Rating: 
Summary: Yeh man, like deep.
Review: After having ploughed through this novel, I really did wonder why such unoriginal and stereotypical writing becomes so popular.There is little in this novel to stir the interest - it's a cross between an Indian's onanistic reminiscences of a brief fling with a young French woman, and a travelogue depicting an India straight out of the travel brochures (it's all there, naked sadhus, peasants working the fields, loving descriptions of Benares). I dare not pass this book on to my Indian friends, as this sort of thing tends to exasperate them. Were this novel set in England, of course, all the characters would own stately homes, be found of an evening drinking warm beer in country pubs with thatched roofs, and be endlessly fox-hunting and quoting Shakespeare to each other (whereas we're far too busy planning which country to wreck after we loose a soccer game, being anti-German and watching endless soap operas and game shows, or writing reviews on Amazon). But I'm digressing. What's there to say about "The Romantics" other than the criticism above? I don't really know where the novel intended to go or what the author had to say in the end. All the relationships between Indians and Westerners break down, but this seemed to me to be very much a re-tread of Forster's "A Passage to India". There is the usual band of emotionally inadequate, self-indulgent Westerners trying to find "meaning" to their lives via "India". Each is contemptuous of the others (and to this reader, all are tedious). But to cap it all, there is the sheer pretentiousness of the characters - Samar keeps picture postcard portraits of Proust, thinks it's the height of sophistication to listen to Sibelius in Benares, and to cap it all tries to convert his gangster-like friend to Flaubert's "A Sentimental Education". For goodness sake!
Rating: 
Summary: Hopeless romantic
Review: At the outset, it seemed to be an (another) East meets West story, but it truly felt to be a book about love. The character Samar has always been in love with books, and is content to live a bookish life - four walls, a window and shelves of knowledge. He is a faithful lover and truly believes everything he reads. At Benares, his love is tested as he rediscovers life in the flesh - his growing love for Catherine and shocking realization of the European world-age traveler. The story is spiritual and romantic. In the end he hopes to live a meditative life with his one true love.
Rating: 
Summary: A Disappointing Romantic
Review: For a short book, one is able to grasp the essence of life of an out-of-school young person in India. And in a country with 1 billion people, how it is virtually almost impossible to make a life in such a place. Yet this same country has its allure to foreigners. Throughout the book, there seem to be continual influx of foreigners. The exoticness of the country is a big draw, however, the book also exposed extreme desolation of life in the "ghats". That being said, the main character was presented as someone aimless, whose only love and ambition was to read. He spent his time reading western literary critics, philosophers and hanging with his closest westerners acquaintances. The writer did well in using the character's pleasure in reading to blend western and eastern ideas. But the protagonist seemed to have no other passion but for books. However noble this appeared one is inclined to think he did so for his quest for knowledge, also so he could associate easily with his western colleagues. Ironically, one cannot really say he has close friends, as he shy away from closeness, a notion that may be blamed on the lesson learned from his stoic father about maintaining aloofness.
The only instance that revealed a hint of passion for this young man was expressed on the trip to Kalpi, northern region of India on the base of the Himalayas. It lead him to truly experience his only passionate moment. "I like this place." he blurted out to his traveling companion, Catherine, who agreed. He would later return to this region, not by his own design though, to spend the rest of his adolescent years, but those years were also spent in complete isolation, with minimal social contacts.
The most disappointing point in the book was that the character never completely resolves his aloofness. The closest passionate relationship he had never came to fruition. Ok, I am not going to make much of this since this was not a Harlequin Romance Series and I didn't necessarily expect a they-all-live-happily-ever-after sort of thing. Nonetheless, Ms. West, his neighbor, mentor, and a supposedly friend should have not been left hanging when she asked him about his brief encounter with Catherine. While he returned to Benares to see her, they spent only a few moments together and upon her mentioning her departure to him, we did not get any reaction. One would at least thought he would reveal in some way to Ms. West what happened in Kalpi or at least offer a revelation to her, which would have been sufficient to Ms. West and to this reader. He did go back to Benares to see his past and Ms. West was great part of that. Was he maintaining his life long philosophy of remaining aloof and not going back to the past? Was that why he offer Ms. West nothing? He would acknowledging her goodbye take him back to the past because he already said it once, a few years ago?
