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I 'write a little everyday, without hope, without despair' as per Isak Dinesen. I like to get the writing done quickly so I can go out to grow veg and play tennis.

Tuesday, March 06, 2007

The House of Blue Mangoes

and Why it doesn't work for me

1) bowing deeply (pg 67) drank deeply (pg 67) jumped with a huge splash into the deepest part of the pool (68) deep sense of contentment (pg 68)

2) narrow tarred road that stands out like a fresh scar on the red soil (pg 3)

3) Despite his disability, Joshua Dorai was one of those men who walked lightly upon the earth, seemingly without a care. (pg 99)

4) About Summer - dead white eye of the sun.. enamel the sky with heat and glare until they burned - (pg 79)

5) udukkai drum (pg 74) udukai (pg 75)

6) European food... mulligatawny soup (pg 86)

7) as dawn came crowding through the night (pg 96)

8) 'Rather a drastic solution, but that's always been your way,' said Solomon drily. (pg 101)

9) Hitler's Lebensraum paralleled with the idea of the Vedic times' Aswameda yagnam. (pg 280)

10) smeared his face in the dirt (pg 279)

The list is endless, so I'll stop here to save more agony of looking for gaffes. To cap it all, after resisting the temptation for over 45o pages, the author finally gives into the inevitable and in the very last page compares the neelam mango to a woman's breast.

Finally finished it; it was a real struggle to plod on, without giving up. To sum up, The House of Blue Mangoes is a long string of tedious superlatives.

3 comments:

Idyll Mind said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Idyll Mind said...

haha... this reminds me of my conversations with friends after we watch a film. I go on and on about the bloopers I find in the visuals and the script and see than I am able to appreciate the nuances that go unnoticed by them. And I wondered why they couldnt see the errors that seem so obvious to me.

But from reading this post, I can tell how easy it is to miss the gaffes.

I read house of blue mangoes and found his writing style tedious too, but I am amazed at the things you found that bothered you that didnt even occur to me. I really want to re-read blue mangoes to see how many I can find myself.

More than anything, I feel terrible now that you and I can read the same book and yet my level of appreciation is going to be so limited in comparison to yours. :-(

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