An author madly confused

"She understood her depression perfectly: she had dedicated herself to her work, snatching seconds from the sky like a magician... to write her first novel, Indian American, modelled on her marriage, four hundred pages in manuscript, composed over four years, typed from start to finish from a handwritten draft, twice in the space of six months, the original and a revision, incurring countless hours before the Sears electric, inducing constant backaches and headaches and wristcramps "" receiving for her pains forty rejections in the space of four months from a multitude of editors, agents and publishers... She might have chosen to stop writing..."

If only Boman Desai might have chosen to stop writing. Or, his publishers had chosen to stop printing. A gargantuan mistake may have been avoided. And us poor readers spared a thousand agonies. A Woman Madly In Love is Chicago-based Desai's third novel. His debut work, The Memory Of Elephants "" "a big book of baroque design" "" had earned praise from the likes of Punch.

In contrast, all this latest endeavour should have fetched is one of those 40 rejection slips. Why it didn't remains a mystery. Having said that, this review could effectively end here. However, for those who insist on reading further, the entire tale.

Fifty-year-old Farida Cooper, Parsi, Mumbai-ite-settled-in-Chicago, arrives, on the verge of hysteria, for a job interview. She doesn't have the necessary qualifications.

But argues that she has the relevant experience and thus rightfully deserves the job. When the company in question is not quite willing to consider this, Cooper, and Desai, launch into a tirade against the state of art and academia, love, marriage and society in general.

The story unfolds with a portrayal of the impoverished-artist stereotype. Cooper's is the first family amongst Parsis in Mumbai. But in Chicago she is at odds with her world.

Having cut her moneyed roots, she must now make do with living in a box of a studio flat, "eight by twelve by twenty", measuring out her life in thin sandwiches that she cuts for daily meals; Beatles records and Agatha Christies read in the bath tub ("because the light was better, she couldn't afford a brighter light in the living room") the only luxuries afforded. But material conditions are immaterial.

Sticking close to cliches, Desai's character remains unshakeably dedicated to the pursuit of her self-indulgent art. Cooper has a bone to pick with academia because the university will not give her an extension to complete her Masters in creative writing "" she has already wasted 10 years instead of the maximum four allowed, breaking off every now and then to concentrate on writing novels with corny titles like Blood Of The Orchid, The Long Sunset and the like; none destined to make it to the printing press.

But no amount of rejection slips will stop our femme fatale (for she is that too) from making the fatal mistake of going "awn and awn and awn", as Vikram Seth would have said. There is never a moment of self doubt, never a crisis of faith in her talent and ability.

Desai's lack of ear for dialogue is even more wearisome. Consider the conversation Cooper has with her husband Horace Finksch, a high-profile teacher of English Literature, just before he tells her that he has been unfaithful. Finksch is dressing for dinner, Cooper just out of an afternoon nap and they discuss deconstruction! "... I got a little shuteye in the park as well. I told Rohini to wake me up in ten minutes and she let me have thirty."/ "You must have needed it "" or you'd have got up yourself"/ "Maybe, but I've overslept now "" by which I mean I've slept too much, not too long." This is just a sampler of the everyday conversation the couple has.

Each casual remark is stretched, examined for its literary/philosophic meaning and deconstructed. Whether it is Cooper saying that she enjoys being driven around in the car or Horace quoting Ulysses because he loves kidney beans or a simple conversation between friends on a picnic "" "the point is to maximise meaning, to understand the matter at hand as possible."

Now, if you are a dedicated student of literature, especially given to early 20th century criticism, you may enjoy a revision of your syllabus. But, there's always the danger of such writing becoming too obscure to be of interest to anyone outside the charmed circle. A better proposition for the author would be to limit his ambitions to the school magazines circuit.

As a man writing in the voice of his female protagonist, Desai must expect to be subjected to another kind of scrutiny "" especially since one of his avowed themes also happens to be 'feminism'.

Once again he fails to make the grade. He gets as much under the skin of his character as, say, Sidney Sheldon. The title suggests that a major preoccupation would be the protagonist's love life. It is.

The narrative progresses with Cooper's personal journey from a 20-year-old marrying a much older, ultimately unfaithful man to a divorced and childless heiress back in Mumbai dallying unsuitably with a 17-year-old, to finally the middle aged beauty finally finding mature love.

If this reminds you of Barbara Taylor Bradford, note Desai's choice of vocabulary: "Her eyes fluttered like a butterfly searching for a place to alight."

Cooper's seduction of a 17-year-old is reminiscent of schoolboy fantasies. Considering that the character as well as the author obviously think of Cooper as the epitome of an empowered liberal woman, it would be pertinent to note that the latter never really breaks free of the essentially patriarchal paradigm. Nice women always find nice men to look after them and they live happily ever after...Never mind deconstruction.

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A WOMAN MADLY IN LOVE

Boman Desai
Roli Books
Pages: 419
Price: Rs 350