Recent Reading

Burma Sahib by Paul Theroux (published in February, 2024) is a novel based on the true experiences of a man named Eric Blair in Burma approximately 100 years ago. The story begins when Blair is 19 years old, recently graduated from the famed prep school Eton, where he was not at all happy. He has gone to Burma to become a policeman and an officer of the British Empire. This is in stark contrast to most of the other Eton graduates who would have enrolled at Oxford or gone on to something else very upper class, but Blair wasn’t upper class. His father had been a rather lowly civil servant in charge of a minor aspect of the British-state-run opium business in a nearby part of the empire. 

Theroux selects wonderful detail about life in colonial Burma. For example, I really enjoyed his descriptions of the occasional native meals that Blair tried, as well as very British food that the Indian cooks prepared: food that they wouldn’t eat themselves because they were vegetarians. For example, a lunch of “boiled fowl, mashed potatoes, and a slimy vegetable no one could name.” (p. 33).

Food often contrasts to the political environment in which Blair exists; consider this:

“And the other memory was of an occurrence at the end of the meal (veal chop, mash, brown gravy, bottled peas). The boat that had brought the arresting officers had also brought provisions: crates of wine, potted meat, packets of water biscuits, tins of salmon, and a chest of cheeses.   

 

“Wearing gloves, the khidmatgar placed a cheese board on the dining table next to Oliphant. Grasping a cheese knife, Oliphant tapped it on a large wedge of Stilton, lowering his head so that his slicked-down hair gleamed in the lamplight, scrutinizing the Stilton. All the cheeses on the board were sweating slightly, a moist double Gloucester, a damp cheddar, a softening brie…. 

 

“There were more shouts, a yelping from one person, a woman’s shrieks, and Oliphant paused. … And that was the moment Blair heard the ruckus—yells from the precincts of the pagoda, the frantic jangling of bells, hoarse shouted orders from the arresting officers. Oliphant did not look up but instead studied the cheese.” (p. 144) 

Basically, being a policeman does not suit Blair at all; he finds that he doesn’t fit in at all with the colonial society and its repressive racist greed. He also doesn’t fit in with any of the various Asian people he gets to know, though unlike most of his fellow policemen, he learns the local language and has a lot of sympathy for the people. In fact, he is stymied by the rampant prejudices, the cruelty, and the pettiness that he finds all around him. 

Blair wants to write poetry, but is never satisfied with his efforts, and begins to write stories about his experiences. I loved reading about this five-year period in Blair’s life. His growing awareness of people and relationships, as well as his many frustrations and humiliations, are portrayed in a very fascinating and effectively dramatic way — much of this due to the imagination and inventiveness of the novelist. As you may know, Eric Blair was a very real person who did in fact become a writer. His nom de plume was George Orwell.

The Soul of an Octopus (published 2016) is the third book by Sy Montgomery that I have read. The others were about turtles and dolphins. But in fact all of them are really about Sy Montgomery. In The Soul of an Octopus, of course, you can learn a lot about the lives of octopuses that the author encountered — especially a few of them that live in a large aquarium in Boston. You can learn a bit about natural history, about scuba diving to see more of these creatures, about the dedicated caretakers who work in the aquarium, and about scientists who study the sea. But most of all, you learn about the author. I wasn’t as conscious of this in the earlier books of hers that I read but in retrospect I think it was the same. Not that it’s bad, that’s just the way it is.

I expected to enjoy The Seventh Veil of Salome by Silvia Moreno-Garcia (published August, 2024). I was very disappointed. It’s a soppy story about Hollywood. Unlike Moreno-Garcia’s other novels that I’ve read and liked, this one didn’t have any magical realism at all. Not recommended!

I’m also rereading Moby-Dick, in the aftermath of my trip to the Galapagos.

Reviews © 2024 mae sander

Shared with Sunday Salon at Readerbuzz.