Anyway

For a change, I’m going to review a book that has­n’t been read by the book­club I go to, the only reas­on being that it’s a rel­at­ively slow read. “Maps for Lost Lov­ers” by Nadeem Aslam is the story of events and people in a Pakistani com­munity in Eng­land. But it’s a much deep­er, multi-faceted, and lyr­ic­al work than a curs­ory read­ing of the back cov­er would indicate. 

The first chapter of the book details a murder, and who’s been arres­ted for that murder. This murder is the start­ing point for an exam­in­a­tion of the life that people in the com­munity lead, and what drives many of the chil­dren to leave the com­munity. The ties to Pakistan, the influ­ence of the cler­ics, the inhu­man­ity of many of the cus­toms, are all examined in a sens­it­ive but unflinch­ing man­ner. This makes the descrip­tions of these cus­toms and laws and what they lead to even more hor­ri­fy­ing; this nov­el shows the effects on people who are try­ing to do their best to cope with the effects of a sys­tem that val­ues men greatly and women very little, that has extremely strict rules on beha­viour, and that encour­ages “hon­our” killings. The main char­ac­ter, Shamas, is well-mean­ing but weak, his wife Kaukab so pious and naive she wreaks hav­oc on the fam­ily She is a sym­path­et­ic char­ac­ter des­pite her actions, her thoughts and hopes and fears pic­tured as she slowly comes to the real­isa­tion that not all the cler­ic advises her to do is neces­sar­ily cor­rect. When read­ing about Kaukab, I could­n’t help but think of the women in Palestine who are inter­viewed on tele­vi­sion and say how happy they are their sons have become sui­cide bombers and how they wish they had more sons to become sui­cide bombers. It gave me a little more idea how someone could go down that path.

The reviews on Amazon vary wildly from those who highly recom­mend it to those who find the por­tray­al of the cul­ture and people racist and ste­reo­typ­ic­alb. I don’t know enough about Pakistani cul­ture to know how truth­ful the por­tray­al of much of it is. One item struck me as odd so I did a bit of research — one of the char­ac­ters, Suraya, was divorced by her hus­band, who later regret­ted it and wished to remarry, but they could­n’t remarry until she had mar­ried and divorced someone else. This turns out to be true, although the inform­a­tion I found made it sound like the divorce pro­ced­ure itself isn’t quite as easy as por­trayed in the book, and that recon­cili­ation is encour­aged. So, a little exag­ger­a­tion there for the pur­poses of the story, and it’s likely that such exag­ger­a­tion hap­pens in oth­er places in the book as well. That being said, “hon­our” killings do take place, and women who are depressed over arranged mar­riages are some­times sub­jec­ted to exor­cisms to get rid of the djinni the cler­ics claim have pos­sessed them.

I have seen a little of Pakistani cul­ture — I knew a woman in Aus­tralia who was mar­ried to a Pakistani. She came from Afgh­anistan and it was an arranged mar­riage that her par­ents wanted to get her out of Afgh­anistan (this was dur­ing the Taliban regime). The pre­vi­ous wife had been divorced as she bore the hus­band no chil­dren. I watched the video of the mar­riage — I have sel­dom seen any­one look as scared as this poor woman did, being told to marry someone she first met on the day of the wed­ding and move to a coun­try she knew noth­ing of, where she knew no-one and did­n’t speak the lan­guage. For her it worked out well (apart from hav­ing the moth­er-in-law liv­ing with them) since the hus­band was kind, she was lucky enough to bear him sons quickly enough (after hav­ing four chil­dren in not very many years the doc­tors for­bade any more), and even­tu­ally her sis­ter mar­ried her hus­band’s broth­er and they also moved to the same dis­trict in Sydney. She got lucky; I doubt that the first wife found life as good.

Although the main interest of the book is the por­tray­al of an unfor­giv­ing cul­ture and the clashes it has with West­ern styles of liv­ing, it does speak to prob­lems that any immig­rant faces when in a new coun­try, that of try­ing to save what is pre­cious and worth­while from the cul­ture and beliefs you were brought up in, and fold­ing that into the cul­ture you live in. This book is full of regrets, people who thought they were only going to live in Eng­land for a short time and miss the flowers and trees of Pakistan, people who bring their pre­ju­dices with them and hate that they can­’t force oth­er people to do what they want them to, people who no longer have any­where to live where they truly feel “at home”. And the gen­er­a­tion clash (exacer­bated by the cul­ture clash) of par­ents doing what they think is best for their chil­dren, where the chil­dren dis­agree. Don’t read it when you’re feel­ing down.

