Rating: 
Summary: Wonderful book
Review: A beautiful account of two English women, their relations with India, and those who cared about them. Offers a panorama of life, feelings, prejudices, and culture through different views and angles. Engaging, surprising, and beautifully written in a manner that makes the reader feel the same prejudices and emotions that wafted through pre-Independence India.
Rating:
Summary: Wonderful book
Review: A beautiful account of two English women, their relations with India, and those who cared about them. Offers a panorama of life, feelings, prejudices, and culture through different views and angles. Engaging, surprising, and beautifully written in a manner that makes the reader feel the same prejudices and emotions that wafted through pre-Independence India.
Rating:
Summary: Is it real?
Review: As the plot has been described in other reviews, I won't do it again, but I had to offer some comments. First, it is an excellent story - once you've read it, it won't be forgotten easily. Second, there are some parts that are long on description. Third, it is a bit difficult getting from Book 1 to Book 2, because the main character changes. However, don't let that put you off, because later on you'll find that the main characters from Book 1 are never out of the story for long, and form the backbone of what happens until the end. Fourth, I've never read a story that seemed so real. The continual return to the original event of the rape, which is explored again and again, is fascinating. Many characters' views of the event, of what happened afterwards, and of what the event meant about India become the story. Don't miss this one.
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Summary: A perfidious interpretation?
Review: Hari Kumar's father made every effort to ensure his son would grow up to become the perfect Anglo-Indian executive. Hari was raised in England and was attended by a governess and later a tutor. He attended Chillingborough a top school known for its production of British Civil Servants. Eventually, Hari was to return to India to work for the Indian Civil Service. Unfortunately, external forces disrupted his life and although he returned to India, it was not in the circumstances his father had planned. THE JEWEL IN THE CROWN is the story of Hari's life.THE JEWEL IN THE CROWN is Book I in the series written by Paul Scott known as the Raj Quartet. JEWEL is a complete novel, but it also lays the groundwork for the three other books in the series. The later books elaborate the story laid out in Book 1. Although Hari is absent from large sections of the text in Books 2-4, he is the main character from the beginning to the end. He is the invisible presence who haunts the other characters. He may symbolize India, but As Daphne Manners says in her journal, he is his own simile. JEWEL takes place in 1942, mostly in India. Hari's story is a composite developed from many viewpoints--court depositions, recorded hearing proceedings, journals, and the personal remembrances of those who him. The narrator piecing the story together appears to be a writer or reporter describing the so-called Mayapore riots of 1942 and their aftermath in the years following. Pandit Baba, an Indian scholar, says in a Book 2 that the word "riot" is a misnomer. The English say it was a riot but the Indians say it was a lawful protest by a people who had suffered outrage and wanted Independance. The Raj Quartet reminds me of Jane Austin's novels --especially her later books MANSFIELD PARK and EMMA. Like Austin, Scott has a keen understanding of human nature. His characterizations of Harry and Daphne are flawless. He builds them one fine layer at a time until the reader is convinced they must have been "real" people. Scott also describes an historical place and the people who lived in it with what the reader can only believe is verismilitude. Like Austin, Scott brings an exquisite sense of timing to his storyline. The near misses and plot twists leave the reader breathless. And,like Austin, Scott's sense of irony is so deftly incorporated one can only wonder at the various possible interpretations of the text. JEWEL like India is difficult to understand. Scott has written his book in English, and as Hari Kumar's father said, English is a beautiful language but "it cannot be called truthful because its subtleties are infinite. It is the language of a people who have probably earned their reputation for perfidy."
