Strategies for Success

Fitch, Stona. Strategies for Success. New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1992.

When Rabbit Howls

The Troops for Truddi Chase. When Rabbit Howls. New York: Jove Books, 1990.

The book is about the condition of multiple personality disorder that the writer of the book suffers from. Truddi Chase lives with her troops. The troops are the multiple personalities who inhabit her ("her" being only one of the many selves who inhabit her self). This book is about her therapy and the notes she had prepared for her therapy which is used by the doctor with her permission. She enters this state of mind after the emotional turmoil of incestous child abuse which was sustained. "Rabbit" is the name of the child who was abused.

No Onions, Nor Garlic

Natarajan, Srividya. No Onions, Nor Garlic. New Delhi: Penguin, 2006.

Strong for Potatoes

Thayer, Cynthia. Strong for Potatoes. New York: St. Martin's Griffin, 1998.

Sacred Country

Tremain, Rose. Sacred Country.
The novel is about Mary/Marty/Martin. She is a misunderstood and ill-loved girl. Her mother Estelle is caught in a loveless marriage with Sonny. Timmy, her brother is loved and therefore hated by Mary. At six, she deciedes she is a boy and not a girl. This strong belief persists throughout her life and makes her closested and totally different from others. She falls in love with a girl, lindsey in her class but her love remains unrequitted. The narrative also weaves other stories, like that of Gilbert the dentist, and Walter the butcher, Edward and Irene, Pearl and Billy her step brother, Cord, Mary's/Martin's grandfather and McRye her teacher. Rose Tremain in her author''s statement says that: "I suspect that many writers deceive themselves about why they write. My self-deception is that I create in order to understand and that the final end of it all might be wisdom. This means that I deliberately seek out the strange, the unfamiliar, even the unknowable, as subjects for my novels and trust my imagination to illuminate them to the point where both I and the reader can see them with a new clarity. The writers I admire most seem to have this kind of goal: to comprehend experience distant from their own, in nature, place and time, and to let the extraordinary cast new light on the quotidian."

Suffragette City

Kate Muir, Suffragette City (Pan/Macmillan, 1999)
This is a funny and serious novel about Albertine, the decadent woman artist. She is single, lives with her room-mates, Wanda a fashion designer and Nosmo, a gay man, but does not have any deep relationship with anyone. She meets an interesting man, but as chance encounters go, does not know where the relationship is going inspite of being fully pregnent with his baby. In the meanwhile, she is haunted by her great-great grandmother's ghost who escapes through her letters preserved by Albertine's grandmother Rose. The novel ends with the coming together of the lost lovers and Albertine making it big in the art world, both of which happens along with her giving birth.

White Teeth

Smith, Zadie. White Teeth. New Delhi: Penguin Books, 2000.

This is a very strange novel for a woman to have written. The main character is Archie, a middle aged white man going through a divorce. His wife Ophelia has just gone through a mental break down and decieded to walk out of a door-mat's existence for the past 30 years. In a fit of depression, Archie deciedes to kill himself but is saved. He decieds to explore life without regrets now and meets Clara, a beautiful black woman who was a Jehova's witness, now in a joint-smoking, group-sex-having commune. She is 19, but has a broken relationship with Ryan, who introduced her to a new life-style but then, under her mother Hertonse's influence, turned more of a Jehova's witness than her. The title of the novel derives from Clara's buck tooth, which she looses in a bike accident with Ryan. Now she has no teeth at all in the front row.
Salman Rushdie had assured us that this book "has bite."

A Beautiful Mind

Nasar, Sylvia. A Beautiful Mind. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1998.

An Autobiography

Davis, Angela. An Autobiography. New York: International Publishers, 2000. (first Published in 1974).

The autobiography is about a black activist's struggle against the american state. Angela Davis begins her autobiography with a crisis in her life. She is a fugitive running away from the FBI who has charged her against murder. She is finally caught by the police and is taken to the New York jail to await trial. The first chapter describes her trials in this jail and is titled "Nets." The text becomes a document of a black Marxist woman's interpretation of the state punitive system. In the beginning, she is placed in a room full of mentally deranged women, who have been deliberately given tranquilizers. It is a dead house and they are always spaced out on different drugs. Angela is placed there with the excuse that she might be attacked by the other inmates. But, the truth is that she is loved by them and they look upto her as an activist. Later when she is moved into solitary and then along with the other inmates, she developes a close relationship with the jailed women. There is a full fledged social life in the jail with homosexuality (including formalizing of relationships, sexual and otherwise) happening within its confines. Angela makes friends not only with the inmates but also some of the jail authorities. But, in between, she is handed over to California by New York state and has to shift her residence to another jail.

