themselves. Things follow to a logical conclusion, but not in the deductive manner of Poirot, or Holmes, We can't really solve the mystery alongside Strike, but have to wait for the literature to yield the answer.

A Dickensian detective story overall. And it left me with the hope that perhaps, good literature isn't dead after all.

A Review: The Silkworm, by Robert Galbraith

The Silkworm is the second book written by Robert Galbraith, the first being The Cuckoo Calling, in which we are introduced to ex-army Intelligence veteran, Cormoran Strike, private detective, and his pretty assistant, Robin. They operate a private detective agency in cold, grey smoggy London, where business has taken a lucrative turn owing to Strike's recent success in a very public, tricky case.

When Leonora Quine, the wife of absentee eccentric gothic gore writer Owen Quine , reaches out to Strike, to find her abconding husband, Strike begins to trace Quine's footsteps. Central to this is unravelling the mysteries of a book that Quine recently wrote,  Bombyx Mori , which has angered and alienated fellow writers, publishers and loved ones, the pages of which contain clues to his disappearance. When his body is discovered in an empty house, mutilated,  Strike must unravel the clues he is presented with, both literary and physical, to find his killer.
him, asking him to find her missing husband, Strike and Robin enter the literary world, to try and track him down. Central to his disappearance is the last book he wrote and aimed to publish,

We move through Strike's headspace, London through his eyes, however grimy, made picturesque through the author's writing. Elaborate sentence construction, vivid descriptions and plenty of attention paid to the protagonists' personal lives gives us  a different detective . Cormoran Strike is not Sherlock Holmes, and he certainly isn't Hercule Poirot. He is a normal man with a past, a present and preoccupations, who happens to solve puzzles and play private eye for a living. He worries about crime, loves football, alternately drinks tea and coffee, broods over an ex,visits his sister and worries about the bills.

In a highly descriptive book, focusing on the investigation itself wasn't easy, the book , while a literary treat to read and sink into, lacked the necessary brevity of a mystery novel. Most mystery novels become exciting because the readers get to think alongside the action in the book , and the suspense heightens when you reach the solution, and see what the detective has to say. Things are not so clear in Silkworm, for Galbraith scatters evidence mired in long literature, and perhaps only a highly alert reader would have the whole story fall into place alongside reading.

In that sense, the writing here is really mature, and Galbraith writes like a pro. (She's a pro, really, Robert Galbraith is a pseudonym for a very well known writer. Go check. ). Even if it weren't revealed, the writing style hasn't been very different from that person's other best sellers, though it may have worked in other genres, it might still need to evolve to suit mysteries.

Galbraith's writing is reminiscent of a Dickensian approach, and the emotional graph of the toll a mystery takes on the people involved, is reflected too, for which the writer has my respect. Galbraith has successfully avoided the racy pattern of the current generation of mystery and thriller writers, or the unwitting protagonist model (I've honestly wondered why Dan Brown's Robert Langdon never wonders why these weird adventures happen only to him, but that's for later) . The characters are cmfortable with social media and use it to their advantage.  Characters are actually quite solid. We can actually imagine living through the controversies, the pain and uncertainities accompanying them, and I should say, one can really admire Strike's will to act decisively , regardless of the many things dragging him down, both in the case and personally.

The characters grow on you and maybe, once we read the book, we feel as if we've made new friends. It is a good read, best read slowly , paying careful attention, on a cold Sunday morning with a hot cup of tea.

A Review: Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets , by J K Rowling.

This book is currently sitting battered next to me after my second reading wave. It was the first Harry Potter book my father bought for me, and the doodles and stickers I find inside bring back memories of how I used to have reading marathons at home as a kid. Rereading the second book was quite refreshing, and as I mentioned in my previous review, it allowed me to look at the series with fresh eyes.

This book opens with an argument at breakfast between Harry and the Dursleys, about Hedwig, Harry's owl, being locked up.The Dursleys have locked up Harry's things and his owl, to prevent him from communicating with his friends and using magic. The Dursleys make plans to invite a builder and his wife for dinner, to seal a deal with Uncle Vernon's firm, and Harry's role is to remain quiet, unseen and unheard, presumed non-existent. Plans go awry when Harry finds a house elf, Dobby,in his room, who tries to persuade Harry not to return to Hogwarts, due to great 'evil' coming up in Hogwarts. Dobby's determination extends to brutal sabotage, where he performs magic in front of the guests, smashing a pudding , to ruin the dinner and lock Harry up.