I’d heard quite a lot about the book “The Curi­ous Incid­ent of the Dog in the Night-Time” by Mark Had­don, but I tend to dis­count the breath­less reviews in news­pa­pers and the like, since I find I often don’t have any­where near as high an opin­ion of any giv­en book as review­ers do. But when a couple of blog­gers I read recom­men­ded it, I decided it was prob­ably worth a try (thereby prov­ing the old adage about word of mouth being much more effect­ive than oth­er forms of advert­ising). So when I was last in Oxford, I picked it up in one of the 3‑for‑2 Sum­mer Read­ing sales. And promptly decided it was worth read­ing, and worth the book­club read­ing. Which we did.

The book works on a num­ber of levels, I find. It’s writ­ten simply enough that it’s a quick read, without los­ing depth of mean­ing. As an adult read­ing the book, you know what’s going on long before the nar­rat­or Chris­toph­er does, leav­ing you to observe his fig­ur­ing it out too, and to won­der what he’ll do when he knows. Chris­topher­’s observ­ances of life and people, the seem­ing logic (although much of it isn’t at all logic­al) are remin­is­cent of vari­ous sci­ence fic­tion char­ac­ters, such as Spock in Star Trek, or the wit­ness Ann in “Stranger in a Strange Land”. The book lets you see the dicho­tomy where sci­ent­ists are trained to not jump to con­clu­sions, and to be care­ful about assum­ing that A implies B, but in social inter­ac­tions people are expec­ted to infer motives from beha­viour, and to make assump­tions about likely causes and mean­ings. Chris­toph­er has prob­lems in large part because he does­n’t make the con­nec­tions and infer­ences that most people would make. The big­ger part is that his reac­tions to vari­ous stim­uli are so over­whelm­ing that oth­er people can­’t under­stand them.

I like tak­ing books like this to book­club because we dis­cov­er dif­fer­ent mean­ings in the dis­cus­sion; every­one sees dif­fer­ent points. One mem­ber, who works in the school sys­tem here, poin­ted out how high-func­tion­ing Chris­toph­er was when he could make him­self remem­ber the extra teach­ing he was giv­en, that he could learn what the expec­ted reac­tions were to every­day social inter­ac­tions even if he did­n’t under­stand them. And that the care-givers also have to be taught how to react, how to sup­port the learn­ing pro­cess that takes so much longer and is so much harder than with chil­dren who don’t have Asper­ger­’s or autism.

All in all, an excel­lent book to read and think about, espe­cially if you’re a geek, sci­ent­ist, or have friends or fam­ily who are. There are cer­tain traits that Chris­toph­er has that geeks and sci­ent­ists share, though (of course) not usu­ally to the same degree.

The book­club decided to read Hein­lein’s mas­ter­piece — the bril­liant spec­tac­u­lar and incred­ibly pop­u­lar nov­el (quote from the back cov­er of the Ace Sci­ence Fic­tion edi­tion, pub­lished in 1987). The book Stranger in a Strange Land has­n’t quite stood the test of time (assum­ing it ever did match up to the breath­less praise). War of the World’s review is decent and points out some of the strengths and weak­nesses of the book.

The book­club found the book worth read­ing for its his­tor­ic­al value, even though the sex­ist and racist tones are irrit­at­ing, the dia­logues don’t quite match up to the sup­posed soph­ist­ic­a­tion of the char­ac­ters (par­tic­u­larly Jubal), and the bits about the archangels don’t appear to serve any pur­pose. The book could have done with a good edit­ing. A couple of inter­est­ing ques­tions came up – we spent some time dis­cuss­ing pri­vacy in a tele­path­ic world, espe­cially on how one would bring up chil­dren with a sense of who they are in such a com­munity, and the implic­a­tions of a group where people take money as they need it and give money as they can (shades of the social­ist ideal from each accord­ing to his abil­ity, to each accord­ing to his needs that nev­er seems to work bey­ond a small circle of people, such as a family). 

In the end, we came to the con­clu­sion that there were good ideas in the book, and parts of it were reas­on­ably well-writ­ten, but that there must be bet­ter sci­ence fic­tion out there, with believ­able dia­logues and char­ac­ters. Does any­one have recommendations?