A History of Insects

Roberts, Yvonne. A History of Insects. Surrey: Review, 2000.

The novel deals with a colonial (to be more precise, post colonial - Peshwar, Pakistan in the 50s) childhood, the memsahibs and the sahibs still in an illusionary world of pre-independence, the rise of Islamic fundamentalism and its targetting of the West, the meaningless marriages in which both men and women are caught, the racial tensions between the whites and the browns etc are the setting of this growing up tale of Ella Jackson. While it happens in the explosive situation of inter-racial tensions, the story is about the different secrets that Ella Jackson, the main character in the novel witnesses. They are all secrets of sexuality, forbidden and therefore dark. It is also the consequences of speaking about secrets. In fact, the title is derived from Ella's contradictory desire to speak and to keep secrets - her diary is named "A History of Insects" to make it look unattractive to the grownups.

She is child of nine, known to be imaginative and causing a lot of worry and distress to her mother, Alice due to that. Bill, her father, is from the working class background, and is unhappy in marriage. His only reason to hang on to Alice and her pettiness is Ella. The girl is growing up, lonely and without any reassuarance from a mother who thinks she has come between her and her husband's affection. The story revolves around an incident that Ella accidentally witnesses. She sees the murder of a Pakistani army man, colonel Ashraf Khan Afridi, who she revers and likes as her "uncle Ash." This happens in the "secret garden" which she frequents with the gardner Shafi. She witnesses the neighbour's wife, Marjorie and Ash making love and later, Marjorie's husband, Piers murdering Ash. But, since the body is never found, no one believes Ella. Ash's family is used to his disappearances and they do not complain. Ella is removed to the boarding school for some time due to Alice's insistence. It is St. Winifred's at Chowdiagalli. There Ella is subjected to the combined torture of Zuhra Iqbal who teaches her that "teacher's pets" like her and other white girls should be taught another lesson. She is a witness to another secret, between Caro and Millie, two senior girls in her group named "Buttercup." Both she and Zuhra are subjected to witness Dr. Mac, a preacher, masturbating. Zuhra has to leave St. Winifred's because she tells the truth about him. Ella remains because she becomes dumb and unable to speak for many months. Betty, the considerate American picks her up forcibly from the school and gets her home. But, it is trouble time there. President Nasser has announced the nationalisation of Suez Canal and anti-West sentiment is blowing all over the Islamic countries. There is riot in whcih Ella's father and Betty rescue and Anglo-Indian family, but seriously jeopardizing his career in the meanwhile.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

Rowling, J.K. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. London: Bloomsberry, 2005.

Like all Harry Potter series, this book is also about the archetypal battle between the good and the evil. Rowling uses stereotypes quite effectively, sometimes to quite politically incorrect proportions, but the book inspite of it is also quite seductive.

The insight built in the previous book, that Voldermort and Harry cannot exist together - to be read as good and evil cannot survive together - seems to be built in this book also. But, I liked the building of the more complex stuff about good and evil - that Harry could actually read Voldermot's thoughts and there was Harry in Voldermot and the other way round.

The cental image in this book is the "Advanced Potion Making" text that Harry comes to possess by chance. This makes him an expert in a subject he was just average. The book belongs to an older student who signed as "The half blood prince." At some stage, Harry finds out that the half blood prince is also quite a dangerous person. Most of Hogwarts keeps going on in Dumbledore and Harry's private lessons where Dumbledore tries to get into the mind of Voldermort by reliving memories of Tom Riddle, his origins, his childhood and later his turning into Lord Voldermort. The findings lead to the conclusion that Voldermort was ashamed of his muggle origins and all his efforts at keeping the purity of the magical race is because he cannot face his own origins. Harry shares most of Voldermort's upbringing but has turned out t be the opposite.