Rating: 
Summary: Endless verbage and too little plot
Review: I adored the BBC film that was made out of the Raj Quartet books and felt it might be time to read the books. I bought them two years ago and only through sheer perseverance have I managed to get through the 3rd book. I have to step back and admimt this book was written in a 'different era' - I'm not sure if it would have ever made it through the editors today... Or maybe its my Generation-X tolerances... However, Scott spends endless long long looooonnngggg paragraphs (of the half page to two page paragraph variety) painting microscopically detailed pictures of India around WWII, the time British imperialism began to crumble. I can't fault Scott with his descriptions, but it is very hard to read such large paragraphs. It also got tiring - there is only so many times you can describe a road or a house before one's eyes begin to glaze. The book also seems unable to focus on a way to tell the story. So one minute we may be seeing the collapse of India through a first person account, and then inexplicably, with nothing more than an asterix or a double break between paragraphs (even THAT couldn't be consistant!), the same story is being told in third person. This book really begins the Raj Quartet by spending 3/4s painting the picture of what India was like just before WWII. However, the readable story that emerges is on the tale of Daphne Manners and her English-raised Indian lover. This book didn't really pick up until we got to this love affair - well over half way through. It is not hard to see why it became the focus of the BBC series... This is not the easiest of books to read and will take a lot of perseverance for most I imagine. I am a voracious reader and have read other fictional and non-fictional accounts of history which are just as detailed - but a whole lot easier to read. If I hadn't read this genre before, I'd probably blow off this genre afte this book. I have only persevered ever onwards through this series because of memories of the BBC series.
Rating:
Summary: A Literary Experience Like no Other
Review: If I had to choose one book to take with me to a desert isle as a shipwreck, The Raj Quartet would be that book. I felt terribly depressed as I finished the last page because I wanted the book to go on forever. The character development (particularly that of the female characters), the sweeping and dramatic historical setting, the intricate plot, the chilling depiction of terrible injustice, and the expert portayal of the British caste system in India make this a book with something for just about everyone.
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Summary: The Raj at War
Review: Set in India in 1942, the plot of this novel hinges on the rape of an Englishwoman, and the arrests and repercussions that followed. "The Jewel in the Crown" is constructed as a series of reminiscences written or told by the characters themselves as they look back at the events of 1942 from various points in time afterwards. As such, the stories overlap, repeat and at times contradict themselves - the reader has no objective view of what actually happened. But I felt that this was Scott's intention - to use this device to reflect the views and prejudices of his characters. Although the rape is the fulcrum of the plot, the novel is really about the dying days of the British Raj - the attitudes of the British and Indians of the time, the strains of war and the struggle for independence. Scott's exploration of British attitudes and behaviour was particularly interesting - how class divisions within the British cantonment were maintained, how antiquated many of the newly-arrived British found their countrymen's attitudes, and how the military and police's views differed radically from those in the civil authority. Of the differences with the Indians - Scott paints them as largely irreconcilable, founded as they were on racialism. This is complicated in the novel by the fact that the view is aired that preparation of India for Dominion status revived Indian nationalism, and thus, perversely, fostered counter-racism. All interesting and complicated stuff. I thought that the novel betrayed strong echoes of earlier works by E M Forster and John Masters. It's not a novel to read if you're expecting something approaching a detective novel set in the Raj - it's a far more reflective work than that. I look forward to getting around to the next volume.
Rating:
Summary: The beginning of the end for British India
Review: The Jewel in the Crown is a novel that combines a story of romantic love, a heinous crime and its consequences, and a detailed account of the social and political aspects of life in Colonial India, at a time when British rule was nearing collapse. It also presents the reader with several ironical situations which, if they accomplish nothing in their own right, serve to heighten one's understanding of the hopelessness of any form of reconciliation between the Britons and Indians that could erase more than a century of colonial oppression and native resistance. However, behind all of this, and also in front of it, one basic theme dominates the scene: As Mr. Scott writes in Part Five, the section devoted to 'Young Kumar', 'In India an Indian and an Englishman could never meet on the same terms.' This inescapable fact is what dooms the relationship between Daphne Manners, an English girl living in Mayapore, India, and Hari Kumar, an Indian who was brought up in England. It is Miss Crane's failure to recognise this unequivocal rule that leads to her undoing. It is possible that Paul Scott's main goal in publishing The Jewel in the Crown was to prove that by 1942, after a long history of racism, colonial oppression, and violent native uprisings, the British had no choice but to 'Quit India.' The time when the turbulent events of Great Britain and India's common history could still have been resolved had long since passed. The story was closed; the outcome inevitable. Daphne and Hari's failed attempt to break the old social barrier pushes the reader's hope of British-Indian reconciliation to the ground, and the terrible and ironic fate of the two lovers, and of Miss Crane, all champions of tolerance and understanding among the English and Indian populations living in India, drives that hope into the dust.
