Book Review: Fairy Tales at Fifty by Upamanyu Chattejee

Upamanyu Chatterjee’s latest book is a tale of brothers separated at birth, and his spin on the overused plot point. Anyone familiar with Chatterjee’s work would agree that his books are not the sort of easy-read varieties made for journeys, but they require the readers to spend a lot of time thinking about the words they read, as much as he spent writing them. Fairy Tales at Fifty is no different, but it is ultimately less rewarding than any of his other works, partly due to the choice of his protagonist, but mostly due to the lack of exploring the plot to its potential. 

Nirip, on the verge of his fiftieth birthday, realizes that his parents are not his actual biological ones, and he ponders on the alternative life he could have had. Anguli, or Jhabua, the separated twin leads a vagrant life wandering across cities, killing people for fun and games. They meet at the start of the book and open up to each other, mostly coz no one else was interested in them. The first 43 pages, where Anguli narrates his tale, are a breeze, aided by Chatterjee’s macabre wit and detailed observation of the grotesque, which also lets the anticipation grow higher going ahead. 

When it comes to Nirip’s turn the tale loses its steam, and instead indulges in intensely labored rumination of his life and the things he has surrounded himself with. The best parts of Nirip’s tale are the curious family ties that he unravels, and how much of them he misunderstood over his fifty years. In fact, the family tree of Pashupati (the patriarch) is one of the most intriguing and weird ones I have come across.  

There are important plot points in his tale like the staging of his own kidnap to get back at his father, the violent cricket match where the players get killed according to the whims of its organizers, his father’s blood and flesh trade, and his relationship with his half-male, half-female sister Magnum (getting the rawest deal of them all), but they are discarded as quickly as they are brought into the story. Once Nirip gets kidnapped, the narration gets even more tedious detailing of the surroundings he finds himself in and the quirks of the men who kidnap him. It doesn’t help that every one of his kidnappers is called Scruffy with different second names, making it difficult to identify them or tell them for the other. 

The underlying philosophy seems to be, also spelt out in the book, as we grow old, we become ourselves and life becomes as pointless as it has always been, but we chose to grind it out, since death seems a worse alternative. The nothingness and tedium of old age has been explored earlier by the author in his previous books on Shyamanand and Barfi (The Last Burden and Way to Go), and he does not add much to it, thankfully, since this is supposed to be a fairy tale. The scatological observations are also toned down, but Chatterjee’s prose is as impeccable as ever, commas and hyphens intact. 

I was waiting for a new book by him ever since I read Way to Go, yet I came across this book only by accident, and was surprised not to find any publicity about its release. I’m glad I read it and will keep it in my collection for a future re-read, once I think I’m equipped enough to handle his works, but I don’t think I would recommend this book to many.

Book Review : Way To Go by Upamanyu Chatterjee

Way To Go by Upamanyu Chatterjee is the most difficult book I have read and finished for I was not quite sure at once of the intended readers of this work - I for one am not one of them. At 359 pages this book is long in all aspects from the sentences it uses to the life of its characters and is definitely not an easy read being a tad profound to my sensibilities. I picked up this book going by its cover which has a certain obscurity attached to it that one can almost miss its title if one is not paying much attention. This book is a sequel to the writer’s earlier work ‘The Last Burden’ which I have no idea about in the first place and read it as any other book, but the book being a sequel does not ask too much of its readers to know of its predecessor and one can safely view this as a different entity altogether. Probably an acquaintance with its prequel may give an idea what to expect of its characters and the train of thoughts and speaking of the trains here, I’m not quite sure that I followed all these trains to their intended destinations.

In Way To Go, Upamanyu views life through the eyes of a father and his two sons whose relationship with each other can termed as one only when they are not with each other and they dissect sex and human excreta with same degree of amusement, often making the readers wonder if they are spending more time and efforts on the later. Considering the age of the old men involved it is a valid concern to keep their bowels clean, however, we would have done without the talk on it, just like you people reading this would have done just fine without me mentioning it.

The book has excessive amounts of depressing thoughts about life and death in general, sometimes glorifying and mystifying the later. The wit that is on display throughout the book -if not for which I would not even completed a quarter of this book -at its very best succeeds in evoking a little indifference while it is not very busy in depressing you which is a definite revelation for me since I have always considered wit to evoke humor and sarcasm. On top of that, the story moves at a snail pace with a lot of musings going behind for every single line uttered. This is the kind of book where you can skip a 30 pages and still follow the story but you would want to read those 30 for some interesting and thought provoking insights into life. However it became so difficult for me to follow the chain of thoughts and relate it to the main course of events that at a particular point, the story ceased to be what it really was and became the story which I understood it to be. But at the end of the day I was able to relate the beginning with the end and connect all the dots, albeit with a strong sense of uncertainty.

To be fair to it, the book leaves you a lot wiser than when you started reading it and that I suppose is a good thing to happen to you. But at the end of it all, you would want to know what it exactly is about that you should find it compelling to read. Is it about the futility of life in general and if it is then I must say it is not a very entertaining thought indeed to be pursued with the sincerity and efforts that Chatterjee has put into this or may be it is but I don't get the point. 

I’m not quite sure if I had liked the book or not or If I want you to like it or not. This book is for those people who get depressed by life and in the end realize that it is not the best way to spend a life. I would love to see someone who claims this book as one of their favorites so that I can discuss this with them and probably get some more things out of it as I’m sure this had some more to it than I could see into.

PS: The sentences in this review are deliberately long in a mediocre attempt to imitate the author’s writing style. I hope the author will not be offended if at all he stumbles upon this.