When Alison Bechdel wrote, “Fun Home”, a graphic novel about her closeted gay father and her relationship with him, it was received with great aplomb. Critics loved it and so did the regular readers. I read it last month and was in absolute love with it. At the end of the book, I wondered, “What about Alison’s mother? What about her point of view and her life?” and the wonder was put to rest when I read her new book, “Are You My Mother?”

Are You My Mother speaks of the relationship Alison shared/s with her mother. Alison’s mother was everything rolled into one – an actor, musician, lover of books and also a woman unhappily married to a gay man. Alison’s childhood simmered under all of this – her father’s constant battle and her mother’s constant shirking away from her, so much so that she stopped touching or kissing her daughter good night ever since she was seven. There was this constant tension between her parents, which led to Alison’s history of obsessive compulsive disorders which she shares in the book.

The book in itself is funny and at so many places only heartbreaking. There are moments when Alison’s relationship with her mother are for all to see – how she did not get the attention she craved for, or the relationship defined by the complete and absolute lack of intimacy. At some places she provides answers and reasons and at the others she leaves it for the reader to figure it on his/her own.

Are you my Mother contains a lot of dream analysis as well – Freud has to jump in, when it is the bigger picture and through these dreams one can also understand how detail-oriented Bechdel is with reference to her life and relationships.

As a graphic novel, I loved the drawings as much as I did in Fun Home. The lines are clear and the colour is just what this book should have – in shades of grey and tinges of red. Alison’s book is not just about her mother – it is also about introspection of her life and the way she led it before writing Fun Home.

I loved the way this book was written. More so because I am biased to graphic novels. They speak a different language of words and pictures, which also conveys a lot, like a novel would. The past and present are beautifully juxtaposed and the good thing is that there is also a sense of empathy while reading the book. There is no pity or sympathy; however it is something one can relate to, without experiencing it at some level.

“Are you My Mother?” for me was a wonderful read this month. Family relationships are beautifully portrayed in this one and that too being a graphic novel, it manages to convey a lot. Bechdel’s mother remains an enigma in most places, but that doesn’t deter the book from being what it is – brilliant. Relationships are like a prism sometimes with way too many angles and perspectives. This is one of them – from a daughter to her mother.

We all have our literary heroes. Sometimes in the form of characters, which we have loved reading about and idolizing while reading or sometimes in the form of writers themselves, who bring stories and characters to life. For me, there are so many writers who have changed my life and the way I see things and the world around me and then there are those who stay on irrespective of time.

Pico Iyer’s new book, “The Man within my Head” is homage to Graham Greene, and at the same time, it is a travelogue, a memoir and a literary biography of sorts. It is everything rolled into one, taking pieces from Graham’s books and his life and that is what makes the book an interesting read.

The book opens during a visit to La Paz, Bolivia and the imagery that Iyer leaves you with is fascinating. A lot but of course has to do with the fact that he can describe a regular scene with great intensity, and make it appear magical to the reader. I picture Iyer on his journeys, sinking in what he sees, settling in his hotel room and writing for his readers, writing about Graham Greene – his writing style, his books and his life. He does all of this and at the same time, gives us a sense of his (Iyer’s) life, juxtaposing the two, which makes for great reading.

Graham Greene was always an outsider and that sentiment was forever depicted through his characters – from the whiskey priest in The Power and the Glory to the adulterous wife in The End of the Affair to The Quiet American, Iyer takes the reader through a Greene journey, and pushes readers to visit Graham Greene.

Now to Iyer’s writing style – at times it is broken, fragmented, but then I love that kind of writing. I like writing that makes you think, that has layers and that is not given on a platter to ease the reading. The man inside Iyer’s head is Greene for most of his life, and later does he realize that there is another man who he has never known and lives within him – his father. Through this book, Iyer then learns how fathers and sons function – the relationship they share, what are they made of and what it takes to bind them.

Iyer’s writing is crisp and almost there – it made me stop and wonder about life at various points and if a book manages to do that, then for sure it has done something to you. We all have a man within us – someone different, someone similar, and someone who sometimes we want to be. As Iyer, eloquently puts it, “A man within your head whispers his secrets and fears to you, and it can go right to your core”. A must-read.

One icon that instantly comes to my mind is “Coco Chanel” and it is not because of the laurels. It is because of the life she led. So when I received a detailed biography of Chanel’s life, I jumped at it and finished it in a matter of two days. Prior to this I had seen the movie based on her life, “Coco Chanel” starring Shirley MacLaine (who by the way made a perfect Chanel in her later years) and wanted to know about the designer who ruled the fashion scene for years.

Lisa Chaney’s book, “Chanel – An Intimate Life” is the most comprehensive biography there is on Chanel’s life and I say this after the research I have done on works written on her. Chanel not only chronicles Coco’s life before she turned Coco, but also proves to be an entertaining read.

The sadness and deprivation of her early years are heartbreaking – when the family did not have enough to eat and survive. Lisa then moves on from here to her emergence into fashionable society and the love affairs that defined her, to the man she loved the most and lost (Arthur ‘Boy’ Capel), to the point when she became a brand thereby changing the face of fashion to the war years as well as the loneliness of her later years to the re-emergence of Chanel in fashion.