This is geering towards an adult fiction with the problems of love and Dumbledore's death happening which will take Harry towards adulthood without parents finally.

Song of Solomon

Morrison, Toni. Song of Solomon. New York: Plume Books, 1987.

Lisa, Bright and Dark

Neufeld, John. Lisa, Bright and Dark. New York: Signet Books, 1969.
This is about Lisa Sheffield, 16 years old who suffers a mental breakdown. It is about the daily dairy of observing the onset and progress of mental illness in an American teenager. The novel unfurls through the voice of her friend, Betsy Goodman, admittedly a very minor character in the whole narrative. Betsy studies in the same school as Lisa and is a friend of Mary Nell, who is closely associated with Lisa. So, the story that is opening out before the readers is through a character who is hearing from Mary and then seeing Lisa as a third party in the school. Mary Nell is admired by everyone, including Betsy. Another girl who is very popular in school is Elizabeth Frazer. Brian Morris is the cutest boy in the class and he is in love with Lisa. But, Lisa's wayward behaviour during her illness breaks the relationship. In the beginning of the narrative itself, we hear Lisa speaking to her parents in front of Mary, that she suspects she is going crazy because she is hearing voices in her head. Her parents think this is yet another one of her ploys to gain attention and is least bothered. One day at a party, Lisa suddenly goes away from the crowd and when her boyfriend Brian tries to come to her she rebuffs him. But, she returns after 10 minutes and everyone forgets the incident. Only when Lisa actually is seen cutting herself after the class does the school counsellor, Bernstein, get involved. At his insistence, the parents send her off on a vacation. But, this does not help lisa.
Betsy notices that Lisa had good days and bad days and it could be seen in her clothes. This is the basis of the title of the novel, Lisa Bright and Dark. After she comes back from the vacation, which was a visit to a clinic, Lisa sunk back more into her dark mood. One day she could not give answer to a question in calculus and she goes near the teacher and whispers in her ears the answer. This makes everyone notice that she was not normal.
Betsy describes the fear that everyone felt around Lisa. The friends would ignore her in her dark moods and be with her in her bright ones. But, she is angry with the school authorities who ignored Lisa's symptoms, though she herself felt fear and kept away.
There is a kind of relationship between Elizabeth and Lisa that keeps developing in the narrative. At one point, Betsy notices that Lisa was following Elizabeth around and the latter was ignoring her. Later she says that it was only Elizabeth who was not afraid of Lisa.When Mary and Betsy offer their help to Lisa (after failing to warn Lisa's family about the situation), Lisa herself suggests Elizabeth's name as someone who will understand. Elizabeth, though, comes out as extremely cold when Mary and Betsy confronts her with a demand for help. She joins them but is always critical and at a distance. She doesnt even look concerned for Lisa.
Also, Lisa’s actions could not be explained in anyway. She attacks Elizabeth once and the others could barely save her. Betsy understands that Elizabeth had a strange understanding of Lisa and guessed that she also would have suffered the same problems.
The only glimpse the outsiders get of Lisa’s inner world is through her words. She is very reticent of sharing it too. The fact that everyone remembers is the English world that she builds inside her head. If Lisa speaks with an English accent, then the girls understood that trouble was brewing.
Another interesting angle is the growth of Betsy as a person. She thinks she has only one ambition – to marry someone and live near a beach. Whereas, Mary Nell was ambitious and had leadership qualities. Elizabeth was arrogant and again had the quality of being an important person. Yet, Lisa chooses to trust Betsy because of she would understand her through her feeling rather than her head. Also, the narrative looks at the competition between the girls as a subtext, though the concentration is on their camaraderie.
One day, Lisa walks through the glass-paned door in Betsy’s house in front of her father Mr. Goodman. It is symbolic of Lisa’s final plunge into the world of mental illness and is rightly interpreted by everyone present as a desperate cry for help. But, Mrs. Shilling does not heed inspite of this. We realize that she is just refusing to see truth since it might call into question her own parenting of Lisa.
At this point, Betsy is introduced to Neil Donovan by Elizabeth and she immediately develops a crush on him.

As a Man Grows Older

Svevo, Italo. As a Man Grows Older. New York: New York REview Books, 2001. (First Published in Italian in 1892, this translation in 1932).