Harry is rescued from his imprisonment by Ron and his brothers, the twins Fred and George in their father's flying Ford Anglia, escaping the Dursleys and landing at the Weasley's residence, the Burrow. They spend the summer there, and on the day they're to return to Hogwarts, they have trouble getting onto the platform, miss the train, and decide to fly the car to Hogwarts. They end up crashing into a tree, and are severely admonished for their rather dramatic entrance. Incidentally, they have a new professor for Defence against the Dark Arts a rather questionable, narcissistic celebrity, Professor Lockhart, who has a penchant for dragging a reluctant Harry into unnecessary spotlight. This year also marked Ginny's entry into Hogwarts, Ron's painfully shy and insecure sister .

Beginning with the caretaker's cat, when a series of Muggle born students are attacked and left in a state of frozen petrification, with threatening messages alleging the presence of a Chamber of  Secrets that means to purge the school of unworthies , a duelling club is organised for the students , where an encounter with a snake causes Harry and the rest of the school to discover his ability to communicate with snakes.Since this language, Parseltongue has been known to be used by Salazar Slytherin and dark wizards of his line, Harry is now the prime suspect behind these attacks.

Harry, Ron and Hermione try to find answers by working in a haunted girls' toilet , conjuring forbidden potions, where Harry comes across a mysterious blank diary that responds to what the owner writes, belonging to a Tom Riddle. When Hermione herself is attacked, they work faster to uncover a series of connections with Hermione's own clues, and eventually discover the Chamber of  Secrets, the person who opened it, the monster within , the real culprit and how it all revolved around Harry. A battle in the Chamber ensues, destroying both the monster and the vestiges of the culprit. They eventually manage to leave the Chamber, and clear the situation with Professor Dumbledore. Harry manages to free Dobby too, and the year ends on a high note again.

This book sees the characters grow up a little, but not much; they still have a healthy disrespect for school rules. The tone of the story is rather more serious, and the sense of wonder we see in the first book is now replaced with familiarity and curiosity, while navigating possibilities in a magical landscape. Witnessing Harry's abuse far more directly and vividly right from the beginning, the series ceases to be the fairytale it was in the first book. The topics of fame, insecurities, reputation, ability, truth, and loyalties start coming in. Gilderoy Lockhart craves attention and reputation and is willing to go as far as possible to further it, Harry struggles with his own reputation and tries to stay both away from attention and clear his reputation, Tom Riddle is trusted while Hagrid is punished, all on account of their reputations.  We also see a second social issue, that of social divide, possibly a reflection of racism and slavery, concerning the discrimination between so called Pure Bloods and Muggle born students, and wizards and other magical creatures.The conflict between these, and the struggle to resolve them, marks a turn towards tolerance and narrative seriousness. The book grows up a little, as does the reader's range.

I do have a point of debate with Rowling's narratives, in that, her stories gain momentum and the plot moves on, not as much with the deductions and adventures of the protagonists, which readers should ideally be able to do in parallel, but by introducing new bits of information present at each stage, culminating in shocking finales.The plot advances with the information presented. While one may argue that the wealth of magical knowledge in that universe is too vast for readers to be presented a concise picture to reason with, the fact that in each case, action could be taken by a trio of teenagers, in this case, twelve year olds, while adults save for Dumbledore, who did have access to greater information and awareness, could not connect dots, one can assume plotwise in the series that maybe they could have been streamlined to advance more on the basis of the characters themselves, and not newer information?

Perhaps, a factor for the series' success is the sheer bulk of information itself, their complexity, and requiring considerable of imagination in every scene, something maybe other fantasy authors would not have bothered with after establishing the scenario. In this case, the experience is like discovering gold nuggets in every sieving of sand, connections and parallels can be drawn at every point, with every re-read bringing up new insights.

The second book presents several important themes in a rather prophetic manner, something a reader would only realize after having read the series. If the first book established Harry's magical identity and his first adventure, the second book effectively introduced themes and positioned Harry opposite his nemesis, and set the tone for future books to follow. 

A Review: Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s stone, by J K Rowling

The Harry Potter series in recent decades has been a literary phenomenon and a landmark in fantasy writing over the ages.  My first Harry Potter was the second one, Chamber of Secrets, but as predicted, I could not make sense of what had then I read since I hadn’t read the first. A colleague of my mother was a Harry Potter buff, and lent me the first one. Like every other excited teenager, I too was hooked, got my books early, devoured them like religion and obsessed over the stories and characters. I grew up with the books, and read them over and over, often in competition with my cousins.  I also eagerly awaited the movies that came out, and slowly, my heart shattered. The Harry Potter  I had envisioned , and the way some of those stories were told had done little justice to reading the master pieces themselves, and, sadly, over time, I stopped obsessing over them as much as I used to. In fact, my reading methods changed. I no longer was as absorbed in the books I read, and ceased to retain a perfect memory of what I read.