Chaney clearly has the extraordinary ability to enter into and make her readers also understand the lives of people who were closely connected to Chanel. The writing did get pedantic in parts; however I ignored it because the rest of it was beautifully written. I liked how the author described the times Chanel lived in and how difficult it was then for any “new fashion sense” to make its presence felt. The analysis of the artistic scene then (Dali, Picasso, Cocteau) had a great impact on Chanel’s work and Lisa has given us a brilliant take there in most chapters.

Chaney’s book is an honest attempt to detail one of the most talked about lives in Fashion. It is a moving portrayal of a strong woman who did not let go of what she thought and believed in. Chanel makes for a great read.

Kalpana Chawla
India’s First Woman Astronaut
Written by Dilip M Salwi
Published by Rupa & Co. under the Charitavali series.

Reviewed by sandhya.

On 1st February, 2003, as the world watched in disbelief, the spacecraft Columbia turned into a fireball and disintegrated in the sky, 16 minutes away from a safe touchdown after a fortnight in space. All 7 astronauts aboard were killed. Among them was 41 year old Kalpana Chawla, born in India on 17th March 1962, and who had joined NASA as a full astronaut in 1998. This had been her second foray into space.

This biography is a tribute to the memory of Kalpana Chawla, a small-town girl from Karnal, Haryana, who followed her dream and became the first Indian woman astronaut, and the first Indian to be a full member of a NASA team that went into space on a mission.

Born in a place that does not really celebrate the birth of girls, Kalpana struggled against many prejudices, even in her own family, to get an education, and then a higher education- on her own terms. At every step, she had to face the mindset that holds girls back from flying high enough to reach their dreams, and succeeded beyond all expectations.

She went on to obtain a degree in Aeronautical Engineering, then applied to and secured admission for further studies at the Department of Aerospace Science and Engineering at the University of Texas, Arlington, on a scholarship. It was then that her father was convinced, and supported intead of obstructing her.

From then on, Kalpana did not look back. She single-mindedly went after her childhood dream of becoming an astronaut and reaching for the stars.

This lucidly written biography by science writer Dilip M Salwi is peppered by photographs provided by Kalpana’s family, teachers, colleagues, husband Jean Pierre Harrison and NASA- even those taken of her in the spacecraft.

As Kalpana had written in her last email to the students from her alma mater in India from the space shuttle, “The path from dreams to reality does exist. May you have the vision to find it, the courage to get onto it and the perseverence to follow it.”

Pic courtesy infibeam

HANA’S SUITCASE
Written by Karen Levine
Published by Jyotsna Prakashan, by permission of Second Story Press

Reviewed by sandhya.

An estimated 11 million people were killed in the Holocaust, of which about 6 million were Jews. Bare statistics. Since then, many stories of those killed and of the survivors have come to light, bringing home the horror of it all, how many ordinary and extraordinary lives have been lost.

Hana Brady would have been just such one faceless statistic.

Our book begins in Tokyo, Japan, in the winter of 2000, when an ordinary looking tattered suitcase from Auschwitz arrives there. On it are these words painted in white- HANA BRADY, 16 May 1931, WAISENKIND (orphan in German). It was sent here from Auschwitz on request by the Tokyo Holocaust Education Resource Centre.

Pic courtesy: Tokyo Holocaust Education Resource Centre

Who was Hana Brady? What was her story? Fumiko Ishioka, the director of the museum, sets out to find out. This is the story of her journey to find out all about the girl, which takes her all the way from Auschwitz to Nove Mesto, in the former Czechoslovakia, where Hana’s story begins.

A happy family of four- the parents and brother-sister, George and Hana. Their life changes in 1939 when the Nazis take over Czechoslovakia. Increasing sanctions make ordinary life difficult and then impossible by degrees, then first her mother and then father is deported.

Then one day, the two children are also deported to Theresienstadt, now Terezin, and they are permitted to take just one suitcase each with their personal belongings. There, they are separated, and later, Hana is transported to Auschwitz on 23rd October, 1944, where she is sent along with the rest of the girls straight from the train to the gas chamber. They had been commanded to leave their suitcases on the railway platform.

Pic courtesy hanassuitcase.ca Fumiko and George with the suitcase

Fumiko Ishioka doggedly and painstakingly followed the leads from the entry of George and Hana Brady’s name in the Nazi’s registers to trace her journey, and found out about her death, but also the fact that George was known to have survived. By tracing other survivors who were with him in the concentation camp, she finally traced a 75 year old George Brady now residing in Canada, and got in touch with him.

Between them, they brought Hana’s story to us, all his memories and the family photographs that he had saved, and which he now so generously shared. There were also many things that the siblings had put in a box and buried in their backyard all those years ago, in a game of ‘burying treasure’, that were found by another family now living there. Ensuring that she does not remain a faceless statistic. A lovely, lively human being, who was lost to the senseless genocide.

Pic courtesy radio.cz Hana and George with their mother Marketa

The book by Karen Levine is simply written, shuttling between Hana’s story in the 1930s, and the story of Fumiko’s effort to bring it to us. There are plenty of real photographs of the Brady family, beginning with the toddler Hana to the 12 yr old Hana on the cover page, copies of the drawings Hana made in the Theresienstadt deportation centre, as also photostat copies of the Nazi records which Fumiko followed on her search.

Crossposted.