Emilio Brentani is a failed writer who is now working as an insurance agent. He is in his mid thirties. He meets Angiolina quite by chance and falls in love with this beautiful woman. He keeps hearing about her past from all sources, including some womanisers like Sorniani. Coming from a poor family, she was once engaged to be married. Her fiance was Merighi who was extremely rich. But, due to some reason, he lost his fortune and Angiolina had to leave him so that he could marry a richer hieress. Sorniani speaks about a gossip about Angiolina that she was carrying on with another person when the Merighi affair was on and this is what actually lead to its demise. Emilio's friend Balli and his sister Amalia are disturbed because they get less of him these days. Yet, he cannot stop himself from seeing her.
Even though Emilio knows that he is in love, he is not ready to commit. He keeps on reiterating to Angiolina that they should behave with prudence, and by that he means he can only consider her a plaything, though he feels love for her. Angiolina is not at all perturbed by these circumstances. She never once demands that Emilio deciedes to marry her. In fact, she takes it for granted that their relationship will remain unacknowledged in public and is least bothered about that.
Once Emilio happens to go to Angiolina's home and discovers the pictures of some of the rakes of Trieste in her bedroom. He is disturbed, but like many other situations in their relationship, Angiolina speaks very naturally about these things and he is not given a space to express his jealousy. So also, Emilio is wild with her while walking through the road and she seems to enjoy the attention of other strangers. But, given the situation of the relationship, Emilio cannot demand more.
They used to joke that it would be better for Angiolina if she can find a victim to marry so that Emilio and she can sleep together more comfortably without the care of pregnency. Surprising Emilio, Angiolina actually gets engaged to a tailor named Volpini. He is not able to bear this and starts seeing her as a strange woman, though he does not propose to her even then. When he asks her if they should cut off from each other she says she does not want to. When he proposes to her in jest, she surprises him furthur by rejecting all the time maintaining that she has to marry Volpini for security since Emilio was never ready to marry her.
We realize that it is Angiolina's sexuality, which Emilio never feels to be his, though she is outwardly showing him all the signs of acquiesence, which is disturbing him. She is for some reason, quite unaware, or refuses to acknowledge this fact. One day, Emilio decieds to confess to Stephano Balli, his sculptor friend who is very dominating, about his troubles. Balli suggests a dinner with his girlfriend Margherita and both of them so that he can see Angiolina for the first time. Angiolina is very excited about meeting Balli because she has heard about him from a girl who was in love with him once. Emilio feels jeaolous of her interest in Balli. Whne they meet it is dark and Balli cannot wait to satisfy his curiosity. He lights a lamp and peers at Angiolina's face. Later, he also shows off his girlfriend Margherita. But, he hurts Angiolina by saying her nose is not perfect. Throughout the dinner, Balli keeps asking Margherita for various signs of submissiveness, like removing her boots for instance. Margherita keeps complying constantly. Angiolina is adamant and this keep Balli trying to insult her and yet flirt with her. Emilio becomes an onlooker to this drama unfolding before him. Emilio compares Margherita and Angiolina and sees the former as "chaste and affectionate aby nature, and her declarations of love were made silently and almost imperceptibly." He also sees Angiolina's blooming health to be a contrast to Margherita's perpetual illhealth and sees Angiolina's obvious pleasure in her body and experiences it as threatening.
This seems to set the tone of the novel - which is about male jealousy and control over women. Angiolina is the villian of the piece. She is valued preciesly for her physical beauty and health. Yet, paradoxically, it is this very beauty which later comes to be percieved as a problem and illness. Her pride in her body, and the easy way in which she deciedes to fool Volpino (though she never declares her love for him and does not come out even once as dishonest) is another point against her, though Emilio never even once offers marriage to her.
The novel is about making (or rather the unmaking) of the masculine man. Brentani is a failed man in more senses than one. He is a writer with a moderate success, but not someone who has been taken seriously. More importantly, he does not take himself seriously. With Angiolina, he is always in doubt. He sees the men around her, and has no way to gauge the scale of passion he arouses in her. He always feels inadequate before her and therefore keeps blaming her as a cheat in his mind.
In contrast, is a successful masculinity type - Balli. He is crudely domineering and women are seen to fall for precisely this crude show of power. Emilio is reduced to absolute silence when Balli is performing his master-servant narrative of masculinity with women around. It is easy for him to get and treat women like preys and they seem to enjoy the strage arrangement. Even Brentani's nun-like and plain sister, Amalia falls in love with Balli and Brentani knows the excitement that Balli seems to evoke in her quite existence.
It is at the insistence of Balii that Brentani breaks off with Angiolina. Balii catches her with another woman and a man and sees that Angiolina is having an affair with the man who was not Volpini. But, he also regrets having broken off from her, though her pain gives him immense satifaction and the first sign that she also loves him.
Emilio undergoes intense pain and loneliness without Angiolina. During this period, he gets to know his sister more closely. He finds out the scale of her unrequitted passion for Balli and unnecessarily gets involved in the affair. he forbids Balli from coming frequently to his house but is later forced to betray about his sister by confessing about her feelings for Balli. Balli is repulsed by the plain girl's passion and keeps his distance from the house. Amalia understands that Balli has left her and is in pain.
Emilio sees Angiolina again by chance and renews his friendship with her. This time, they find out a private place to make love. Angiolina gets a letter from Volpini,in the meanwhile, that he has got to know of her various affairs and wants to break off from her. She composes a letter to him with the help of Emilio professing her sincerity. Emilio feels bad for himself. In his repulsion for her, there is also the element of the middle class hatred towards the working class. Angiolina never speaks about her worries, though it is quite clear from her house situation that she is in financial trouble. Her father is pscychologically disturbed and her brothers are violent towards all the women in the house. At this point, Amalia suffers a nervous breakdown which leads to her death. Emilio keeps feeling that he is responsible for Amalia'a fate. He realizes that he loves Amalia much more than anyone else. In a fit of rage and guilt, he calls Angiolina a whore and leaves her. The novel ends with Brentani reflecting on all these incidents as he grows older.


