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Our Lady of Alice Bhatti [Paperback]

Mohammed Hanif (Author)

3.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (9 customer reviews)

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Book Description

Publication Date: 4 Oct 2012

The patients of the Sacred Heart Hospital for All Ailments in Karachi are looking for a miracle. Junior nurse, ex-prisoner and part-time healer Alice Bhatti is looking for a job.

With guidance from the working nurse's manual, and some tricks she picked up in prison, Alice starts work at the crowded hospital bringing help to the thousands of patients littering the corridors. But her new life isn't easy and on top of everything else Alice impulsively falls for optimist and loveable good Teddy Butt - a ragtag law enforcement officer by night and a bodybuilder by day.

Can Alice and Teddy live happily ever after? Will the hospital accept her unorthodox ways? It all seems unlikely, but then Alice Bhatti is no ordinary nurse and this is downtown Karachi where the unusual is ordinary .

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The patients of the Sacred Heart Hospital for All Ailments in Karachi are looking for a miracle. Junior nurse, ex-prisoner and part-time healer Alice Bhatti is looking for a job.

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Product details

Paperback: 240 pages
Publisher: Vintage (4 Oct 2012)
Language: Unknown
ISBN-10: 0099516756
ISBN-13: 978-0099516750
Product Dimensions: 12.9 x 1.5 x 19.8 cm

Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (9 customer reviews)

Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 193,459 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Review

"Belly-laugh-inducing. Sam Lypsyte funny. Faulty-Towers funny.The silliness is anarchic and profound.a ripping story and a rowdy piece of art" (New York Times )

"Relentlessly readable" (Guardian )

"Alice Bhatti's Karachi is so alive with sensations that you can smell the sewers, hear the screeching of tyres, and feel the humidity" (Scotsman )

"Superbly witty" (The Times )

"An amusingly anarchic tale of Karachi life" (Lady )

Book Description

'A tragicomedy of Shakespearean proportions' - Time Out

From the author of the award-winning, critically-acclaimed debut, A Case of Exploding Mangoes.

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Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover

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Customer Reviews

3.3 out of 5 stars

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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Be warned: far darker than you might expect 21 May 2012

By neverendings

Format:Hardcover

Alice Bhatti, recently of borstal, has somehow talked her way into a nursing job at the Sacred Heart Hospital (possibly due to being the only applicant), where she finds herself the unexpected object of devotion for young bodybuilding police ruffian Teddy Butt, more at home with a gun than with poetry. Alice's father Joseph has the mystical ability to cure stomach ulcers; but Alice has the less welcome `gift' of seeing death in the faces of those she meets.

At first I found the narrative quite entertaining as we joined Alice on the day of interview for her nursing job, and simultaneously, Teddy massacres his own thumb so that the police can `justifiably' arrest someone for a previous crime. I wasn't quite sure I agreed with the logic, but was willing to go with it. The author tells his tale with a wry sense of humour which was initially easy to engage with, but even in the first couple of chapters it sometimes felt incongruous.

The lighter episodes really did not sit well for me, alongside Hanif's depiction of the harsh realities of corrupt Karachi life, where the treatment of women in general is, quite frankly, disturbing. I didn't want to laugh about it. I'm hoping that - given the ending - this was actually Hanif's point. I was expecting a slightly quirky romance between not-quite-trustworthy characters and the subject matter caught me unawares. It was not a story that was easy to warm to when juxtaposed with the seamy side of life in which the characters lived, regardless of their claimed religion. Very few of the characters are as they initially appear, and you will probably be surprised by some of the side characters, before the story ends.

I am really torn on my opinion of this book.... Read more ›

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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Literary Brilliance 17 Sep 2012

By Ben Mirza

Format:Hardcover

As the inimitable lady with the lamp, Florence Nightingale once said "Nursing is an art: and if it is to be made an art, it requires an exclusive devotion as hard a preparation, as any painter's or sculptor's work; for what is the having to do with dead canvas or dead marble, compared with having to do with the living body, the temple of God's spirit? It is one of the Fine Arts: I had almost said the finest of Fine Arts." I know from friends and relatives that nursing comprises of two emotional components, elation and frustration. The majority of the time it involves thankless tasks, mired in dirt, grime and excrement or pointless administrational busy work, until the next cavalcade of sick pass through the front entrance, on a procession of rusty trolleys and squeaky wheelchairs. However, those moments of real nursing, those of which all nurses dream of, caring for the sick and injured, offer something that makes the miniscule and superfluous acts more palatable. In Our Lady of Alice Bhatti, published in Britain and Pakistan respectively, Mohammed Hanif's writing is as electrifying as ever.

