Heat and Dust

This is how the novel begins:

“Shortly after Olivia went away with the Nawab, Beth Crawford returned from Simla. This was September, 1923. Beth had to go down to Bombay to meet the boat on which her sister Tessie was arriving. Tessie was coming out to spend the cold season with the Crawfords. They had arranged all sorts of visits and expeditions for her, but she stayed mostly in Satipur because of Douglas.”

These are the first 5 sentences of “Heat and Dust”, a Booker Prize winning novel (1975) by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, which was subsequently made into a film by Merchant-Ivory Productions. I watched the movie a long time ago, in the late-80s, and loved it, and I’d always been intrigued by what devices a novel can utilize to alternate 2 stories from 2 different periods of time into a cohesive narrative. So I bought this novel the first time I chanced upon it 2 years ago. Since then I must have tried to read it at least 4 times, but never got beyond the first paragraph. The first 5 sentences above would take me a couple of minutes to read, and then I would be annoyed by it all, and then I would read it yet again, and then give up, swearing to keep off women writers for a while. There are 5 characters mentioned in quick succession almost as if the writer is sketching out the plot in exposition for the first time.

But during my visit to KL this week, I forced myself to read it again (having deliberately brought nothing else) and once past the annoying opening, has made good progress in what is turning out to be writing of the very best order. It’s almost as if the opening passage is deliberately complex so that only the persistent may enter and reap the delights further up. I’m a quarter of the way through now, and it’s a slow-burning pleasure. Highly recommended, both book and movie.

Chup