About the writer
Italo Svevo (1861-1928) whose given name was Ettore Schmitz was born in Trieste into a Jewish family of Italian German descent. 2 publications in the 1890s. A Life and As a Man Grows Older. He was disheartened after the rejection by the public of these works and went to work in his father's paint business. James Joyce had been tutored to teach him English and he expressed his admiration for these novels and Svevo returned to writing. He published Confessions of Zeno in 1923 and also The tale of the Good Old Man and the Lovely Young Girl in 1928, the year he was killed in a car crash.

Growing Up Untouchable in India: A Dalit Autobiography.

Moon, Vasant. Growing Up Untouchable in India: A Dalit Autobiography. Gail Omvedt (Trans from Marathi). New Dehi: Vistaar Pubications, 2001.

Contents:
Introduction. 1. The neighborhood. 2. Fearless. 3. Callousness and clouds. 4. Heat and rain. 5. Dev master’s curse fails. 6. Religious hymns. 7. Shooting star. 8. Chickpeas and parched rice. 9. The unconquered. 10. Parade of lions and tigers. 11. Foreshadowing. 12. Holy victory. 13. Robust and rollicking. 14. Sports and study. 15. Politics and pigeons. 16. Climax. 17. Wrath. 18. Cultural transformation. 19. An unspoiled picture. 20. The welfare of the world. 21. For what? For books. 22. I begin to write. 23. The end of Omar Khayyam. 24. Rising moon. 25. The vows of religion. 26. Falling star. 27. Tying the knot. 28. The spinning top. 29. Summing up. Chronology. Glossary. Biographical notes. Bibliography. Index.

Moon has dedicated this autobiography to his mother Purnabai whose "cracks in her feet disappeared only with death." The beginning describes the Basti or the slum in which Moon was born. It is not a sentimental description of poverty or struggle alone. It is about the crammed way in which life places the Mahars in the Basti and the strange way in which peace is still got out of these inhuman circumstances. The tar road becomes the space of socialising and sometimes even star gazing for the growing up boy.

The text is also about growing up male in a Dalit basti. The models in front of him are the wrestlers who fight amongst themselves and then join hands at a later stage, the thief Nagya who was known all over Maharashtra and who bequeths his skills to his son, men who tease the beautiful Champa, wife of an old man etc.

