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A talky, pleasing generational novel of divided worlds, blending postmodern conceits with old-fashioned whodunit conventions.Owen Monroe is a writer and slacker of dissolute tendencies, better versed in Shiraz vintages and American sitcoms than in history. "I can forgive America anything for these girls it produces," he sighs, ogling a rerun of Supergirl. Yet, now that his Anglo-Indian parents, born of two cultures and peoples, are aging, Owen is paying more attention to them, visiting their suburban home for "moreish nibbles of my parents' lost past - gathia, choora and seo - followed by a lunch of korma (the dry South Indian version, not the curry house's coconut jism) with pepper-water and plain Dehra Dun rice." His parents are talking and now Owen's listening as, fragment by fragment, their story unfolds: a courtship fraught with difficulty, Ross Monroe's failed career as a prizefighter, his more successful ventures as the victim of an elaborate con game that liberates from him his most prized possession, his mother's bloodstone ring, "green chalcedony with blood-like spots of jasper." The liberator is a jutted-chin Brit out of Kipling's "The Man Who Would Be King," whom Ross will meet again - and so will Owen. The aptly named Mr. Skinner is but one of Ross's problems, as Owen learns as he gets deeper into a book project about the Cheechees, the Anglo-Indians of the last generation before Indian independence. Owen's own life is not without dramas, if sometimes vicarious ones, that sometimes rather too neatly fall in parallel with those of the narrative he is pursuing. But then, as Owen explains, "Destiny, like truth, never really surprises; some Chomskyan grammar is there to receive it." Tracking those parallels leads to some surprises, as well as a shaggy-dog false ending that gives way to a more satisfying payoff.A vigorous roman a ghee, reminiscent at turns of Vikram Seth, Zadie Smith and Douglas Coupland. (Kirkus Reviews)
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India, the 1940s: a time of political turmoil and violence; a country on the verge of its tryst with destiny. Ross Monroe is a boxer, a Catholic and an Anglo-Indian. Throughout his youth, Ross is sustained by a single dream: to box his way to Olympic victory -- until a devastating betrayal by an Englishman sends him into exile, and an obsession which will change his life for ever. In present-day England, Owen Monroe, aspiring novelist, is writing the story of his father's life in an attempt to avoid confronting the problems in his own. But family chronicle turns to amateur sleuthing when a chance discovery provides a clue to the whereabouts of his father's long-lost enemy. The quest that follows takes Owen through the secrets of the Monroe past and into a love affair he could never have thought possible...
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A talky, pleasing generational novel of divided worlds, blending postmodern conceits with old-fashioned whodunit conventions.Owen Monroe is a writer and slacker of dissolute tendencies, better versed in Shiraz vintages and American sitcoms than in history. "I can forgive America anything for these girls it produces," he sighs, ogling a rerun of Supergirl. Yet, now that his Anglo-Indian parents, born of two cultures and peoples, are aging, Owen is paying more attention to them, visiting their suburban home for "moreish nibbles of my parents' lost past - gathia, choora and seo - followed by a lunch of korma (the dry South Indian version, not the curry house's coconut jism) with pepper-water and plain Dehra Dun rice." His parents are talking and now Owen's listening as, fragment by fragment, their story unfolds: a courtship fraught with difficulty, Ross Monroe's failed career as a prizefighter, his more successful ventures as the victim of an elaborate con game that liberates from him his most prized possession, his mother's bloodstone ring, "green chalcedony with blood-like spots of jasper." The liberator is a jutted-chin Brit out of Kipling's "The Man Who Would Be King," whom Ross will meet again - and so will Owen. The aptly named Mr. Skinner is but one of Ross's problems, as Owen learns as he gets deeper into a book project about the Cheechees, the Anglo-Indians of the last generation before Indian independence. Owen's own life is not without dramas, if sometimes vicarious ones, that sometimes rather too neatly fall in parallel with those of the narrative he is pursuing. But then, as Owen explains, "Destiny, like truth, never really surprises; some Chomskyan grammar is there to receive it." Tracking those parallels leads to some surprises, as well as a shaggy-dog false ending that gives way to a more satisfying payoff.A vigorous roman a ghee, reminiscent at turns of Vikram Seth, Zadie Smith and Douglas Coupland. (Kirkus Reviews)
Product Description
India, the 1940s: a time of political turmoil and violence; a country on the verge of its tryst with destiny. Ross Monroe is a boxer, a Catholic and an Anglo-Indian. Throughout his youth, Ross is sustained by a single dream: to box his way to Olympic victory -- until a devastating betrayal by an Englishman sends him into exile, and an obsession which will change his life for ever. In present-day England, Owen Monroe, aspiring novelist, is writing the story of his father's life in an attempt to avoid confronting the problems in his own. But family chronicle turns to amateur sleuthing when a chance discovery provides a clue to the whereabouts of his father's long-lost enemy. The quest that follows takes Owen through the secrets of the Monroe past and into a love affair he could never have thought possible...
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