Rating: 
Summary: Why be obsessed with a dingbat?
Review: I am a fan of Indian writers and I saw this book in the library and decided to take it out. The fact that it takes place in Benares was one of the reasons the book attracted me. I know that Benares is the holiest place in India for Hindus and that if one dies there they are supposed to be released from the cycle of rebirth. To me this should be a fascinating place.
I had read another book about Westerners in Benares a while ago, Sister India, not written by an Indian. I liked that book so I thought I would give this one a try.
I just couldn't buy the story in this book. Samar seems to be intelligent on one hand, but then he becomes obsessed with this girl who is living with another Indian man, and right from the start you could tell she was a number one air head. So what if she might have been pretty, she was a completely shallow and unintersting whiny character and this is what spoiled the story for me. She is the type of person that has no understanding of feelings and will hop from man to man the rest of her life, and why the fact that she ditches him makes him so devestated and unambitious is beyond me. I just could not relate. It was not like they had a passionate love affair.
I know that India is a hard place to really build a good life if you don't start off with a lot of money, but Samar did seem promising and I only wished that he would have found a nice girl, Indian or Foreign who was at least human.
Other than this what I believe a big plot flaw, his descriptions of the places he goes were very nice and the relationship with the student at Hindu Benares University seemed to be the more interesting one in this tale.
I would like to see a sequel done to this story as the ending did leave me feeling like things were unfinished.
Rating:
Summary: Interior-Decorated India for Western Audiences & NavelGazers
Review: I bow to the skill Arundhati Roy and Pankaj Mishra demonstate in carefully packaging eastern tripe for western consumption. The same image keeps popping up in my mind, a smart, eager "convent" educated Indian kid is being given an assignment - "OK beta now write something that will be accepted by a western publishing house". Read Jhumpa Lahiri, read Shashi Tharoor, read Rushdie for something thats written from the heart not this homework assignment.
Rating:
Summary: Stock Characters, Trite Plot
Review: I first became acquainted with the writing of Pankaj Mishra when I read, and loved, BUTTER CHICKEN IN LUDHIANA. When I learned Mishra had written a novel, I was very anxious to read it. There was much about THE ROMANTICS that I did like, but, unfortunately, there was more that I didn't like. THE ROMANTICS is a rather late coming-of-age story of Samar, a Brahmin who has come to stay on the banks of the Ganges to read and "find himself," I guess. He meets and falls in love with a rather Bohemian Frenchwoman, Catherine, who, it seems, has very little love for him. Instead, Catherine focuses her energies on another man of Indian origin, Anand. In this way, THE ROMANTICS seems to be a book about "East meets West," or rather "East is East and West is West." Mishra seems to be telling us that westerners can't possibly understand the East and vice versa. There's very little plot in THE ROMANTICS and the "love story" between Samar and Catherine isn't really a "love story," at least not in the conventional sense. Despite that fact, the book's very best moments take place when Catherine and Samar travel together to the Himalayan hill station of Mussoorie. This section, which is all too brief, is rather poignant and it does show us the vast differences between easterners and westerners far better than do Samar's encounters with the fiery Rajesh (who seems to be a symbol of the East). THE ROMANTICS is a quiet book (no Salman Rushdie pyrotechnics here) and, at times, it's a very delicate and gracefully nuanced book. Most of the time, however, THE ROMANTICS is simply boring and trite and downright awkward. Samar is even reading Flaubert's SENTIMENTAL EDUCATION. Mishra also has a tendency to spell everything out, to tell us what he's just shown us and this tendency destroys much of the book's grace. As yet, Mishra certainly lacks the insight of another "quiet" Indian writer, V.S. Naipaul. Mishra, however, hasn't been displaced. Naipaul has. Overall, I found THE ROMANTICS to be a dismal debut. The plot is "barely there," the characters are stock (Rajesh, the fiery, lower caste political activist; Catherine, the westerner who simply "can't understand the East; Samar, the Braham intellectual who's been so sheltered and protected he's actually startled when he realizes just how materially poor 99% of India is), and there's really nothing at stake. I didn't find the book completely without merit, however. Mishra has a wonderful eye for detail and a lovely, nuanced prose style...some of the time. At other times he's way too ponderous. While reading THE ROMANTICS, I felt Mishra had a lot of insight into India to share but he needs to work on characterization and coherence...a lot. Readers want characters who come alive, not clichés. I really can't recommend this book to anyone at all.