Gertrude and Alice

Souhami, Daina. Gertrude and Alice. London: Pheonix Press, 1991.

Gertrude Stein met Alice B Toklas in 1907 and they were together till Stein's death in 1946. This book is about their love story, and their personalities. But what is most striking is the relationship between the two. Stein played the husband and Toklas was always the wife. She was completely overshadowed by Stein. Toklas felt her own capacity as an intellectual was limited. With Stein, she felt she was in the presence of genius. She dedicated her life to Stein's ambition and became "Your Darling" to Stein's "Darling, Darling." Even in her Memoirs she speaks about her life with a genius and projects Stein's point of view. She is buried with Stein, but the inscription is also a shadow of Stein's inscription.

This is not quite a remarkable achievement for a woman, who is taught to obiterate herself and not have any direct ambition. It is strange that the same patriarchal models of power reflect even in lesbian relationships.

My Name is Red

Pamuk, Orhan. My Name is Red. Erdag M Goknar (Trans. from Turkish). New York: Vintage International, 2001.

This is set in medieval Istanbul. The sultan has commissioned the illustration of a book. The novel is from the differing points of view of many characters and revolves around a murder. The setting is 16th century Ottomon empire in Turkey. Most of the characters are the minaturists of the Sultan. Using the minature art as a sign of art and representation, the novel speaks about the problems of the impossibility of authorship.
In the novel, a corpse speaks to the reader first. He describes the competition among the illustrators that led to his murder. Then Black, the traveller speaks. He is exiled from Istanbul by his uncle, an illustrater, for his forbidden passion for Shekure, the uncle's daughter. He is coming back after 12 years and is aware of Shekure's presence behind the walls. Then the dog of the murderer, who is also a thief, speaks. Then comes the murderer himself. Like this the story unfolds in the character of minature art itself, with extreme care to depict details, but no deapth.
The contest between human beings only reflect a more serious contest between two world veiws - the western and the islamic. the islamic world view, represented in its pristine form by the followers of Hoja, a wandering mystic, believes in the impossibility of realism. whereas, the Frankish masters who paint portraits in Venice, and whom the master illustrater, Enishte Effendi (Black's uncle) had seen, portrays each of their subjects realistically as well as giving separate individual characterestics for each portrait. This style is completely different from the Islamic style where individualism is forbidden. The first minuatarist, Elegant Effendi was murdered precisely because he wanted to betray the group to Hoja's followers. But,when the murderer confessed his doings to Enishte Effendi, he did not get any sympathy. So, he murders him as well.
Parallaly woven is the story of Shekure and Black. While Black seems to be idealizing Shekure and in love with her idealized image, Shekure herself is a scheming woman trying to exist within the constraints posed to her by a tough patriarchy. For her, both Hasan, her brother-in-law as well as Black are equally usable, though she feels a kind of attraction towards Black.
Following the style of Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose, the novel weaves through the different possiblities of who the murderer could be focussing on the three master minaturists - Stork, Olive and Butterfly. Finally, when the mystery is solved, we understand that the murderer has committed the crime to prevent the demise of Islamic art, but is seduced by the possibilities of individualism himself. He steals the final portrait of the Sultan and and has painted his own portrait there instead.
Read another review here.

Martha Quest

Lessing, Doris. Martha Quest. London, Panther, 1974.

