Last night(12/2/08) I finished the novel by Rohinton Mistry entitled Such a Long Journey, winner of the Governor General in 1991. One could say that it is an ironic book title given that the book is less than 350 pages, and could be a more apt title for his perhaps more famous later work, A Fine Balance. It is one of Keren's favorite books, though I have heard from many people over the year about their struggles to finish the well over 500 page tome, and their complaints of it being(despite the fact that Balance was chosen as an Oprah Book Club pick)long and depressing...I thought it was quite good, for several reasons, and in that regard, I was looking forward to reading Long Journey. This book reading has been a long time coming, however, because of all kinds of obstacles, including a long wait for it at the library, and several other bright shiny objects that made it difficult to read more books as of late. Anyway, I finally started reading Journey last week, the day before the terrorist attacks of Mumbai, the renamed city of Bombay, where the novel takes place. All of a sudden, a world that is very very far away from me, one that I know almost nothing about, became very real. The novel takes place well over 30 years ago, in 1971, when India went to war with Pakistan over what was to become Bangladesh. This book is about more than a war, though, with the war only really coming to the forefront of the novel in the last half; this book is about a man, Gustad Noble, and his journey through life, in a particularly trying time. At the start of the novel, Gustad's long-time friend and hero, Major Jimmy Bilmoria, writes Gustad asking him for a favor, a favor that involves a very large amount of money. The money needs to be hidden, and Gustad, a bank teller, is one who is just under the radar enough to do it. Aware of the dangers, but bound by the loyalties of friendship, Gustad is not sure what to do, and the resulting situations involving the money are at the heart of the novel. However, there is much more going on in Gustad's life, which of course compounds his stress level. His daughter, Roshan, becomes deathly ill, and his son Sohrab decides that he does not want to do what his parents want and refuses to go to India Institute of Technology. He secretly wishes to do something with the arts, but does not tell his father this. Gustad obviously has a lot on his plate and at times, this character, a very complex and human man, loses it. But, he is an honest, loyal and good man, who always wants to do the right thing, and faces constant inner conflicts when sometimes that is not entirely possible. This is Mistry's first novel, and it has been on my list of books that I wanted to read since I was in college almost 10 years ago; it shows such promise for a writer who continues to be given many awards for his work. A Fine Balance, the book of his that I read first, won the Giller, one of the other prestigious Canadian book awards, and showed me the power that Mistry has to create brilliant characters. Mistry depicts Indian life with a Dickensian-like detail. Each character in his book, from the entire Noble family(wife Dilnavaz, daughter Roshan, sons Sohrab and Darius)to Dinshawji(Gustad's work colleague and friend and eventual co-conspirator in the money scheme)to the man who sells paan outside the whorehouse, to Tehmul, the neighborhood "idiot", to the street artist who adorns the side of Khodadad building with an amalgamation of religious pictures and icons(Gustad's idea originally, so that people would stop going to the bathroom on the side of the building, attracting large amounts of mosquitos), is described in such detail, you really feel like you're there, laughing and crying along with them. This book also made me realize how completely ignorant I am. As an American growing up in the public school system, there was much that I did not learn about. India is one of those things I did not learn much about. It is only what I have gathered together in my novel reading, watching public television news and listening to the radio, and the occasional Bollywood picture(on an off-note the name Bollywood is a bringing together of "Bombay" and "Hollywood", to describe the blossoming movie business in "Bombay". When the name was changed by right-wing Hindi leaders in 1995 to Mumbai, named after the Hindu goddess Mumbadevi, the city's patron deity, Bombay for many years had been believed to be an English bastardization of the name Mumbai, and hence keeping the name Bombay for the city was seen by these leaders as a legacy of colonial rule), and through my only Indian friend, Samitha. This book made me feel, amongst other things, at once more worldly and totally ignorant, certainly not because of the writing style, as before mentioned, which is wonderful. It makes me think, though, of why Canadians in 1991 picked this book as a winner for the top literary prize in Canada. Was it as simple as jumpstarting the career of a young, up and coming writer, or was it to show Canadians what else is out there? Or is it a contination of Canadian tradition that celebrates Canadian writers who write about topics outside of Canada? What does this mean in terms of the Canadians vs. Americans? Is there a purpose to the selections? Do they look over years and see what has won before and make decisions based on that or do they just pick what they think the best of the year is? I'm still trying to sort that out. I need to go back to the book, though, and mention a couple of things. One is Noble's character. He is amazingly patient with everyone but himself and his family. He is even almost sexually assaulted(by another man no less) on a long train ride to Delhi and he just shrugs it off attributing it to the man's loneliness and/or urges. He is annoyed when his good friend at work Dinshawji gets in trouble because of his inappropriate advances towards a co-worker, but he still does what he can in his own way to make sure the friend doesn't humiliate himself any further and keeps his job. I guess what I liked about this book, and what I seem to like when I read any and all kinds of literature is the everyman aspect of this book. This is about the abject poor in Mumbai, people who are even poorer than we could ever imagine in the West, the land of overabundance. And they are all not so unbelievably miserable as one might imagine, they live their lives as best as they can, they adhere to religious beliefs and they are good people. It's a great book full of great human beings who even when they're not pressed, do great things.:)
My favorite quote from the book is about storytelling. It regards the Paan maker who stands in front of the whorehouse in Noble's neighborhood, who always tells stories to attract people in to buy his wares.

"Outside the House of Cages, a larger than usual crowd had gathered around Peerbhoy Paanwalla, unmindful of the sewer stench that made Gustad cover his nose and mouth with his kerchief. But Peerbhoy was not spinning his time-honoured yarns about the House of Cages: the aphrodisiacal tales for tyros guaranteed to heat the blood, elevate flagging confidence and boost paan sales. No there would be no more of that for a while. In deference to the mood of the country and the threat from without, Peerbhoy Paanwalla had mobilized his talents for the common good, using his skills to weave a tale that defied genre or description. It was not a tragedy, comedy or history; not pastoral, tragical-comical, historical-pastoral or tragical-historical. Nor was it epic or mock-heroic. It was not a ballad or an ode, masque or anti-masque, fable or elegy, parody or threnody. Although a careful analysis may have revealed that it possessed a smattering of all these characteristics. But since things such as literary criticism mattered not one jot to the listeners, they were responding to Peerbhoy's narrative in the only way that made sense: with every fibre of their beings. They could see and smell and taste and feel the words that filled the dusk and conjured the tale; and it was no wonder they were oblivious to the gutter stink" (306).

Here's the truth. The truth is, I am a reader, I have studied literary criticism, and I do read to an extent with a literarily critical eye. First and foremost, though, I am a reader, and enjoy probably more than my work, more than anything else in my life besides my family and my partner, reading books. And I love, beyond measure the books that are like Peerbhoy's narrative. And, the prize reading list has made me search not only for the greatest stories, but also made me question what should be the greatest stories, and therefore the greatest authors. Rohinton Mistry definitely deserves his seat at the table.:) PPs-46, GGs-40.