Book Reviews

2007-12-20T10:29:01Z

Coming of Age as a Stranger in a Strange Land

The Perfect Man by Naeem Murr

The bulk of the story takes place during the 1950’s in Pisgah, Missouri and chronicles the troubled lives of the small town residents. The main action is centered around Rajiv Travers. Sold off by his Indian mother to his white English father and then subsequently abandoned in Pisgah at the age of 11, Rajiv ends up with Ruth, a romance novelist who was the lover to his paternal uncle. As the years go by, Rajiv works his way through the prejudice and ignorance of the town with a charming arsenal of snark and humor. Soon he’s befriended by Annie Celli who includes him into her circle of friends made up by the emotionally traumatized Lewis (he witnessed his younger brother’s death) and the lovelorn Nora.

At the core of it, the novel is a coming of age story for the quartet as well as a Faulknerian mystery as to how Lewis’ brother really died. Murr has a tremendous talent for creating memorable characters whose lives are so wonderfully foreign and interesting and somehow also relatable and sympathetic. Rajiv for all his flippancy and irreverent attitude toward just about everything, holds inside of him scars that run much deeper than anyone could imagine thanks to his early abandonment.

The writing itself is beautifully lyrical and Murr did that awesome thing that I love in authors wherein he writes that one, perfect sentence that so artistically puts across his thoughts. The book is actually chock full of wonderfully constructed sentences, but the particular one that Annie uses to describe the increasingly unstable Lewis hit me hard with how simple it was, but so poignant.

The Weight of Genius

Gifted by Nikita Lalwani

I always through my parents were strict when I was growing up. But after reading this novel, my parents were practically freewheeling hippies in comparison to Rumi’s parents.

At the tender age of 11, British-Indian Rumika Vasi is proclaimed a math prodigy. Her parents, instead of treating the news with praise and happiness, immediately begin a regime to try and get Rumi into Oxford by her 15th birthday. Taking on the task to help her study for her exams, Rumi’s father, Mahesh starts her on a method of study that’s both effective, but ridiculously oppressive for the pre-teen. He closes her off from pretty much the entire world to pore over her equations and numbers, scheduling her life down to the last minute. Rumi’s mother Shreene, who feels unfulfilled by her own marriage and a life never really lived has a love/hate relationship for Rumi’s talent. Both praising it and hating it knowing that in the end it’ll do her daughter little good in finding a suitable husband. In her reduced, suffocating world, Rumi has no allies to speak of. Friendless and socially awkward, Rumi’s only release is sneaking in contraband food (her diet is heavily reinforced to maximize her brain power) and reading novels when she should be studying.

Lalwani makes it clear that Mahesh and Shreene’s treatment of their daughter, however filled with best intentions, is unhealthy. Any questions or issues Rumi brings up that are related to more normal pre-teen life such as boys and parties are all mowed down in favor of concentrating on her studies, leaving Rumi to express her thoughts on the matter in fits of screaming rages.

I liked how the story did not end with Rumi’s final exams to get into Oxford, but follows on to show the larger repercussions of when a child’s innate talent is so brutally encouraged that the child itself begins to disappear beneath it. While I found myself hating her parents, Lalwani gives us enough insight into their thoughts that I can at least understand why they do the things they do. While the story is mainly about Rumi growing up with this cursed gift of hers, it’s also about her own parents growing up as well in a country not their own and navigating the uncharted waters of parenthood. And much to my delight, it presents my personally well-loved question of how much a person is pushed before they need to either change or disappear.

The Not So Secret Lives of Math Geniuses

The Indian Clerk by David Leavitt

This is Leavitt's fictitious take on G.H. Hardy, the real life Cambridge mathematician who is probably best known for bring over to the Western world, Indian mathematician Sirivasa Ramanujan. Unlike his contemporaries, Ramanujan had only the basic mathematical education and yet on his own was developing pioneering theories in the field. After starting a letter relationship with Hardy, Ramanujan came over to England to continue his work.

Despite the title, the book focuses more on Hardy and his prolific, but difficult relationship with Ramanujan as well as his unknowingly complicated one with his colleague J.E Littlewood. In their day, Hardy and Littlewood were considered England's best mathematicians and their working partnership was unmatched by any other. Leavitt does a wonderful job of capturing the kind of easy chemistry between two men whose contrasting personalities complimented one another rather than cause friction.

Overall, this book is a testament to the overwhelming love a man can have for the beauty in numbers. Never being a competent math person myself, I can't say I even understood a bit of the theories that Leavitt throws in, but his book certainly made me appreciate the sheer elegance of figures. And how such love can join three men of incredibly different personalities and sensitivities. Even if you're not a math fan, Leavitt's prose immediately throws you into the lives of these scholars with such competence that you can't help but read on.

"No Book Long Enough, No Cup of Tea Large Enough"

Book Reviews