This is about a young girl growing up in a white family in South Africa. It is about the construction of the intellectual woman - the pangs of growing up. The novel opens with Martha reading a book sitting on the steps of her porch. Her mother and her woman friend Mrs. Van Rensberg (who is visiting with her husband), are gossiping behind her in the porch. Her father and Mr. Van Rensberg are speaking about public affairs in the lawns. Martha is struck by the hypocrisy of the conversation of the middle class families. They are going on talking about all that is most inconsequential in their lives and will continue to do so. She decides she will never be like her mother, nagging and frustrated, nor fat and homely like, Mrs. Van Rensberg. Her only comfort seems to be the Cohen boys who lend her books to read – books in Sociology and Psychology. Even Marnie, the Van Rensberg’s daughter, who is interested in high heels and lipstick and boys and who is Martha’s age bores her. Marnie is puzzled by Martha’s nasty tongue and does not know how to react to it, since she has a slavish admiration for her. The novel is about her quest, quest for identity and meaning in life, and the confusions of growing up female.
Though Martha hates the small farm and the failed father and the nagging mother, she does not take that one step that will allow her to escape. In her own mind there is no justification for all that. She does not pass the Matriculation,though it would have been a cakewalk for her. Nor does she maintain her relationship with the Cohen boys, with the excuse that she does not want to face the gossip. They read it as anti-semitism from her side. Joss, one of the brothers is very close to her, yet, she never considers him a lover, or envisages a life with him. She can be herself only with him. But, instead of taking his cues, she dances with Billy Van Rensberg in her first dance, and later starts a relationship with Donovan Anderson when she moves into the town. It is Joss who gives her a job in his uncle Jasper's law office. She trains to be a secretary, though she is frustrated with her job. Joss comes into her life only to bid adieu before he moves to the university.

Her relationship with Donovan reminds one very much of any heterosexual relationship. He wants her for a particular role, and she resents this. But, there are moments when she enjoys playing that role for him - the passive, pliant woman in his expert hands which keeps moulding her. Donovan has serious problems with women's sexuality and cannot bear any suggestion of a sexual self from women. This role playing is very prominent in his presentation of her - in his choice of clothes and his pride in public appearances with Matty.

In order to escape Donovan, she ends up with another mismatch - a Jew who is ashamed of his jewness - Adolph. He is suspicious of her leaving him, and is not at all confident. The relationship continues because of Martha's mixed feelings of confusion mixed with pity and revulsion. This is her first sexual relationship. Martha senses the feelings of amazement and disgust with which her immediate audience - the sports club people and her friends, Stella and Donovan views this development. The relation ends with Stella and others persuades Martha to humiliate Adolph publicaly. Martha goes along with this in her confusion and later feels liberated as well as disgusted with herself.
Later, she develops a relationship with a guy called Doughlas. It ends in marriage and the novel ends with her wedding to Doughlas. Though it has the potential to be a companionate relationship, it never becomes that. Doughlas, whom Martha meets in the bohemian setting of the Sports club is interested in settling down and moving into a stable and boring middle class life. She is misataken about his political ideas and this is proved beyond doubt when they see Joss and others in a public ralley against Hitler.
The novel is also aware of the native-white problem constantly, and this appears as a background for Martha's growing up. Though she is pro-blacks, never once in the narrative does a black person appear as an important character. Her political opinions are voiced only to find another kindred white soul, and she meets only Joss like herself.
I particularly liked the way she moves towards marriage like a fateful journey towards doom and knowingly so.
Read a biography and another review of the text here.

The Bleeding Heart

French, Marilyn. The Bleeding Heart. New York: Summit Books, 1980.

One More Time: A Memoir

Burnett, Carol. One More Time: A Memoir. New York: Random House, 1986.
I just finished reading One More Time. maybe because i am at a stage in my life where i feel my life is over and wasted, as far as a career is concerned. At that stage, Burnett's work seems to be such a break. She is so focussed on her career. she also speaks about how she discovered herself - that she wants to be a stage artist, and nothing but a stage artist. it was completely by fluke, and she had absolutely no role models. her mother and father, were both failures and alchoholics, her grandmother (nanny) who acted as her mother figure was a manipulative woman with a hidden past. due to her terrible experiences in the past, she had become cunning and cynical, and she tried to go on breaking her daughter's confidence throughout. inspite of all these circumstances, Burnett comes up in life, she is writing to recreate her life for her children. i am touched by that gesture, a baring it all for her children that she undertakes, for she does not want them not to know her as she had not known her nanny and mother.

I see her as human when she writes - her fears before she gets on stage, the way she performs, the way she does not perform because of over-confidence once...so many things, comes out.

but, more than anything else, i like the way she bares the processes of writing to us, the letters that she wrote to others to unearth her nanny's secret life, the truth about her mother and herself - that their grandfather was actually mellon and not creighton as her nanny had made them both believe, the reconstructions of people that she does over the years...the taperecorders that she uses to record her immediate thoughts so that she could write it, and the feeling of being a spy on herself while she writes...she has been wonderful, actually!