The setting of his latest tale is Karachi, where a noxious atmosphere of ethnic, religious and caste tensions are steadily drowning this bustling metropolis, there is no hint of exoticism or rainbow tinged fantasy, just the stark reality of everyday life in a run-down hospital - The Sacred Heart. The absence of sweet smelling mango trees, sprawling chameli and Ghalib references makes room for explorations into the personal and working lives of Pakistan's Christian Choorah's, those at the bottom end of a complex caste-system....

The Sacred Heart hospital, where all manner of life, from the good to the bad, deceivers to moralists pass through, each ruled by a set of social moirés and moral amnesia, is the ideal repository in which to tell the story of modern Pakistan, free from decorous frippery. The whole structural system of the hospital is diametrically opposed to how one would think such an institution is run, with the building, Catholic in origin, entrusted into the hands of a rather imperious and intellectually fragile man, who inherited it from his father. Nurses, Ward Sisters and Doctors show routine moral failings, yet are, in their own way, dutifully devoted to keeping the Sacred functioning, to a slightly acceptable degree at least.

We are introduced to Alice Bhatti, a Christian and former borstal inmate, who hails from French Colony, a small Christian community of labourers in Karachi. Longing to be a nurse, we are first introduced to Alice waiting for her interview, fastidiously going over her preparations and fears about securing this once in a lifetime opportunity. Alice Bhatti has the perfect brassy attitude, volcanic emotional complexity and fiery personality to carry her through all this energetic madness with relative ease, even when she is assigned to the ominous Charya Ward, where mental patients of various levels of mania reside, as the blunt Sister Hina Alvi explains "those who bugger their sisters and bury them alive, because some God told them to"; the wretched souls range from a potential terrorist to a deranged yet oddly verbose old man, who takes pleasure in having his underwear around his ankles.

Hanif's writing is immediate, in the best kind of way; he takes typical literary and philosophical subjects, such as love, politics, society and religion and turns them into comical and easily digestible couplets. Most of these beautiful nuggets emanate from Alice's mind, she muses, quietly yet with a comical timing and phonetic quality worthy of the best wordsmith. This is not simply a novel about nursing, nor is it a philosophical attempt at analysing wider Pakistani society, Our Lady of Alice Bhatti is a novel that tells the story of modern Pakistan, through the lives of a small collection of people, united in serving the public. Chronicling the trials and tribulations, loves and loses, hopes and dreams of ordinary people caught up in an ideological tornado.

The novel is fortunate in that every chapter explores something new, but with the themes of religion and duty remaining ever present, culminating in a very tearful and tragic conclusion. One truly feels empathy and a great deal of love for this little Choorah Alice, this Christian in a Muslim world, this woman in a male dominated society. Read more ›

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5.0 out of 5 stars Fantastic, my favourite book of 2012! 19 Feb 2013

By Poppyseed Thin

Format:Paperback

Utterly enthralling, Our Lady Of Alice Bhatti is a damning indictment of the state of the country it's set in and the way women are treated, particularly those from a Christian background that the rest of Pakistani society looks down on. There are some truly great Pakistani women out there defying all the odds, so if nothing else, this book will get you hooked on their struggle in a male dominated society not dis-similar to India's despite the perceived difference in women's status.

Hanif draws the reader in gently, then casually slips in appalling violence interspersed with dark humour and flights of fancy. Read it and wish more authors could write like him!

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2.0 out of 5 stars very patchy book 24 Dec 2012

By M. Fabbri

Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase

there is not a clear plot and many events are not credible. The end is quite abrupt and vould have benefited from clearer explanations about what happened to some of the characters

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1.0 out of 5 stars Our lady of Alice bhatti 20 Dec 2012

By Philip Shapiro

Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase

Whole text too jumbled - no real plot to follow, a disappointing read - not recommended for serious readers
Shapiro@talktalk

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3.0 out of 5 stars Our Lady of Alice Bhatti. 19 Dec 2012

By Mr Les Edwards

Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase

Not to my taste, other people might like it. but did not entharl me, the story dragged on and on,

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2.0 out of 5 stars Can t recommend it 30 Nov 2012

By Helsen, Kristiaan

Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase

Loved the author's previous novel - case of exploding mangoes - so had high expectations. But the narrative was underdeveloped and the humor was missing

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1 of 4 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars a good read 14 Mar 2012

By westoe

Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase

I bought this book as I spent a number of years in Pakistan and visited Karachi very frequently. The book was very good at giving the reader an understanding of the very different cultures existing in Pakistan between Muslams and Christians. However I sometimes fealt that the style of writing was a bit disjointed.

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