I continued to read though, a tad impatiently, until a fellow bookworm friend asked me to revisit the books I used to read when younger, and maybe notice if I read them with different eyes.

I took up on that suggestion, and Harry Potter was the first series I challenged.  They had been a big part of me growing up. So re-reading it after a long time was also a nostalgia trip. I may receive brickbats from other Potter aficionados for my perspective on things, but in my defence, hey, after five years of separation, I am trying to get my religion back here!

In the first book, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, we are introduced to the Dursleys, a seemingly picture perfect respectable upper middle class thatcherite family with a skeleton in their closet; their cousins, the Potters, a family as out of the ordinary as can be. Ominous occurrences, such as owls in daytime, people in cloaks, and shooting stars are a prelude to the surprising arrival of baby Harry Potter on the Dursleys’ doorstep. Harry, the tiny skeletal boy, the skeleton in the Dursley closet, grows up in a closet as the family’s punch bag, until the days leading up to his eleventh birthday, where the extraordinary pursues Harry and plagues the Dursleys to the point of denial. Answers arrive in the shape of Hargid, a huge friendly giant with a letter of acceptance into Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Hagrid also reveals to him his true identity and calling, not only as a wizard, but as The Boy Who Lived, the only survivor of a fatal encounter as a baby, with Voldemort, a murderous malignant tumour on the magical landscape, a notorious, seemingly unsurpassable practitioner of dark magic, which has made him famous throughout the magical world.

Harry is fascinated by the magical world he belongs to and dealing with his new found identity (but not fame).

He enters Hogwarts, gets sorted into his house, Gryffindor (for the brave only), makes new best friends, Ron( his bro) and Hermione (the sensible ), encounters and learns things strange, interesting and fascinating, discovers a prodigal passion for Quidditch, runs into a pile of mischief like a good eleven year old, (one does wonder, if given the excessive punishment he received at the Dursleys’ , Harry has become rather subconsciously thick skinned, and knows he would be treated far better at Hogwarts, prompting his proactive risk taking?) and becomes the target of a professor,Severus Snape’s dislike. This dislike, taken along by a series of events whose dots he and his two friends manage to connect, uncovers a conspiracy to steal the famed Philosopher’s Stone. 

Given the dismissive response they receive from the professors, they take it upon themselves to save the stone, embarking in an overnight adventure that tests their mettle. And the surprise that meets Harry in the final stage, an unexpected face off with an enemy one could not imagine, and a memorable battle to save the stone, the day, and by extension, the world.

Harry wakes up in the hospital wing, well rested and recovering, to a pile of sweets and an indulgent headmaster, Professor Dumbledore, who has the answers and concludes their adventure.  Harry, Ron and Hermione reunite for a memorable term end feast, where, as the high point, their crazy adventure wins points for their house, Gryffindor, and wins them the House Cup.

The book ends on a note of euphoria, as the academic term ends, and the students have to head back home. Hagrid(is he Rowling’s take on Roald Dahl’s Big Friendly Giant and Santa?) presents him one of his treasures, an album with pictures of his late parents. The story ends on a happy, hopeful note, with promise of something exciting to come.

Certainly the book has its light parts, but it also broaches things that most children that age start to think about. The non-obsessive detachment that Harry has, in spite of his issue-filled backdrop, and by simply being a normal eleven year old kid, and even viewing himself in that light, allows us to connect with him. His excitement at the magical world opening up in front of him, and the many sides, good, bad and ugly, washing over him, allows the audience to bathe in that sensation too. The way he has been written into this book, is that certain aspects of his life are revealed, and enough breathing space has been given in the character’s headspace, for readers to imagine his experiences, and draw up their own version of him. Harry may have begun as an Oliver Twist type deprived orphan, but he embraces his destiny, tries to rise to the challenge as much as an eleven year old in a magical new world can. This becomes a  symbol and a role model for his readers. This would probably explain how emotionally difficult it was for a lot of Harry Potter lovers to reconcile with the on-screen portrayal of the character, and the narration of the story. I suppose seeing Harry and his world tangibly contribute to the gap between the books and the films.

Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone is a fairy tale. It is a fairy tale, written with the whimsical quality needed to capture an eleven year old reader. The best thing about Rowling’s writing is that she does not underestimate the children who would read her book, and has therefore, imparted a certain strong writing quality to the book. 

As an adult, the feeling the book left me with, was a happy one; a book with a child protagonist I would love, the right dose of whimsical, magical and adventurous, a motley bunch of complete characters, and a treat to the imagination, and to good literature. A yummy book indeed!