JANUARY / FEBRUARY  

 
THE GOD OF SMALL THINGS

The story of the tragic decline of an Indian family whose members suffer the terrible consequences of forbidden love, The God of Small Things is set in the state of Kerala, on the southernmost tip of India. Armed only with the invincible innocence of children, the twins Rahel and Esthappen fashion a childhood for themselves in the shade of the wreck that is their family -- their lonely, lovely mother, Ammu (who loves by night the man her children love by day), their blind grandmother, Mammachi (who plays Handel on her violin), their beloved uncle Chacko (Rhodes scholar, pickle baron, radical Marxist, bottom-pincher), their enemy, Baby Kochamma (ex-nun and incumbent grandaunt), and the ghost of an imperial entomologist's moth (with unusually dense dorsal tufts).

When their English cousin and her mother arrive on a Christmas visit, the twins learn that Things Can Change in a Day. That lives can twist into new, ugly shapes, even cease forever. The brilliantly plotted story uncoils with an agonizing sense of foreboding and inevitability. Yet nothing prepares you for what lies at the heart of it.

Reading: January and February 2012

Meetings:12 and 26 of January; 9 and 23 of February

MARCH  

THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST

The Importance of Being Earnest is a tour de force of comedy, misidentifications, and farce. Algernon and Jack are friends, and each has invented an imaginary person as an excuse of getting out of engagements. Jack's person is Ernest, a brother with a wild past. The two conspire to woo the ladies that they love, and through a series of happenstances, must gently deceive to get want they want. The end result is a play of uncomperable quality, chock full of witticisms that are highly quotable out of context. In fact, I dare suggest the entire play is quotable, such its brilliance.

 Wilde pulled no punches when writing Earnest. Often, when a play is filled with memorable quotes, it takes away from the realism of the scenes because the characters then become merely conduits for the writer's intellect. Not so in Earnest. Wilde manages to make the characters say exactly what they would say in each situation, true to their persona. That alone is quite an accomplishment, one not often seen.

Misidentities, witty banter, love, all conspire to one of English's most brilliant comedies ever to have seen the stage. We should be so lucky the world had Oscar Wilde in it, and even more so, that he wrote at all.    

Reading: March  2012

Meetings: 8 and 22 of March;

APRIL/MAY

DRÁCULA

Published in 1897, Bram Stoker’s Dracula soon became known as a work of pure genius. Even today, it is much read across the world, and regarded as THE all-time classical horror story. Stoker based his Vampiric character on the fifteenth century Wallacian warrior prince, Vlad Dracule. He researched his novel in great detail, visiting the region of Hungary and Romania that Vlad ruled, and reading ancient manuscripts and stories. The actual novel is written as a series of diary extracts, and the people involved submitted their diaries after the event in order to make sense of it.    

This perhaps resembles the way that time fragments history. Through time, stories are changed and manipulated – and this in turn, makes them all the more mysterious and thrilling. There is a possibility that Stoker was trying to tell us that perhaps the events were exaggerated through different people’s perceptions of them. Even at the end of the novel, we do not know whether pieces of the story were left out or changed. This leaves us with a sensation of emptiness. We do not know whether to believe it as a true story; or a work of complete fantasy; or if we have been informed of all the gory details or not.

In the story, we meet Jonathan Harker, who leaves his beloved fiancé, Mina, to travel to the remote land of Transylvania. He is there in order to organise the finances of a Count Dracula, who is buying an estate in England. Harker soon becomes suspicious of Dracula’s motives. He asks himself why there are no mirrors in Castle Dracula; why he is forbidden to enter a particular part of the Castle; and where Count Dracula disappears to during the day. He realises that not all is what it seems to be in the remote Castle, nestled amidst the Carpathian Mountains.

Dracula’s intentions soon become clear. He intends to create a race of Vampires to rule the world. Such an idea would place the Human race second in the food chain, instead of being on top of it. Such an idea is so immense, and the implications are terrible. A race of Vampires would reduce Human beings to the role of animals. They would be farmed as cattle, and drained of their blood. Together with Professor Van Helsing, Harker and a few others seek to hunt down the Demon and destroy him. This is revenge for their beloved Lucy, who fell at the hands of Dracula; for Mina, who becomes a communication portal for Dracula; and for the sake of mankind.

This is a story about good against evil. It depends upon the late Victorian ideal that good shall always triumph. The almighty God must win against Satan in the end. Together with this, Stoker seems to depict the social classes of the era to be corrupt. If the lower classes are not repressed, then they will turn into a raving monster that consumes and possesses all that stands in it’s way.

 I love this novel dearly, and I hope that others will too. Even if you are a devout reader of contemporary horror, this is still a must. The story of Dracula underpins most horror stories that follow it, as well as the whole literary ‘Horror’ genre.  

Reading: April and May 2012

Meetings: 5th and 19th of April; 3rd, 17th and 31st of May