Rating: 
Summary: west eating up east and the sadness of it
Review: I have never been in India. But while reading this book, I felt homesick. I could smell Asia. Mishra's prose is subtle and rich, nothing much happens on the outside, meanwhile he is living such an intense inner life. His approach of life, or rather the approach he constructed for Samar may not appeal to non-sensitive persons. You don't go to a church for a roller coaster ride.
As english is not my first language, I had to use a dictionary every other page, but I embraced every word of it, even when I didn't know it's meaning. Not only because they transported me to a place called Indiaindonesia, but also because of the recognition of this theme: east and west meeting, colliding. The clash and alienation is tremendous, I know the confusing western orientation when living in Jakarta, and now in a different life I feel the amputation as Chineseindonesian living in Holland. Sometimes I get very sad confronted with this unevitable division which is more a state of mind than a geographical fact. Luckily there is beauty, in prose and in art.
I am very curious about the author: Did he have a specific audience in mind? I wonder how the book is received in India.
Rating:
Summary: missing the point
Review: i honestly feel this is the best novel, indian or not, i have read in long time. all these reviewers who go on and on about this being an example of packaged "exoticism" and then go on to suggest reading rushdie (the king of "exoticism") really blow my mind. this is such a beautiful book precisely because it is not really about the concept "India" at all. The strange, unneccesary plot turns are simply the stuff of real life. you cant reduce this book to any trite commentary about east vs west. it has a life of its own.
Rating:
Summary: missing the point
Review: i honestly feel this is the best novel, indian or not, i have read in long time. all these reviewers who go on and on about this being an example of packaged "exoticism" and then go on to suggest reading rushdie (the king of "exoticism") really blow my mind. this is such a beautiful book precisely because it is not really about the concept "India" at all. The strange, unneccesary plot turns are simply the stuff of real life. you cant reduce this book to any trite commentary about east vs west. it has a life of its own.
Rating:
Summary: The pursuit of happiness
Review: The Romantics by Pankaj Mishra is a simple story told with great elegance. Samar is a Brahmin, a young intellectual who meets a group of westerners while studying in Benaras. He is too western (he reads Flaubert and Wilson, listens to Schubert and Sibelius) to mingle with other Indians, and too Indian to mingle with Westerners. He meets a French girl, falls in love, and although they have an affair, it is unsatisfactory. All the chief characters are unhappy doomed people either searching for romance or pursuing doomed relationships. All of them live in their heads, and lack any kind of vitality. Rajesh, Samar's friend, another Brahmin, is a poorly realized character who reads Urdu poetry but cavorts with criminals, and is doomed in his own way. It is telling that this book is written in English. Indeed, it could not have been written in any other Indian language. English, an outside imposition, makes foreigners of Indians within India, and all those who talk/write in English (me included) are cut off from the real India. It is this loss of rootedness which creates the regret and the nostalgia. The story is told in a limpid over-refined style which oozes nostalgia and regret. All through the reading of this book I was reminded of Kazuo Ishiguro. The same style and tempo, the same over-refined characters in an over-refined culture expressing nostalgia and regret and always lacking in vitality and afraid to commit. Pankaj Mishra has given voice to this Indian dilemma in beautiful style. He is the Indian answer to Kazuo Ishiguro.
|