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Summary: The Art of the Novel
Review: The Raj Quartet (comprised of four novels) is in my ultimate top ten of great novels and my favourite work of fiction for the twentieth century. Paul Scott is up there with Tolstoy and Jane Austen in stylistic and storytelling terms, as well as in his acute observation of the human condition. The Raj Quartet is exquisite to read, every word and every sentence appears to have the perfection that Jane Austen bestowed on her works but on the majestic scale of Tolstoy's War and Peace. The Raj Quartet is multi-layered, complex, beyond the apparent. Is it about a country? Or is it about two countries? Paul Scott deals with the years of the "great divorce" as it were, but now at the beginning of a new century the continuing implications of the historic British occupation are as fresh as ever, both in India and the UK, one example being the the unforseen post war immigration and lifting of racial barriers between two peoples (I myself am a product of a post war marriage between an Indian father and British mother). The question of identity is explored. What makes an Indian? (still a relevant question in a subcontinent of such diverse cultures, religions, languages, outlooks, etc racked by communalism). What happens to a group (the Raj British) who are no longer needed in either India or Britain? (I recommend Staying On by Paul Scott which deals with a minor character who does stay on in India.) Beyond the themes of history, colonialism and imperialism, there is the theme of the universal human experience. Who are we all really? Should we let our nationality and culture define who we are? Or as one character, Sarah Layton, finally have the courage to break free and define our own identity. Sarah at first is apart from "the other", then in one revealing scene (the ride with Ahmed) she subconsciously turns to face "the other" though unsuccessfully and finally in the beautifully written and incredibly sensual scene where she decides to dive into the forbidden (the seduction by Clark, who I see myself as Eros or the Hindu God of Love, Kama) she breaks through into her individuality, her "grace". Ultimately, the time in which the Raj Quartet is set, with the division between two races, and between Indians themselves, is an ill-fated time, inevitably leading to tragedy for the characters who find themselves attempting to bridge barriers whether subconsciously or consciously and to those Indians also like Ahmed and Hari who are not to be slotted into convenient pigeon holes of socio/cultural/racial expectations. Very rich, very westernized, very aristocratic Indians had always been able to flout the racial barriers set in place both by orthodox Indians and the British of the Raj, and vice versa for some enlightened British - examples being Lady Chatterjee, the eccentric and Rajput princess who married the equally eccentric Bengali Kulin Brahmin Sir Nilu Chatterjee and enraged her family, Lady Manners, the widow of a Governor and a law onto herself, Mira, the rich Indian lesbian bohemian and her divorced Rani lover. However, the British and Indians of this sort had always been in the extreme minority historically. Hari's tragedy is that he could have belonged to this group if Lady Chatterjee had discovered him earlier and if Merrick had not from an early point fixed his obsessive interest in him. In the end we are left with Hari and Daphne's child as a symbol of hope for the future - a child of two worlds.
Rating:
Summary: One of the best novels ever written
Review: The Raj quartet -- which begins with the Jewel in the Crown -- is a meticulously thorough and detailed examination of the last days of the British empire in India. All four novels in the quartet circle around a single event -- the rape of an English girl by persons unknown in 1942. This is not an original novel. Scott borrows his story from Forester ("A Passage to India") tosses in a little Kipling, injects a Mother Teresa clone (Was Scott influenced by Mother Teresa or was she influenced by Scott?), Gandhi, and "Freedom at Midnight." He has the usual British obsession with social class. But nobody has ever examined so minutely the British Raj. In fact, the main criticism of the novel might be that Scott tells far more than you wanted to know about the British in India. Scott's characterizations are marvelous and always changing as he shifts viewpoints. Mildren Layton is despicable in the third book of the quartet, but rehabilitated slightly in the fourth. The policeman Ronald Merrick is fascinating: menacing, pathetic, courageous, cruel, and brilliant in turn. An American would portray him as a flawed hero who rose above his humble origins through hard work and diligence. To the British, he is a villain for exactly the same reasons. The Raj Quartet is not for everybody. It presumes that you have knowledge about India and the British empire. It's a little tedious in places. I thought the fourth novel in the quartet was a bust, until it redeemed itself with a dynamite conclusion about the last days of British India, the horrific communal violence between Muslim and Hindu, the fate of Ronald Merrick, and the return to the story of Hari Kumar, the tragic Indian boy who loved and lost the English girl raped in the Bibighar Gardens in 1942. I don't read nor enjoy much of what is considered "good" literature, but the Raj Quartet is an exception. This is an exceptional novel by any standards.
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